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Country Blues => Weenie Campbell Main Forum => Topic started by: waxwing on May 28, 2009, 10:14:47 PM
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Inspired by the card playing in the Mamie Smith - Harlem Blues vid Pan posted, I did a little googling on these two games, which we have discussed in various threads and for which, to my memory, we never came up with rules of play.
There is now a wikipedia page for Coon Can or Conquian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquian) which is pretty clear.
Georgia Skin is still a little less clear, but the gist of it can be gleaned from two humorous gambling forum discussions:
http://markgritter.livejournal.com/317064.html (http://markgritter.livejournal.com/317064.html)[Edit - Read down to the second description titled "Real Skinnin'"]
http://www.sportsunit.com/forum/showthread.php?p=39311 (http://www.sportsunit.com/forum/showthread.php?p=39311)
and then listening to this explanation by Zora Neale Hurston, which has a small mp3 format that should work for dial up:
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/flwpabib:@field(NUMBER+@band(afcflwpa+3137b1)) (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/flwpabib:@field(NUMBER+@band(afcflwpa+3137b1)))
And there's also a transcription of Hurston here:
http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/RmOlSngs/RTOS-DealGo.html (http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/RmOlSngs/RTOS-DealGo.html)
I also saw a mention that Georgia Skin is derived from Faro and Wikipedia now has a page for Faro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faro_(card_game)) as well, which gives some insight.
Apparently there were a lot of regionalisms in the rules of Georgia Skin.
Wax
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Curious as to what a "skin game" is I found this link that Waxwing posted quite a while ago, in which Zora Neale Hurston narrates a description:
https://www.loc.gov/item/flwpa000010/ (https://www.loc.gov/item/flwpa000010/)
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If anyone is interested in card games of any stripe, I would highly recommend the website www.pagat.com, which has rules and background on card games from all over the globe.
Chris
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Just out of curiosity I googled the term "cooncan". Except for the card game website, this is the only reference I came upon referring to the name. When I was a boy we played and stick and ball game that we (small black community) called "cooncan". We staggered several (six?) empty tin cans in a pyramid shape and used a soft ball (?) and a stick (some times a sugarcane stalk) to knock the cans down. I wanted to see if others played this game and did they call it that. I was also curious a to whether the term was actually derived from racist references to African Americans. Can anyone respond?