A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Hesk
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 07:30 AM

Lighter, sounds like a true fact to me!

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Hesk
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 06:21 AM

RJM,

I agree that statements should be backed by sources where possible, but there is such a thing as a matter of opinion. It is tedious to mention this every time, especially as Mudcat is just a bit of fun for like minded people who like a good argument or a bit of natter, (in my opinion!)

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Sep 23 - 11:04 PM

>>Neither did the sailors on the Gazela call them "shanties." Their 2400+ year histories and traditions are not about African-Americans, cotton screwers or the Gulf of Mexico.<<

What do "them" and "their" refer to?

>>Reidler<< [sic]

Could you please explain to everyone why you have been pounding on this poor undergraduate thesis-writer (Riedler) for several years, ever since you got a bug in your bonnet about people not discussing Catholic Romance language-speaking flautists? The frequency with which you mention her name seems only slightly behind your mention of "TikTok," "Wellerman," and "Naval Science." Yet, I'm confident that most if not all people here have no idea whom you're referring to when you do so.

Was some secondary-sourced background write-up narrative of the history of chanties in the bachelor's thesis about "The Influence of Sea Shanties on Classical Music," by this young woman from Singapore who is a scholar of opera, the primary thing you chance-encountered when you started this journey, and you have been reacting to it ever since? Did you two have an exchange on Reddit or something where she said, "OK, Boomer"? Did you tell her she should change her major to a HARD STEM field?

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Sep 23 - 06:47 PM

Not much substance here, just a remark:

I've noticed "Doodle [sic] Let Me Go" has become (recently, I think) more popular on the eastern side of the Atlantic and in the cyberspace.

I suppose the circa 2019 film _The Lighthouse_ contributed a little bit to that. (Funny enough, I suspect the makers had a look at Hugill, or [even more likely] a performer who had, for that.)

But Lloyd's rendition popularized it, I guess. Lloyd appears to have used Cecil Sharp _English Folk-Chanteys_ (1914) as his source. After the first verse, the lyrics are Lloyd's. Lloyd also changes the form by creating solo couplets (whereas the versions in Sharp, Terry, and Hugill have just one-line solos).

You can roughly tell who might have gotten it from the Lloyd lineage if they sing couplets, and if they do a little snap rhythm (Lloyd's addition, not in the books) on the word "yellow" in the chorus.

Anyway, my remark is that it strikes me as funny hearing so many people sing about "yaller girls." It's such a trope in minstrel songs and 19th c African American songs (though I don't know the exact extent of cross-influence between those spheres on this particular matter), that it's just kind of odd to hear it belted with such passion.

The interpretation I would hazard is that Lloyd's text lays on the narrative of "whoring down in Peru" so thickly that singers, if they care to think what a yellow gal is, suppose it means some quaint name for a "Spanish" prostitute. Or something like that. The cultural distance of "creoles down in Peru," perhaps, makes it politically more palatable than the alternative, a colorist term of US Black people. Concurrently, they are not based in the American cultural environment enough to know it as a the dated but still used term among some Black Americans (usually within their community only) and the connotations it has and had.

Mind, I don't have a strong complaint about people singing it, per se, but I figure that if they knew it better they might be a little less enthusiastic!

And no, Texans and their state song are not the same ;)

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 11 Sep 23 - 06:44 AM

Good questions/comments, Keith, thanks

"Of course you believe Lloyd made it up on the basis that it was never collected anywhere else."

That's not *the* basis. That's one factor in the interpretation, yes, but not the definitive one. So, I don't propose the idea that simply because only one instance of a given song was documented that the song's existence in tradition should be doubted. However, speaking to that point, 1) We have a track record of examples (it's basically the topic of this thread!) of Lloyd creating songs, which doesn't prove anything about this song individually but contributes to reasonable skepticism of his methods; 2) more importantly, we have Lloyd mentioning MacKenzie, as you said**—while what he did was NOT MacKenzie; 3) We have quite a few documents of this song (the chanty with the "Ranzo, ranzo, way" chorus). They all compare well with one another, including MacKenzie's, whereas Lloyd's piece does not match the set; 4) Lloyd's piece does not match the musical style of chanties in general, either (refer to guestD's opinion above).

(**I must note, however, that the liner notes of _Blow Boys Blow_ (1957) do not say this, they say, “One of the great halyard shanties, seemingly better-known in English ships than American ones, though some versions of it have become crossed with the American song called Huckleberry Hunting. From the graceful movement of its melody it is possible that this is an older shanty than most. Perhaps it evolved out of some long-lost lyrical song.” The first sentence is bullshitting. What are “the great halyard shanties”? There is nothing in the literature to indicate its status as “great,” nor is it often attributed to halyards [though that in itself may be meaningless; see below], nor is there data to support “better-known in English ships.” Like many of the liner notes, Lloyd is making wild assertions that are neither possible to make from the documentation and nor is there any information to suggest that Lloyd did the sort of research anyway that would be required to make the claim if it was possible.) Anyway, mention of MacKenzie is on a later, 1964 album.)

