Jerry,

Thank you very much for your details on what Stan recorded off record. I find it interesting (but not surprising) that although his SEVEN SEAS is pretty much the largest collection of chanteys, he is only known for performing a relatively small set of those. In his later books (for numerous easy to guess reasons, I think) he trims off all these "Harding chanteys" (Perhaps that is a better way to group them!). I wonder to what extend he "knew" them them well (i.e. in order to perform them) or knew them just enough to log them in his very inclusive first book.

"John Kanaka" is a funny anomaly, since I'd put it in this category and yet Hugill evidently liked it and chose to popularize it. Maybe it was because he liked doing that yodel. Maybe the story of "samoan" lyrics was gimmicky. But for whatever reason, the very similar and probably more popular "Mobile Bay / John Come tell us as we haul away" hasn't made it to any kind of renown.

Also interesting is that the more recent, wonderful interest in Caribbean chanteying still does not quite fill the gap of what seems to be many Caribbean-or-Southern-U.S.-or-minstrel-based chanteys that were once actually well known by Euro-Americans. It's mostly a different repertoire (I think?) than that represented by Abrahams, the Nevis whalers, etc.

Gibb