Dear Tug the Cox:

The lyrics show in the earlier thread is what Peter Kasin and I recorded on our album, Boldy from the Westward. The Johnson Girls got the song from us but recorded slightly different verses.

Liner notes from our album:

A cargo loading shanty taken from F.P. Harlow's Chanteying Aboard American Ships, 1962. Harlow says "Sun Down Below, Mobile Bay, Way Sing Sally, and Hilo, My Ranzo Way, are purely West Indian Negro chanteys sung while hoisting cargo from the hold of ships and seldom if ever sung by sailors at the halliards." They may have been sung more frequently than Harlow suggests. Stan Hugill, in Shanties from the Seven Seas says that Mobile Bay, for example, was sung by sailors aboard ship at the halyards and at the capstan and pumps.

This song is also mentioned in Lydia Parrish's book, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, 1942. Parrish says "This tune was sung at the end of the day as a hint to the captain, when the hold was too dark for the stevedores to see what they were doing." Verses three and four come from the Lydia Parrish book.

Radriano