Case is thought to have been mulatto. Little official documentation of his personal history is available, but there are reports that he was mixed and sought to "pass". It was also not uncommon for African-Americans to perform in black-face as a loophole into the entertainment business in those days.\n', '

In 1910, after recovering from a nervous breakdown, he went on tour in England, where for the first time he performed the song "There was once a poor young man who left his country home." The 1933 film, The Fatal Glass of Beer is based on this song, and comedian W.C. Fields performs it at the onset. Critic Harold Bloom remarked several years later that Fields\', "croaking his ghastly dirge to the uncertain sound of his dulcimer, is a parodic version of the Bard of Sensibility, a figure out of the primitivism of Thomas Gray or William Blake."[citation needed]\n', '

According to Sigmund Spaeth, in his 1926 book, Read \'Em and Weep: The Songs You Forgot to Remember, the interpreter of a Case song would sing in a "very matter-of-fact voice, with little or no expression, letting the words speak for themselves." Case is also sometimes credited for being one of the first to employ the stand-up style when in the 1880s and 90s he began to do comedic monologues without props or costumes, something that had never been done before.\n', '

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