The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #135431   Message #3227537
Posted By: Gibb Sahib
23-Sep-11 - 02:08 AM
Thread Name: Earliest Commercial Shanty Recordings
Subject: RE: Earliest Commercial Shanty Recordings
Percy Grainger's arrangements fit into this somehow, though I don't know if one would really call them "significant."

This would fit, initially, into the English folklorists phase of the 1900s. The songs he collected appeared in this article:

1908        Broadwood, Lucy E., Percy Grainger, Cecil J. Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frank Kidson, J.A. Fuller-Maitland, and A.G. Gilchrist. "[Songs Collected by Percy Grainger]." _Journal of the Folk-Song Society_ 3(12) (May 1908): 170-242.

The chanty items are:

SUNG BY MR. JOHN PERRING, AT DARTMOUTH, JAN. 18TH AND 25TH, 1908.
Collected and noted by H. E. Piggott and Percy Grainger:

STORM ALONG.
DOLLAR AND A 'ALF A DAY.
TOM'S GONE TO ILO.
SHALLOW BROWN.


Collected and sung by Mr. Charles Rosher
Noted by Percy Grainger, July 24th, 1906, and April 3rd, 1907.

STORMY.
LOWLANDS.
SANTA ANNA.
TOM'S GONE TO ILO.

Between 1907 and 1910+, Grainger composed art music arrangements based on what he'd collected/noted.
These were:
Dollar and a Half a Day (a composite of the two variants above) [ca.1922/23], Shallow Brown [1927], Stormy [unpublished], Shenandoah [unpublished].
I've put the dates of publication in brackets. I don't know if there would have been, possibly, many performances of these works before they were officially published.

Anyway, though Grainger created the arrangements in the 1900s, they may not have had any influence until the chanty revival was getting under way, 1920s.