Country Blues > Weenie Campbell Main Forum

Coon Can and Georgia Skin

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waxwing:
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 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[Edit - Read down to the second description titled "Real Skinnin'"]

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))

And there's also a transcription of Hurston here:

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 as well, which gives some insight.

Apparently there were a lot of regionalisms in the rules of Georgia Skin.

Wax

eric:
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/

banjochris:
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

rvschex:
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?

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