John Hodges ("Cool White") · Key of C · Public domain
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This chart is written in C. Tap any key above the chart to see the whole song in that key, with every chord already worked out. To stay in C with different chord shapes, play it capo 3 with the A shapes, or capo 5 with the G shapes. Singing with a group? Pick the key where the highest note is comfortable for everyone, then print that page.
Buffalo Gals was published in 1844 as "Lubly Fan" by John Hodges, a blackface minstrel performer who went by the stage name Cool White, and it probably circulated before he printed it. Troupes changed the title to fit whichever town they were playing, so it went around as New York Gals, Boston Gals and Alabama Girls, but the Buffalo version stuck. An 1848 edition published in New York by William Hall & Son under the title Buffalo Gals is the earliest printing that can be read online today, and a Buffalo newspaper reprinted it in 1890 as "the most famous of local songs," crediting it to Edwin P. Christy's troupe fifty years earlier.
The usual explanation of the title is the dance halls of Buffalo's canal district, where the Erie Canal met Lake Erie and canal crews were paid off. The chorus had already shed its minstrel dialect by 1892, when Robert Louis Stevenson quoted "Buffalo Gals, won't you come out tonight?" in The Wrecker, and in 1925 the folklorist Dorothy Scarborough reported the same wording being sung in various parts of the country. Most people today know it from It's a Wonderful Life (1946), where George and Mary Bailey sing it walking home from the dance. This chart keeps the three courting verses and leaves out the minstrel stage's caricature verse. Words and melody are in the public domain.
Two chords: C and G7, in a bouncy two. Each verse line pair goes the same way: stay on C through the first line, hit G7 on the first "down the street" (or "have a dance," "gal my wife") and come back to C on the repeat, then G7 at the start of the last line and C on its final word. The chorus is identical: C for "Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight," G7 and C across the two repeats, and G7 to C on "dance by the light of the moon." Strum it like a fiddle tune, down-up on every beat with a little bounce, and let the group answer the "won't you come out tonight" repeats. If C sits low for the singers, G is the key of the 1848 sheet music.
Tap any chord for its diagram, other voicings, and the notes inside it.
From the same decade: Oh! Susanna chords and lyrics
All the campfire and folk song chord sheets, each one in every key.
Further reading: Buffalo Gals (Wikipedia)
