John,

Sure, I'll throw in 2 cents. Your layout of Santianna re: recorded versions, influences, etc. makes sense to me. Forgive me if I inadvertently overlook some of the fine points in your layout.

The version by Odetta & Co. does seem to be based on some or other version of Sailor Dad that was presented by Lomax. And Lloyd & Co.'s version could easily have come from any of the popular texts -- Colcord, Terry, Doerflinger... -- though they may have learned it directly from the oral tradition, too.

From what I can see, the melodies in most of the texts are all very similar -- similar enough that I would tend to disregard variations. That is, I would view the differences as a reflection of individual, incidental variation, rather than representations of distinguishable variant "streams" of the chantey. And though the Lomax-y version IS appreciably distinct when one examines it, IMHO in the grand scheme of things it looks like just another variation of the "usual" Santiana tune. I must confess that I've forgotten where we might have seen Santianna before (earlier), e.g. in any travelogues.

Although I am aware that the Revival often gives a false sense that a given song was well-known and fairly well "standardized", the ubiquity of Santiana in shanty collections and the similarity between the different texts' versions, suggest that this song really was well established. That is why I would not be surprised if the AL Lloyd generation was able to learn it from authentic oral sources.

That is why, I imagine, Hugill also did not feel the need to cite his sources for his "A" and "C". I am sure his performance renditions were somewhat "tweaked" by the Revival version, but his print may have just come from what seemed to be so obviously "the" common version.

When I recorded Hugill's A/C, I was not being mindful of the possible fine distinctions between melodies. I was doing what a typical revival singer does; I "knew" the tune already from a combination of sources, and I was mostly using Hugill's text as a mine for lyrical ideas. Later, due to my change in methodology (i.e. the goal to represent *some* of the idiosyncrasies of his versions), I was confronted with the task of calling what I'd done either version "A" or version "C" (and then recording the whichever one I had not done!). What I had recorded was neither one precisely. But after examining the tunes of both, along with the tunes in other collections, I decided that I considered them to be only variations of each other which, for me, were not important to distinguish. Well, I *can* distinguish between them, but at the same time, versions on record elsewhere combine bits of both. I would conjecture that versions A and C roughly correspond to print versions Hugill had seen. It's not that he was "copying" them, per se -- but I think he used prior texts as models for his notations, so long as they corroborated what he knew. (Incidentally, version "A" appears to be notated wrong, and one can only get the sense of what Hugill meant by consulting other sources!)

Version "B" is a different story. It is quite appreciably different. It has a fascinating "modal" quality where it seems to begin in one tonal center and end in another. Notably, Hugill does cite his source for that one (a Norwegian whaleman). I don't believe I have heard that tune elsewhere.