I mentioned the Mudcat thread about this song (in which Dick also participated). That and Brian's recorded talk, above, spoke to the relationship between Lloyd's song and MacKenzie's book, now summarized again by Lighter. Which is all why I hoped to refer to the song without dragging this all out because I believed all the people actively engaged already knew what it’s about. They also know the standard concept that chanties are rhythmical. And with that they can put two and two together to know what I was expressing about Lloyd’s intellectual dishonesty and about the problem with the Glasgow shanty workshop.

So, here’s an image of MacKenzie’s transcription, “The Wild Goose”
https://imgur.com/a/WDJXuH5

It’s a completely coherent, rhythmic piece. It’s not that Lloyd, taking MacKenzie as the germ of an idea, made a “slow” song so much that he made a non-metered one. It simply does not make sense as a working chanty. I have theories on why he may have done that, but won’t digress. And I hate for us to have to keep saying that Lloyd can do whatever he wants, someone can adapt chanty material to sing whatever they want etc. That’s not the issue. The issue is when people interpret this creation, which is *not* characteristic of traditional chanty style, *as representative* of traditional chanty style—all because they have been led to believe it is a representative sample. After all, Lloyd tacitly implies that *what he sang on record* was that “great halyard shanty” “well-known in English ships” etc. Even when he later mentions MacKenzie, he only says it—we are led to believe “it” refers to what he is singing—is found there. This is not a confession of his adaptation of MacKenzie’s material to a new (uncharacteristic) form. It reads, rather, as a further validation of the pedigree of what he’s doing. Lloyd, I believe, bears responsibility for poisoning the well. I cannot blame most people for being misled by Lloyd; I don’t expect most people to have known not to trust Lloyd. If we do blame them, we must also blame Jim Mageean in the Glasgow Shanty Festival clip. Yet Dick says, “If I want information about Shanties. I don not use AL Lloyd but i contact Chris Roche or Jim Mageaan, who are very knowledgeable." Dick— Jim is using AL Lloyd. Do you not finally see what this is all about? Lloyd f*cked up the entire pool, and that probably goes for problems in Hugill’s work, too. You revised: “When i want info on sea shanties, i do not go to Lloyd, i contact Chris Roche, who knew Stan Hugill well, and is imo an EXPERT on Shanties and sea songs.” (Jim is omitted this time around, why?) What if Chris knew Stan Hugill well… and gets some of the same poison from the well that Hugill got? For example, why did Hugill start singing Lloyd’s form of “South Australia,” whereas this appears in none of his books (and no one sings the South Australia in Hugill’s books? I mean, hitching one’s hawser to Hugill isn’t exactly the authoritative flex you seem to think it is. This isn’t about Jim or Chris, who seem like fine gentlemen and maybe in the same boat of Lloyd’s victims. I don’t see why you seem to be dismissing the significance of Lloyd’s ideas’ effects as if they could be isolated from the business of how shanties are now presented in the UK?

In the 1972 recording, as I started to explain, Lloyd creates a half-truth situation. He says chanties were sung slower (than revival performers sing them). That’s true…some of the time. Some chanties were sung quite quickly, it depends. I think the tempo at which Lloyd sang “Yellow Gals,” which he called “ridiculous,” was absolutely perfect. This idea “we sing chanties too fast” is a truism. True some of the time, but ultimately not accurate. The familiar truism gets heads nodding, “ah yes, (in absence of all the facts) that makes sense; he knows of what he speaks!” and obscures the falsehood: “As proof of that, here’s an example of a ‘slow’ one.” Need I go on? He’s planted evidence. The funny thing is that MacKenzie’s “Wild Goose” could reasonably be sung, in a brake windlass working situation, at the same tempo that Lloyd sings “Yellow Gals”!

As far as whether a chanty belongs to a category of “windlass” or “capstan” or “halyard” or whatever goes, that is a long discussion that I won’t get into here. In brief: I think these categories are bunk. We have primary source accounts that describe people doing one or another job X and singing chanty Y, from which we get some limited data for certain purposes. But as for both the classificatory scheme that took hold in discourse that sifts chanties into these categories, that is a reduction that usually confuses and harms more than it helps to understand anything. More importantly, most of the statements by writers in the popular sources and by revival performance presenters are so unscientific that this supposed point of information (e.g. “Y was a halyard chanty”) is completely useless for understanding chanties historically. I think most people don’t even know what it means (in any significant way that would be worth noting) when they say that, but rather they just copy what they heard/read in an effort to give the impression that they’re providing something. Just about all these ascriptions to categories are good for are detective hunts like the one here about what source a revival performer like Lloyd might have read/heard.

In The Keelers’ workshop clip, because I was not there and I’m only seeing the clip, no, I cannot testify that they *said* Lloyd’s Wild Goose was a brake windlass chanty. What we can see, however (and the reason why I shared the clip) is that they are imitating the action of working a brake windlass. So, I see no reason to question Jerzy’s caption on the video: we see it in the video.

This is where the meta-conversation about categories does have some trivial application. I suspect that The Keelers, in a workshop intended to show the uses of chanties, went through an outline of various categories of work, one of which was brake windlass. I surmise that what we are seeing is the choice to employ Lloyd’s Wild Goose to illustrate that part of the workshop.

