Buffalo Gals

A 19th-century American song published in 1844 as “Lubly Fan, Will You Come Out To Night?” by John Hodges, a blackface minstrel performer who used the stage name Cool White. The melody likely circulated orally before publication, and a version called “Midnight Serenade” appeared in G.P. Knauff’s 1839 Virginia Reels for piano. Minstrel troupes routinely changed the location to suit the audience — “Boston Gals,” “Alabama Gals,” “New York Gals” — and the Ethiopian Serenaders’ 1848 sheet music as “Buffalo Gals” fixed the name most commonly heard today. Folklorists have long doubted Hodges’s authorship. Claiming a transcribed traditional tune as one’s own was common minstrel-show practice. The song moved from the minstrel stage into oral folk tradition and survives in southern fiddle versions as “Round Town Gals” and “Midnight Serenade,” notably in a 1939 Library of Congress recording by Mississippi fiddler John Hatcher that uses cross-tuning and opens with the high part. Recorded versions range from Pete Seeger to Bruce Springsteen, and the song appears prominently in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.