My favorite right now is a riverboat song by Bob Dyer, apparently a folk singer/songwriter from Missouri who has passed on. I don't know much about Mr. Dyer, but I am indebted to him for this great song:

^^ THE JIM JOHNSON
(Bob Dyer)

You've heard about the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee,
The famous Grand Republic and the big Belle Key.
But the greatest floating palace that ever has been
Is the side-wheel giant called the Jim Johnson.

    Look out, boys, she's coming up the river
    And, oh Lordy, she's building up steam.
    Good God! She's as big as a mountain.
    That's the biggest darn steamboat I ever have seen.

She had forty rubber boilers and a forty-hinged hull,
Forty big smoke stacks a hundred feet tall.
She had four big side wheels, two at the stern.
A paddle took a day just to make a full turn.

She could slide through the bends of the mean Muddy Mo
When the river was flooding or the river was low.
And it took her two weeks just to pass by a town.
The people come to see her from miles around.

The Jim Johnson ate enough wood on a run
To build fifty courthouses and a good-sized town.
With all of her passengers, provisions and freight
She could call herself an independent floating state.

The Jim Johnson pilot was a mighty mean man,
Weighed seven hundred pounds and stood eight feet ten.
He had one good eye in the middle of his head
And a voice that could raise up people from the dead.