How they settled on the idea that LLOYD’S Wild Goose would make a good example for brake windlass work is the puzzling part. I can conjecture how they got the idea that “The Wild Goose Shanty,” *as an abstract idea*, would be categorized as brake windlass. It’s an issue of equivocation. Terry’s _The Shanty Book_ has “The Wild Goose Shanty”, to which he affixes the label “Windlass and Capstan.” The first, trivial matter of equivocation is that “windlass” gets mixed up. I’m not at all certain that Terry had the brake windlass in mind when he writes “windlass” in the book. As in Colcord’s similar usage, the book never speaks to brake windlass specifically, instead always grouping it in the phrase “windlass and capstan.” “Windlass” also referred to the capstan-driven windlass (the nature of which working was totally different), and that was the “windlass” that I believe would have been in Terry’s mind, due to the fact e.g. that the brake windlass had practically fallen to the wayside long before. Maybe not, but that’s what I think; I said it was trivial. In any case, both Terry’s book and MacKenzie have “Wild Goose” as the title of this item. Someone very fixated on that *arbitrary* title might overlook other documentation on this chanty. They might say, accepting Lloyd’s Wild Goose as the real McCoy (or MacColl—see Lighter’s recent link), “Let me go look for more info on ‘the Wild Goose Shanty’,” after which they would discover Terry’s score but not necessarily the other documents of “Ranzo way.” They would see “windlass” affixed to Terry’s score and say, “OK, this is appropriate to windlass… [then equivocating] *brake* windlass.” Maybe that’s what led The Keelers to their categorization. I don’t know, and I don’t think it’s very important what *led* to that.

It—“it” being “Ranzo Way,” disguised under the label of “Wild Goose” by Terry and MacKenzie—*is* appropriate to brake windlass work. Incidentally, it was one of the items I had considered when I was creating a recording to illustrate singing chanties with brake windlass work in mind. One of my criteria for all the items I was consideringwas that there must be a first-hand descriptive account of people working a brake windlass while singing the chanty.

The non-trivial equivocation comes in when Ranzo Way qua Wild Goose (Terry and MacKenzie) gets mixed up, by sharing the title, with Lloyd’s Wild Goose. Lloyd might have gotten the idea from MacKenzie but his composition is not the same species of thing. So, the mistake is to take “Wild Goose #1” (MacKenzie/Terry) and the ideas about its historical application and apply them to “Wild Goose #2” (Lloyd). That, in my opinion, should not have happened, not because The Keelers didn’t appraise the provenance of Lloyd’s Wild Goose. We could call that an innocent mistake. It should not have happened because it should have been obvious that Lloyd’s Wild Goose is not functional for brake windlass work. The puzzle is: What inhibited this common sense “check”? Perhaps it was such faith placed in the product of Lloyd and/or the writing of Terry etc that common sense was sublimated: “(Lloyd’s) Wild Goose is the traditional chanty, and books say ‘Wild Goose’ is a windlass chanty, and that must mean brake windlass, and we want to use a popular song to show brake windlass action. It *must* work (Jesus told me so), so we must figure out how it works (rather than question its utility).”

Briefly, Keith:

“You note how slow both Ree Baldwyn and Alex Henderson are singing, the same point Bert makes at the Top Lock folk club.”
No, not the same point. Merely calling attention to the slow tempo, and the correlation to brake windlass work (which was the slowest job, on average, though the tempo varies I’d say up to about 65 BPM).

“if Bert was right and it was used as a halyard, at that very slow pace, it would be possible to get four pulls on the chorus.”
Four pulls per chorus at a halyard does not exist.

“I don't think any of the examples of working shanties given are too successful 'Let the Bulgine Run' for 'Heaving Brake Windlass' is a bit of a shambles.”
Not sure what you found shambolic about it. As you may know, video examples of practical chanty singing are very rare. Most plentiful are videos from the squad at Mystic Seaport, which is where that came from. The dearth of such visual examples, and none with a “full size” brake windlass, is one reason I made Songs of the Windlass: Singing Chanties on Gazela.
The point of that second halyard clip was to talk about the creation of verses, improvisation, pertaining to the situation.

“completed the task in 10.5 verses and 42 pulls, which you considered to be the 'typical length' I'm not sure an experienced crew would agree with you.”
That was data collection. I counted what happened there, and count in other instances, to see the range. I’ve had quite a few chances to do this or observe it in different situations, collecting the data from all, and that instance was not an outlier. Do you know anyone doing this on the eastern side of the Atlantic (I’d love to get their examples). What would they say? 5 verses? 25 verses? We have no historical accounts that I know of of people saying how many verses. What we have is 1) noted texts, which vary quite a bit but suggest a range 2) Recent applications, all of which, however, are associated with Mystic Seaport folks or something I have set up—and all under circumstances we can certainly quibble about (Where there “too many” on the line? Was the weather too nice? Is synthetic line different than hemp? What material are the yards made from? Are the ships too big / too small?), but which don’t suggest that 10 verses is atypical. Imagine those kids as bigger people, and a ship bigger to scale, and accumulated fatigue. I did it on Bark Europa (great crew) crossing Azores – Brittany and 10 sounds about right to me as an average. Big difference between when you do it in isolation versus at the end of 2 weeks at sea doing things often and you’re tired and unenthusiastic.

