The Robert Tallant Papers contain a small collection of songs collected from disreputable people down by the riverfront in New Orleans. Although the item is in the Tallant collection, the material was supposedly collected by McKinney (the name that heads the pages). According the following link, McKinney collected folklore in New Orleans primarily from 1937-1941. He also got much negro slang.
From here:
http://www.nsula.edu/watson_library/cghrc_core/federal_writers_project.htm
