Harpgirl: What you really need is a copy of May Wheeler's Steamboatin' Days, a wonderful collection of Ohio river boatman songs published around 1940. If you can't find one in your library, or get one on interlibrary loan, let me know. I have an extra copy I could lend you for awhile. I've been singing "Rowdy Soul," "Hoo, Hoo, Didn't I Do," "Come, Love, Come," and others from this book (often with extended texts drawn from other songs in the book) for years. It's a great source!

Also, check out Bob Dyer's "Big Jim Johnson," "Huckleberry Finn," "River of the Big Canoes," and others. Bob's songbook is out-of-print right now, but he has a CD available. He's from Boonville, Missouri, right on the big river and is a fine historian/songmaker. His good friends Cathy Barton and Dave Para have also recorded several of his songs, plus "Bayou Sara" and a few other riverboat songs. Then, and importantly, there's old "Condom Art's" cassette of river songs that he sang while hosting and hoodwinking the tourists on the lovely old Julia Belle Swain (now doing cruises out of LaCrosse, Wisconsin). You can surely get a copy of Art's cassette direct from him, now that he's unpacked his stuff and settled into his new digs.

Sandy