By way of another example, here's an experienced crew on Charles W. Morgan eagerly showing off, with 34 pulls (= 8.5 “verses”)
https://youtu.be/1mot3MzhPpE?si=yObk0ydWEcS-qZJf

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 06:40 PM

Dick,

I don't think there is anything wrong with interpretations. That's what a discussion is. People look for evidence and then develop interpretations from the evidence. Then the conversation continues. More evidence is introduced, and interpretations are revised. People debate the quality of the evidence, and the strength or validity of how interpretations are using that evidence. That's what this thread (conversation) has been about.

Not all "evidence" that the discussants have ever seen in their entire lives is logged into this one thread. That would be tedious and unnecessary, since the discussants are aware of most of that already. For example, there is another Mudcat thread about Lloyd's "The Wild Goose Shanty" in which you participated. However, you did much the same there as I think you've been doing there: you didn't engage with the specifics.

I am glad to engage with you about the discussions of evidence and interpretation if you are willing. You have asked me to be more explicit about the evidence for my interpretation, which, it is true, I did not explicitly provide because the *engaged participants* in this thread are already aware of it or at least aware what I'm getting at.

However, I am reluctant to do the tedious work of rehashing all that exposition which has been discussed before because so far you have showed a disposition to ignore evidence. Frankly, I think it is rich that you ask for such an evidentiary process now when there is so much you have already ignored and when you have dismissed that process as not *worth* engaging in.

So, if I am to dance to your tune, you need to give something back. I will not outline the evidence and argumentation that forms my interpretation —which there is, and for you to blindly assert that there is none is not called for— unless you are willing to submit to the same process.

The question is why Lloyd would submit the example of a song in the way that *he created* it, not in the way he found it (and whereas what he found was very different than what he created) to make a claim about the shanty genre. The disturbing issue is that the workshop presenters at the recent Glasgow Shanty Festival also used Lloyd's creation to demonstrate some supposed fact about the genre. They did this, I believe, despite all common sense. That is, whereas Lloyd's manufacture of the song is not common knowledge, and I would therefore hesitate to criticism action without that knowledge, there is a factor of common sense that should prevail nevertheless: One cannot (or is very likely not to) do a rhythmic action to a non-rhythmic song. What inhibited the triumph of common sense? I suggest that it is an extraordinary faith-based belief in Lloyd, which is one of the greater problems that this conversation seeks to address.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 11:18 AM

RJM: "it is possible he meant capstan shanties were slower by nature"

Is that your interpretation, which you will support with evidence? This is quid pro quo, so please make sure we have the quid.

Gibb interpretation:

Lloyd spoke bullshit about how the speed and style of his "Wild Goose Shanty" was, as a representative of shanties as a class. It's bullshit because the song did not *exist* as such until Lloyd himself created it, at which time it was he would decided on what the speed and style would be. Lloyd thus postures as someone delivering some knowledge about shanties that is supported by evidence from the genre's documentation, which in this case is "Wild Goose Shanty." The evidence, however, has been planted, is manufactured. Lloyd does this so smoothly, hiding the dishonesty by misdirection toward a truth-y remark ("how funny it would be to sing shanties too fast!"), that it resembles a psychopath's behavior. (How's that taste?)

Dick interpretation:

???
[Capstan shanties were slower than what?] [He's making a reference to capstan shanties even though he does not single out Wild Goose Shanty as representative of capstan shanties?]

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 08:24 AM

>no, that is your interpretation, do you have any factual evidence to back that statement up?

Yes, it is my interpretation. What's your interpretation?

I'll make you a deal. Give me your interpretation. After that, if you're still engaged, I will give you some of the evidence for my interpretation and then you can give me some of your evidence.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 12:33 AM

Recent example of Lloyd's products causing confusion:

Here's a clip of "Shanties and their Usage Workshop" from Glasgow Shanty Festival, 2 September 2023.

(links to a public post on Facebook)

The song is Lloyd's "Wild Goose Shanty." I guess it's a demonstration of how Lloyd's song "would be" used if it had existed? Or it's a discussion of how to operate a brake windlass whilst singing and Lloyd's song is offered as an example of such a song?

Strange that the song has no discernible pulse and it's asymmetrical. Hey, aren't shanties those *rhythmical* songs for giving time-coordination to sailors' work? At least that's what Webster's says. And it's what the folk performers remind audiences when they want to add a halo of interest around their material like, "This isn't *just* any old song, this is a SHANTY! Yes, you see, it's a *special* song... a song for sailors' work, ooooh!" Yet where is the rhythm? Where is the meter? How on earth is the person imitating the pumping of a brake windlass imagining those motions for a song that gives no sensible cues to motion?

(How is it that these people, who have made their own version, are actually singing more like a shanty? I want them in my crew.)

