The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #119594   Message #2598667
Posted By: Gibb Sahib
27-Mar-09 - 12:56 PM
Thread Name: Sing, Sally-O / Mudder Dinah
Subject: RE: Sing, Sally-O / Mudder Dinah
JeffB,

Yes! This is a version that you have cited. Thank you! It corresponds to Hugill's version "A" and to Bullen's version (which KathyW has so graciously given me access to). Incidentally, the most significant differences between those two versions are: 1. the timing of the choral responses (actually, the choruses of Hugill's version "B" are closer to Bullen's version) and 2. the fact that Hugill's version throws in the major third of the scale in at certain point (the rest being in minor). I decided to interpret this latter "discrepancy" as some sort of attempt to account for a "blue note"; I could easily be totally wrong about that.

I'm not one for typing up lyrics, so here is my recording, in which you'll hear all of Hugill's (4) verses. I added one more made up verse to make it longer. Warning: my rendition is only based on the printed page, and as such its that nebulous mix of "what I think it might sound like" and "what I feel like making it sound like"!
recording

As for Bullen's one verse:
"Good mornin' Mudder Dinah, how does yer shabe yer peepul?
Sing! Sally oh! Right fol de ray!"

The lyrics that the Choir used, at least in the short sample given, make it sound very "British" or "Irish" in my opinion, having erased (??) the African-American color of the song. For instance, "high brown" puts Hugill's (actually Harding the Barbadian's) version in the world of Black speech, where that was a shade along the scale of the so-called African-American "caste system." By contrast, "nut-brown" sounds to me like those dainty "maidens" sung about in Child's ballads!

I'd be really curious to know whether the Choir learned the version from elsewhere or if they changed the lyrics. I'm especially interested because I've been working with a hypothesis that the chantey repertoire has been "whitewashed" (literally and figuratively) in the 20th century, and though it may be with absolutely zero negative intent, it has contributed to (inadvertently) erasing the image of sailors of color when the layperson thinks about sea chanteys.

I think there is something Irish about the chantey, by I would guess that that comes through the Irish- and African-American mix that was characteristic of popular minstrel music of the time period.

Gibb