Coon songs were a genre of music that presented a stereotype of black people. They were popular in the United States and Australia from around 1880 to 1920, though the earliest such songs date from minstrel shows as far back as 1848, when they were not yet identified with "coon" epithet. The genre became extremely popular, with white and black men giving performances in blackface and making recordings. Women known as coon shouters also gained popularity in the genre. Rise and fall from popularity Although the word "coon" is now regarded as racist, according to Stuart Flexner, "coon" was short for "raccoon", and it meant a frontier rustic (someone who may wear a coonskin cap) by 1832. By 1840 it also meant a Whig as the Whig Party was keen to be associated with rural white common people. At that time, "coon" was typically used to refer someone white, and a coon song referred to a Whig song. it was only in 1848 when the first clear case of using "coon" to refer to a black person in a derogative sense appeared. It is possible that the negative racial connotation of the word may have evolved from "Zip Coon", a song that first became popular in the 1830s, and the common use of the word "coon" in blackface minstrel shows. The song "Zip Coon", a variant of "Turkey in the Straw", notably in performances by George Washington Dixon who performed in blackface, was published around 1834. The word "coon" meaning "black person", was in use by 1837. An alternative suggestion of the word's origin to mean a black person is that it was derived from barracoon, an enclosure for slaves, which became increasingly used in the years before the American Civil War as temporary enclosure for slaves escaping or traveling. It may also have been used earlier on the stage; a black man named Raccoon was one of the lead characters in a 1767 colonial comic opera "The Disappointment". Whatever the origin, by 1862, "coon" had come to mean a black person. The first explicitly coon-themed song, published in 1880, may have been "The Dandy Coon's Parade" by J. P. Skelley. Other notable early coon songs included "The Coons Are on Parade", "New Coon in Town" (by J. S. Putnam, 1883), "Coon Salvation Army" (by Sam Lucas, 1884), "Coon Schottische" (by William Dressler, 1884). The most popular coon songs of