***
Here's some balderdash from Lloyd (1972) saying that this shanty goes slower "by nature"? He really means, by his choice to make the song like that and pretend that was how he found it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ8YC7iOsEg

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 07 Sep 23 - 07:01 PM

>Without Lloyd and his contemporaries ther probably would not have been a UKfolk revival as we knew it.

Correct. That's what, in part, we are uncovering: Greater detail about the UK folk revival. What happened, between which individuals, at what times, with which materials for revival, in what forms, with what impact, etc.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 09:28 PM

As a footnote, I appreciated the shout out to the Mothers of Invention in Brian's talk.

I'm sure I encountered that Mothers album before I encountered Lloyd's album, but not long before. At the same time as idolizing Zappa during college, I was starting to re-discover sea songs from my Connecticut childhood, the favorite being one of the Library of Congress's albums of field recordings. Which led me simultaneously to be engaged in performing (and composing) art music inspired by Zappa and doing little informal folkie groups singing chanties based on those recordings. A fellow Zappa-loving friend and I always remember the liner notes' acknowledgement of _Blow Boys Blow_. Lloyd's "Handsome Cabin Boy" was in my repertoire at parties.

In the same notes, Zappa also acknowledges his first composition teacher, Prof. Karl Kohn. I did not know I would end up at Pomona College, where Zappa took lessons from Kohn and where Kohn is now a friend (professor emeritus). My local area is studded with lore about the Mothers, like which of the clubs they had played in and which schools they had attended. When I first moved to the area, on the street I saw Ray Collins, the original leader of the band that invited Zappa to join. Collins was homeless (or living out of a van, I believe). He died less than a year later.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 05:39 PM

>Any thoughts on he Hugill / Lloyd question, though?

Brian,
I certainly do have thoughts, but not much coherent or well-baked enough to put down at the moment!

Off the cuff: Your discussion of "Go to Sea Once More," and Lloyd's tune, reminded me: Doesn't Hugill (SfSS) use that tune? Which brings us back to whether Hugill corroborates Lloyd (whereas Carpenter's Barry singers do not) or whether Hugill pinched it from Lloyd.

The question of Howard bears on my theory about Lloyd developing "South Australia" from the transcription in Doerflinger. Basically, my idea is that he saw the very "descriptive" transcription (which is not performance-ready, having irregular measures and all) and created a "normalized" version by making choices about how to synch up the melody rhythm with barlines. However, arguing that must contend with the possibility of receiving that form of song from Howard. Again we have a case where the tune doesn't match any of the others that are documented.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 03:27 AM

Just caught the video, and happy to find (as I supposed you do) so answers to may recent questions about Ted Howard. Great!

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 05 Sep 23 - 08:25 PM

Brian --
Thanks for coming back! I recently stumbled on your published essay on this subject and it looks so good. Awaiting the opportunity to read it in full, but in the meantime, folks with some spare time (retired people??!?) should definitely check it out.

I feel inspired to look more closely and comparatively at all of the sailor songs that Lloyd said to have learned from Tom Howard of Barry, born circa 1888.

Howard, I recently discovered, played the role of the blacksmith in the 1950s film version of Moby Dick. He was the mate on the vessel used in the movie (captained by Alan Villiers) in the Irish Sea, in the summer of 1954 -- I think that's the same year Lloyd met Howard, and I wonder if the occasion for meeting was also the making of the film. I imagine Lloyd may have been employed to be the shantyman and, perhaps, Howard, also present, piped up to tell him a thing or two!

My curiosity was piqued when I noticed that the liner notes for "Bold Riley" on _A Sailor's Garland_ (1962) contain obvious bollocks and no mention of Howard. But in a 1970 magazine issue, Lloyd is pressed as to where he got the song from and he says it was from Howard. Suffice it to say, I hope to learn more about what "getting a song from Howard" really meant to Lloyd. On one hand, Howard's songs mediated by Lloyd could be really important sources to log. On the other hand, I fear it's possible that Lloyd might have invoked Howard tokenistically in some cases to give his arrangements/creations a pedigree.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 16 Sep 23 - 03:32 PM

No worries, Phil, we all do it!

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Sep 23 - 08:57 AM

There seems to be several scholars working on Lloyd's creativity at the moment. Most of them know about each other but someone perhaps needs to co-ordinate matters to avoid unnecessary duplication and time.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Sep 23 - 08:54 AM

BAUK
This has recently been covered on a similar thread on Facebook on the Traditional Ballads blog. Those in the know stated there that there was nothing at Goldsmiths that would enlighten us further. No field notes etc.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Sep 23 - 01:22 PM

Many thanks for that detailed account, Gibb!

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 10:05 AM

Dick, you are arguing with someone who has done years of dedicated research into the subject AND has first-hand experience of delivering chanties at tasks on board sailing ships. What research have you done? Enlighten us, do!

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 08 Sep 23 - 02:43 PM

We are now discussing personal preferences, in performance, which are not really part of the main thrust here. We are talking about material in the public domain, and anyone can legally and morally take a chanty and do what they like with it. We are talking about presenting recreated material within the revival and passing it off as wholly from oral tradition. Scholars/researchers/truth-seekers are also perfectly entitled to call this out when they come across it.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 07 Sep 23 - 03:13 PM

Dick, your last post is another example of the confusion created by Bert's creativity. Huntington was obviously convinced in this case by Bert's assertions.

