We need to remember that minstrel performers like Rice, Emmett, Brower, Whitlock and co. were all performing as solo and duo acts quite a few years before the Virginia Minstrels set up the successful troupes in 1843. They were already picking up tunes, choruses, the language, body language (albeit exaggerated and burlesqued) and typical phrases from African-Americans, but the verses were largely new and their own invention.