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!