The author concludes (rightfully) not. Not only did it have a long history prior to its racist use, but the association has been (for better or worse) lost. Indeed, much more has been done with the tune being used for kids over the last fifty years, as well as a country standard, as well as any number of other things (including Wakko's State Capitals song http://youtu.be/7QV87XZ3RYw).
(For the record, none of the ice cream trucks in the places I've ever lived played this tune.)
In the late 18th Century, Franz Haydn composed a peaceful little tune for the Austro-Hungarian / Holy Roman Emperor's birthday, to accompany a poem hoping for long life for Francis II. Some years later, someone else added some different words to it to make it an anthem for the German people in the cause of unifying Germany from the separate states it still existed in (something that eventually happened in the mid-19th Century). That tune then became the national anthem of the united country, which was all fine and well until its association with the horrors of the Nazis in the mid-20th Century.
A friend of my parents, with whom they played chamber music, was a survivor of the concentration camps. He would never play that particular Haydn tune, part of Haydn's Emperor Quartet, because of the association of the Deutschlandlied (or, as it's known from its first line, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles").
The Deutschlandlied is still the national anthem of Germany, used on state occasions. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandlied)
Interestingly enough, there are a couple of Christian hymns set to that tune (http://goo.gl/IyWCwH), as well as the Alma Mater of the University of Pittsburgh (http://youtu.be/5BOh-Ii58Ew). It always gives me a twitch when it comes up at a church service, because of that incongruous association.
Can a song be so tainted that becomes unacceptable to use, even after the association with that taint is forgotten? I hope so, because there's some lovely music out there that deserves better than how some folk have put it to use in the past.
(h/t +Les Jenkins)
Recall That Ice Cream Truck Song? We Have Unpleasant News For You
This is the story of why our beloved ice cream truck plays blackface minstrel music that sends kids dashing into homes in a Pavlovian frenzy searching for money to buy a Popsicle.
The first line of the German national anthem isn’t Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.
A DJ on BBC local radio was recently required to ‘fall on his sword’ because he didn’t realise the jolly song he played “The sun has got his hat on”, had the word ‘nigger’ in one of the later verses. The show was prerecorded, so it wasn’t as if he could go “Oh, sorry” and cut the song. (I think he does his links and drops in the track to the recording, rather than sit through all of it)
@LH – A good point I didn’t make clear (though the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandlied#Lyrics_and_translation does). The current German national anthem is officially the third verse of the tune. DDUA is the beginning of the first verse.
But the tune is the same.
Have now listened to the Ice Cream van – Its not a UK tune – ours often use Greensleeves for some reason. I’m sure I’ve heard that as a Reb song, though.
“Turkey in the Straw” is a Scots-Irish tune associated with Appalachia and the South in the US, later with general country music and ho-downs. Not surprising it became minstrel-show fare.
Not to mention that Mickey whistles it at the beginning of every film put out by Disney Animation…