Yep, John Hartford is a licensed pilot. Many of his songs are about boats and the rivers.

The Delta Queen, some say, got it's name when gamblers were having a poker game for the ownership of the boat. One of 'em needed a particular card to win. He was dealt a queen----and he won. So the boat was named the Delta Queen. ;-)

I don't think "The Delta Queen Waltz" was written until the early 1980s or so. It's a beautiful song.

Every so often John Hartford would come on board the Julia Belle Swain for a week or so to pilot the boat when I was the folksinger/storyteller on that steamboat through the '80s and into the '90s. He always brought his instruments and we had some fine times. On the wall in front of me is a photo I took of the back of one of John's fiddles. Below an inlaid steamboat are the words of John Hartford's mentor, Captain Fred Way: Nothing Is Real But The River And All Else Is Sham.

I first saw the Delta Queen in 1961 on the Ohio River passing Evansville, Indiana. I was swimming in the river when it came by. These days it mostly runs on the lower Mississippi between St.Louis and New Orleans. A few times a year it runs on the Upper Mississippi all the way to Minneapolis.

CATHY BARTON and DAVE PARRA play their old-time music and Civil War songs on the Delta Queen a goodly portion of the summers now.

Art Thieme

Art Thieme