You are arguing here with people who have done much research and are the leading exponents in these matters. Your posts are becoming embarrassing.

You have given your opinion IN CAPITALS; now, unless you have something fresh and illuminating to say I suggest you keep out of it.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 08:43 AM

Consider what you like, Dick. There are plenty of people who would rather have the truth, and Bert's tamperings/creativity are already well-known. All we are doing is trying to find out which items are genuine and which items have been recreated without proper attribution.

We are all in awe of Bert's contributions in a very positive way, but that does not detract from a desire to know the truth, in every case.

Bert's reputation as a scholar was largely destroyed by Bert himself. Those realists who want to know the truth can join with us. Those who don't want to know are welcome to ignore us. That is absolutely irrelevant and separate to our admiration for his creativity. All of the people involved here are performers as well as scholars.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 14 Sep 23 - 01:33 PM

And I'm just not reading all that much disagreement here on that front.

Obviously not, because the main posters here are people who have independently researched different areas of Lloyd's repertoire and drawn similar conclusions. Calling it a 'mutual appreciation society' isn't very helpful.

If any so-called tradition requires a formal, regulated performance environment to continue...

Whoever said that the folk song revival is a continuance of tradition? Or that all performance environments were as regulated as the Singers' Club? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 14 Sep 23 - 05:14 AM

This reminds me a touch of MacColl's Critics Group insistence that singers should restrict their repertoires to their authentic geographies of origin - whilst himself being a Salfordian wrapped in ancestral Scottish heritage, singing songs from right across the realm, and a prolific writer of new material to boot.

As in so many fields, the high priests are above the covenants required of the flock...!

There's much truth in this, but I also suspect that there was plenty of creative thinking going on in order to justify given song selections, in the same way that singers in 'theme nights' will dream up ingenious arguments to excuse a song of dubious relevance to the theme. MacColl could at least claim authenticity in respect of his Scots and Lancashire songs, and also anything he'd written himself that emanated from his own cultural experience. Lloyd could arguably have done the same for his maritime songs, although there is a very interesting comment in Peggy Seeger's memoir to the effect that Bert was most adept at constructing convincing fake traditional songs at the drop of a hat, to subvert the dictates of the Policy.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 14 Sep 23 - 04:50 AM

If, and only if, Leadbelly was "Policy."

... A "Policy" of exclusion is about the only way to manufacture the false consensus nobody needs.

The point is that the Policy was adopted at the Singers' Club in order to persuade recent recruits from the skiffle movement to look closer to home than America for material. This was successful, in that it spawned a second revival of English folk song and music in the 1950s and 60s, but for which a lot of us wouldn't be where we are now. It broadened, rather than narrowed, the available repertoire, so although superficially exclusionary it led to an expansion in people's horizons. I don't recognise a 'false consensus'.

Anyway, we were as you say discussing Lloyd in this thread. The big deal in his case is not really the matter of differing opinions. What we're dissecting here are individual cases, in order to learn just how far his interventions went. For those of us interested in traditional song, this is quite important.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 09:46 AM

I'm happy to accept a correction that that approach was more to do with the Singers Club, but I've heard direct testimony from a few who took part about this requirement, and how onerous it was.

According to Peggy (who I definitely believe), it was indeed a Singers' Club policy. However, many other clubs followed and became 'Policy Clubs'. It might have seemed onerous to some, but it was the Policy that persuaded people like Sandra Kerr and Lou Killen to look for songs from their own localities, and fuelled an interest in English folk song more generally. But for that, perhaps we'd all be singing Leadbelly songs to this day...

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 12 Sep 23 - 03:02 PM

Can I also thank Gibb for that tour de force regarding 'Wild Goose', which married an impressive depth of detail with some telling application of logic.

There have been several other interesting comments lately in this thread. It's reminded me why Mudcat is always worth returning to - at its best you can find a level of informed discussion hard to find elsewhere.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 12 Sep 23 - 02:58 PM

Do Dave Harker or Georgina Boyes interrogate Lloyd in Fakesong or the Imagined Village, respectively?

Harker's chapter on Lloyd, 'the one that got away' takes him to task mostly for adopting the main tenets of the Sharpian folk song consensus (a fair comment), for inaccurate analysis of North-Eastern working class culture, for flaws in his 'industrial song' concept, and for being the wrong kind of Marxist (Harker was SWP, Lloyd CPGB). Ironically, considering the book's title, Harker doesn't level the accusation of fakery at Lloyd at all, except in the case of 'The Coal Owner and the Pitman's Wife', the broadside text of which Lloyd apparently tampered with. And, like everyone else who's looked at it, he finds implausible Lloyd's linking of 'The Cutty Wren' with the Peasants' Revolt.

