The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #4933   Message #27674
Posted By: Tim Jaques tjaques@netcom.ca
07-May-98 - 09:24 PM
Thread Name: sea chanties
Subject: RE: sea chanties
Fiddlers' Green is not a sea shanty, although a very nice song indeed.

Get Up Jack John is probably Jolly Roving Tar.

Go To Sea No More -- Jack Radcliffe?

Do the singers on this CD sound North American or English? You say you don't know if you collected them at random -- can I take it from that each selection sounds like a different singer or band?

Stan Rogers sang a version of Rolling Down To Old Maui on "Between The Breaks Live", which he indicates he learned from someone named Emily Friedman in 1978. If it is his version you have there is no mistaking his voice, and it would be a live version.

Jolly Roving Tar has recently been done by Great Big Sea from Newfoundland, and Jim Payne and Fergus O'Byrne, also from Newfoundland. I believe but am not certain that they sing a Nova Scotian variant. The song Jack Tar sung by A.L. Lloyd and Ewan McColl seems related, at least to my ear, because some of the lyrics and part of the tune are the same, and the story line is almost identical. (The beginning of it sounds like The Ballad of Jesse James, though.)

Fiddlers Green has been done by a host of people. Archie Fisher did a really nice version but the tape is very hard to get, at least in Canada. I got mine sent from England, and then a friend of mine ran off with it.

Jack Radcliffe and Blow The Man Down have been done by any number of people.