The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #37548 Message #2274287
Posted By: Greg B
27-Feb-08 - 08:32 PM
Thread Name: What is a Shanty
Subject: RE: What is a Shanty
It was my privilege to have shared a weekend with the Menhaden Chanteymen a decade or so ago.
Words still fail.
The best explanation I can give is their own account that, later in their fishing careers, yachtsmen would come out to watch them fish and hear them sing. And as they did, the yachtsmen would toss cans and bottles of beer into their nets.
They are distinctive among work song singers in that the actual WORK doesn't take place during actual singing--- they sing in between the work, unlike deep-water sailors who work in the choruses (on halyards) or throughout (on capstan or pumps).
Rather, they work IN BETWEEN the singing, but accompany the work with "chatter."
So they'll sing:
Johnson Girls are mighty fine girls WALK AROUND HONEY WALK AROUND... (during this time they are pausing)
(now work) ad lib. heave it up buddy, c'mon c'mon, git it up now
Johnson Girls are might find girls WALK AROUND HONEY WALK AROUND...
ad. lib. come on git em in you got her now
Great big legs and itty bitty feet WALK AROUND HONEY WALK AROUND...
ad. lib...
Oh--- they were just the finest old gentlemen. Of the unique sort of Southern African-American survivors of Jim Crow and everything else where you just want to sit and listen, listen, and listen.
For their part, I guess they were pretty astonished at these white folk who, instead of calling them "boy" at their venerable age, just wanted to hear what they had to say and to sing about their lives and treated them like the national treasures that they were.
The honors came late, but they came in time.
I don't imagine too many of them are left, much less left singing.
Pfizer has always contributed (thanks Doug) to the Mystic Festival.
Unfortunately, they hadn't invented Viagra yet when the Menhaden gents were with us.
Imagine it:
"Won't you help me to raise 'em boys...oh honey" right under the Pfizer "blue pill" logo!
Now THAT would have taken sea music to a new level of commercial value!