Jim, by sounding "authentic" I mean sounding "perfectly believable stylistically."

Slade seems to have gotten his *texts* straight from Davis & Tozer, but his delivery is very vigorous and, IIRC, unornamented. Without the orchestra and drawing-room chorus he'd sound "authentic."

Rasmussen and Halliday may simply have been recalling the songs for posterity rather than trying to sing as if they had hold of a rope or windlass bar. Just a guess.

Possibly Hugill got his yips and yelps mostly from his West Indian shipmates. But he certainly seemed to think that they were more typical than not.

I believe that a few of Carpenter's shantymen used them too. Maybe more would have done so at sea than singing into a machine at the age of 80.

We can agree, however, that few shantymen sounded like Burl Ives, with or without guitar.

One of the other threads raises the question of how much direct influence Hugill mau have had on L & M as early as 1956. But where else could they have gotten that style, particularly M's very Hugillian "Stormalong" - to me probably the greatest revival shanty performance on record (though "Blow the Man Down" comes close).