Georgina's online commentary on 'The Singing Englishman' is very useful.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 08 Sep 23 - 06:54 AM

Thanks Gibb and Lighter for those comments. I'm particularly glad that the Zappa clip rang a bell - the audience reaction to the reveal, when I've given the talk live, is one I cherish. I do remember the name Ray Collins - he was credited with 'Swell vocals' as against FZ's 'Low-grade vocals' on one of the Mothers' LPs, as I recall.

Off the cuff: Your discussion of "Go to Sea Once More," and Lloyd's tune, reminded me: Doesn't Hugill (SfSS) use that tune? Which brings us back to whether Hugill corroborates Lloyd (whereas Carpenter's Barry singers do not) or whether Hugill pinched it from Lloyd.

SfSS does indeed use that tune for Hugill's second version - the first uses what I consider the standard tune in oral tradition. The chicken-and-egg question is the crux of this, and I'm not sure anyone has an answer yet. I think it's possible that SH would have regarded Lloyd as an authentic source, given the whaling experience.

Without Lloyd and his contemporaries ther probably would not have been a UKfolk revival as we knew it.

I think that's what I just said on Facebook...

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 02:21 PM

I hope to learn more about what "getting a song from Howard" really meant to Lloyd.

Tha could be a really useful exercise, Gibb. As I said in the talk, we have Carpenter's recordings and notations from the Barry sailors for comparison.

Any thoughts on he Hugill / Lloyd question, though?

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 02:18 PM

Brian, I have at no point mentioned Marson.

No, but I mentioned him because it was his responsibility to rewrite the 'coarse' lyrics for songs that they published jointly, and I think that needs to be understood. I haven't looked into the songs Sharp published after the break with Marson (I probably should), so I'm not sure a this point whether Sharp changed any texts himself. I'm not aware of any amendments to his Appalachian material between field notes and publication.

I would agree that Lloyd was a more significant figure in the folk revival than Kennedy, though PK (for all his well-documented faults) did collect some wonderful material.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 08:35 AM

Sharp and Marson tampered with texts chiefly when their publishers thought them too 'coarse' to print and, unlike Lloyd, they never altered tunes. His rewrites were of a different order of magnitude.

I don't see why it's 'negative' to understand better the revival folk song canon, and Lloyd's reputation as a scholar had already been seriously compromised without any help from me. Picking it all apart is also fascinating as an exercise in detective work.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Sep 23 - 10:00 AM

Clicky:

Bert's Nautical Numbers

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Brian Peters
Date: 05 Sep 23 - 09:59 AM

I've been very irregular on Mudcat recently (it never seems to be working!) so I'd missed the resurrection of this thread earlier in the year. There are people involved here who I don't meet in my other social media interactions, so I thought it might be of interest if I brought this thread up to date with my own research (aided along the way by one or two participants in this thread).

Over the last four years I've carried out a lot of research into the songs Bert Lloyd brought to the folk revival, both through his own singing and by passing on songs he'd reconstructed to young singers of the day, most notably Anne Briggs. I had been apparent for a while that he did a lot of 'tinkering', but that word doesn't begin to describe the scale or depth of his modifications. On some of the landmark LPs the majority of the songs have been modified, often quite drastically. North American texts were plundered on many occasions, with no hint that the results weren't authentic 'English folk songs'.

As has been suggested above, modal melodies were not only composed for texts lacking a tune (e.g. 'Weary Whaling Grounds'), but substituted into many songs known to tradition with exclusively major tunes. This was particularly true of the erotic songs LP 'The Bird in the Bush' (where they served to make the songs more sensual and mysterious), but also in the case of many sea songs, especially those on 'Leviathan', where they made the mood more exciting and edgy. I think Lighter's point above about the exoticism and apparent antiquity of these melodies was a part of the appeal too. However, the Wyndham-Read version of 'Black Ball Line' with which Gibb reopened this thread is so weird that I'm inclined to agree it might have been mis-transcribed.

I gave a couple of talks about all of this, which are online - I'm linking the maritime one below. There is actually one song I'd like to consult the hive mind about: in the talk I mention 'Off to Sea Once More' and contrast the major tune generally collected orally with the modal one Lloyd (and most who followed after him) used. My belief is that Lloyd made up that tune, and that its appearance in Hugill's book suggests that he got it from Lloyd (who had recorded it five years earlier). However, a friend who knew Stan H. has pushed back against this, saying that, if Stan had used a song from Lloyd, he'd have given it proper attribution.

So my question is, are there any example where you know that Hugill published a song he'd obtained from Lloyd? I know we've speculated about it in the past.

Anyway, here's the talk - it starts at 43 minutes, but you might be interested in the other contributions too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEccGdRD8Fk

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Reinhard
Date: 16 Sep 23 - 10:32 AM

There is a detailed treatment of this song, including Scroggie's full text

... which I only added today, together with information about a bunch of recordings from my record collection that weren't listed yet.

And Scroggie's verses are already in the Digital Tradition, as TARWATH2.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Sep 23 - 08:26 AM

"Bert was most adept at constructing convincing fake traditional songs at the drop of a hat."

Uh-oh....

