history and American studies at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, has also suggested that coon songs can be seen as "a necessary sociopsychological mechanism for justifying segregation and subordination." The songs portrayed blacks as posing a threat to the American social order and implied that they had to be controlled. Composers At the height of their popularity, "just about every songwriter in the country" was writing coon songs "to fill the seemingly insatiable demand". Writers of coon songs included some of the most important Tin Pan Alley composers, including Gus Edwards, Fred Fisher (who wrote the 1905 "If the Man in the Moon Were a Coon", which sold three million copies), and Irving Berlin. Even one of John Philip Sousa's assistants, Arthur Pryor, composed coon songs. (This was meant to ensure a steady supply to Sousa's band, which performed the songs and popularized several coon song melodies.) Many coon songs were written by whites, but some were written by blacks. Important black composers of coon songs include Ernest Hogan (who wrote "All Coons Look Alike to Me", the most famous coon song); Sam Lucas (who wrote the most racist early coon songs by modern standards); minstrel and songwriter Sidney L. Perrin (who wrote "Black Annie," "Dat's De Way to Spell Chicken," "Mamma's Little Pumpkin Colored Coons," "Gib Me Ma 15 Cents," and "My Dinah"); Bob Cole (who wrote dozens of songs, including "I Wonder What the Coon's Game Is?" and "No Coons Allowed"); and Bert Williams and George Walker. Even classic ragtime composer Scott Joplin wrote at least one coon song ("I Am Thinking of My Pickaninny Days"), and may have composed the music for several more, using lyrics written by others. Characteristics Coon songs almost always aimed to be funny and incorporated the syncopated rhythms of ragtime music. A coon song's defining characteristic, however, was its caricature of African Americans. In keeping with the older minstrel image of blacks, coon songs often featured "watermelon- and chicken-loving rural buffoon[s]". However, "blacks began to appear as not only ignorant and indolent, but also devoid of honesty or personal honor, given to drunkenness and gambling, utterly without ambition, sensuous, libidinous, even lascivious." Blacks were portrayed as making money through gambling, theft, and hustling, rather than working to earn a living, as in the Nathan Bivins song "Gimme Ma Money": Last night I did go to a big Crap game, How dem coons