HOOKER JOHN

Oh, me Mary she's a sailor's lass
Chorus:To me Hooker John, me Hoo-John!
We sported all day on the grass
Chorus:To me Hooker John, me Hoo-John!

Full Chorus:
Ch: Way Susanna
Solo: Oh, way, hay, high high-ya
Ch: Johnny's on the foreyard
Ch: Yonder, way up yonder

Oh, me Susie's she's a sailor's gal
She's nine foot high that gal's so tall

Oh, me Flora she's a hoosier's friend
She's beamy round the old beam end

Oh, Sally Brown she's the gal for me
She court's a bit when her man's at sea

Oh, haul away for Mobile Bay
Oh, haul away and make yer pay


I can't remember where I heard this shanty first. It's been recorded by Pint & Dale on their album Port of Dreams and by Graeme Knights on his album Echo from Afar. There is also a shanty album from England titled Hooker John that I have not heard but I can't remember who put it out. The lyrics I use are the same ones Pint & Dale sing, I think, with the exception of the last verse which I lifted from the Graeme Knights cd. We had a great fun recording this one, not only because it's a great song but we all began laughing uncontrollably when one of the chorus singers started singing "Johnny's on the foreskin, yonder, way up yonder."

My sparse liner notes info comes from the Encyclopedia of Nautical Knowledge by W.A McEwen and A.H. Lewis published by Cornell Maritime Press, Cambridge, Maryland. Their definition of hooker is:

Hooker. (Du. hoeker, fishing-vessel; from hoek, hook) An old-time fishing-boat with one mast, common to Irish and southern English coasts. Any vessel usually fishing with lines and hooks, also termed liner. Sailor's depreciative term for a clumsy, old-fashioned vessel; as the hooker leaks like a basket; often applied fondly; as, we prefer to stay on board the hooker.

Here's a definition from The Oxforrd Companion to Ships & the Sea, edited by Peter Kemp and published by Oxford University Press, London, New York, Melbourne, 1976:

Hooker, a development of the original ketch, a short, tubby little vessel with main and mizenmasts, originally square-rigged on the main and with a small topsail above a fore-and-aft sail hoisted on a gaff on the mizzen. She usually set two jibs on a high steeved bowsprit. She was a fishing vessel, and probably, as her name suggests, was used mainly for line fishing. She became a distinct type of vessel in her own right, as opposed to the generic ketch, early in the 18th century. The rig was much favoured by Dutch fishing craft. The name is also used, slightly contemptuously, for any vessel when she grows old and has lost her early bloom, or perhaps has come down a bit in the maritime world.

And, finally, as I found out from Pint & Dale, Hooker John is in Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas. Here are the notes from Stan's book:

"Captain Whall gives a verse and chorus called Ooker John in his book Sea Songs and Shanties. From my Barbadian friend Harding [he had the colorful name of Harding the Barbadian Barbarian] I learnt a similar capstan shanty, but he sang Hooker John, and he said that it was still popular in the West Indies (1931). It probably originated as a cotton-stower's song. Whall gives:

O my Mary she's a blooming lass,
Ch: To my Ooker John, my Oo-John,
O my Mary she's a blooming lass,
Ch: To my Ooker John, my Oo-John,
Full Chorus:
Way, fair lady, O way-ay-ay-ay-ay,
My Mary's on the highland,
O yonder's Mary - yonder…

and judging from these words it looks as though, in spite of the Negro tune and the way the refrains are worded, some Scotsman or North Countryman had a hand in this version. The tune of the solo lines is similar to that of Roll the Cotton Down.

Richard