In the 1830s Rice became known as "Daddy Rice, Father of American Minstrelsy", or "Jim Crow Rice". He traveled extensively singing the Jim Crow Song to rousing applause. Rice doctored the lyrics as he went, alluding to contemporary events and improvising the lyrics as he went. The two versions of sheet music in the James Weldon Johnson Collection vary dramatically, one containing nine verses and the other, forty-four. Along with Zip Coon, Jim Crow was both one of the most popular songs in minstrelsy history, and that which established one of the most indelible racist stereotypes of the 19th and 20th centuries.