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Sep 23 - 10:48 AM

Thanks for the link to your essay, Georgina. I found it most interesting.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Sep 23 - 09:07 AM

Great commentary from Gibb and BlackAcornUK. Thanks for the posts.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Sep 23 - 09:55 PM

Keith, Mackenzie collected the tune and a single stanza from Ephraim Tattrie of Tatamagouche, N.S.

The stanza is the same as Lloyd's first stanza but with the minor differences of "floating" for "sailing" and "pretty girls" for L&M's "young girls." Nothing about trying to pick up a young woman with quivering topsails.

Mackenzie noted Tattrie's tune in regular 4/4 time. That necessary, regular rhythm is the chief difference between the two melodies.

According to Mackenzie, "This is to be regarded as a halliard shanty, although it apparently served at times for the men who were heaving at the capstan bars. Terry lists it as a windlass and capstan shanty."

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Sep 23 - 02:08 PM

Double-checking Mackenzie, 1919, his tune is clearly L&M's source, but it's written (surprise!) rhythmically.

Mackenzie suggests the tune might be called "wild and melancholy." Evidently not wild and melancholy enough.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Sep 23 - 01:58 PM

I see that "GUEST, Wm." pointed out on the "Wild Goose" thread last year that MacColl was singing Mackenzie's words to Lloyd's odd tune as early as 1953:

https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/61814?l=en

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 03:03 PM

Maybe pop and folky renditions of "Shenandoah" at about half the required speed prove what Lloyd was saying about chanteys being slow.

:^}

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 08:49 AM

Steeleye Span:

"Honesty's all out of fashion.
Oh, the hard times of old England...."

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 08:45 AM

"Evidence?? We don' need no steenkin' evidence!!" - "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1947).

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Sep 23 - 07:23 AM

So Lloyd got the song from some unknown chantey man who'd devised it for working defective windlasses that could only be pumped without a strong steady beat!

What a find!

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Sep 23 - 09:35 AM

For me at least, much of the enjoyment of trad song comes from knowing that what I'm hearing is a true artifact of a lost past.

If it turns out the purportedly "true artifact" has been significantly and *covertly* messed with and phonied up by a supposedly reliable editor, I have a right to be ticked.

As I say, if Steeleye Span and Peter Sellers do a totally untrad rendition of "New York Girls," I can enjoy it fully because, not only is it a fine performance, it isn't falsely advertised.

In a different genre, Lloyd's performances were also splendid. The musicality and accompaniment aren't the issue: musically I'd rather listen to Lloyd than to Hugill or (presumably) John Short.

But the issue is the frequent and blithe fakery. It could have been completely mitigated by a few words of explanation. ("I thought the original tune so unappealing that I created I new one which, I think, is still 'in the tradition'"; "In most cases I've tried to smoothe the words out a little, or added and subtracted." Etc.)



it's the blithe and frequent fakery.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Sep 23 - 07:29 AM

Good point, Brian, about Hugill's possible belief in Lloyd as an "authentic source" - at least some of the time.

Hugill objected more than once to Lloyd's double entendres as phony, as well as to his selection of "exotic" modal tunes for recording.

But he also accepted "Blood-Red" Roses and recommended those same recordings as stylistically superior.

There seems to be little doubt that Hugill, Lloyd, and MacColl were in contact before the L&M LPs. MacColl's performance of "Stormalong" could hardly have been influenced by anybody else.

Could it?

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Sep 23 - 02:32 PM

Great talk, Brian. (Great photo of the rustbucket Lloyd sailed on too!)

My enjoyment of "Leviathan" ca1970 was spoiled by the realization that some of the songs (like "Wings of a Gull") had obviously been rewritten in British style (without acknowledgment) from tuneless American material in Gale Huntington's "Songs the Whalemen Sang."

Lloyd's intentional fudging and faking, presented under cover of scholarly care and erudition, plus his supposedly rich fieldwork (whose very existence seems dubious) makes it hard for me to listen to him now with anything like my former enjoyment. As I've noted before, all he had to do was say (as Martin Carthy does), "my version of," "inspired by," "I've improved on the tune," or the like, and we wouldn't be having these discussions.

Lloyd's reputation as a popularizer, moreover, would then stand unsullied.

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 18 Sep 23 - 06:08 AM

Gibb,
>>Reidler<< [sic] I'm always getting that backwards. All apologies and it will happen again. I promise.

Neither seen nor heard one bad word about the author as a person. Nothing at all to match the tone of your post. An all around sterling individual… or maybe the Antichrist, for all I know… or care.

I've heard parts of two shanty lectures. Standard issue, no opera, nothing special. I knew the Maritime Work Song thread would do Wagner when his time came. Little surprise then Piratical Debauchery, Homesick Sailors, and Nautical Rhythms: The Influence of Sea Shanties on Classical Music should turn up on its own merit. What else is there on that subject?

...people not discussing Catholic Romance language-speaking flautists?… you lost me completely there.

What do "them" and "their" refer to?
Too much thread drift for poor old Lloyd. See here: New Chanties Documentary

Subject: RE: A.L.Lloyd & Sea Chanties
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 16 Sep 23 - 02:02 PM

***Oh the irony. The above was me.