From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 12:34 PM

And it may be that some lyrical themes were so strong that they actually "inspired new frameworks". I would like to hear a bit more on this.

I was thinking along the lines of how new songs get created. Even when "from scratch," there is usually some kind of prior basis. Let's say that one way some new chanties came about was simply by a guy chanting something that came to mind, to an improvised melody -- similar to what Lighter was imagining recently on the "Advent" thread. What I am suggesting is that, in order to supply some kind of lyrics to this improvisation, one might draw upon a pre-set lyrical theme (eg Stormalong). In other words, in addition to lyrical themes being re-used and "grafted" upon pre-existing frameworks, they, being so "strong" and ever-present in the "language" of the genre, would probably also be used at that moment when a new framework was being created.

The framework (legisign, a la Peirce, ha ha!) cannot exist without a specific realization (sinsign!). So if it is a matter of chicken and egg...lyrics must come first, I think. They are the "wax" in the "lost wax" process! :)

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 11:19 AM

I'd better post this here before it gets lost again (I lost it once before for several years).

From James Hall, "Letters from the West: Letter III," The Port Folio, XII (Sept., 1821), p. 446. Judge Hall made a trip down the Ohio from Pittsburgh to Shawneetown, Ill. This comes from a letter about Parkersburg, Virginia:

"To the admirers of the simplicity of Wordsworth, to those who prefer the naked effusions of the heart, to the meretricious ornaments of fancy, I present the following beautiful specimen verbatim, as it flowed from the lips of an Ohio boatman:

"It's oh! as I was a wal-king out,
One morning in July,
I met a maid, who ax'd my trade,—
Says I, 'I'll tell you presently,'
'Miss, I'll tell you presently!'"

Obviously the first stanza of a predecessor of the capstan shanty "New York Girls/ Can't You Dance the Polka?"

When Hall revised his article for book publication in 1828, he added a second stanza:

And it's oh! she was so neat a maid,
That her stockings and her shoes,
She toted in her lilly [sic] white hands
For to keep them from the dews, &c., &c.

So it isn't quite "New York Girls." And that unfortunately is that.

Except that Hall also quotes "the words which the rowers are even now sounding in my ears as they tug at the oar,

Some rows up, but we row down,
All the way to Shawnee town
Pull away - pull away!"

I believe Hall makes the earliest reference to the "Shawneetown" rowing song. Its form and the "pull away" chorus brings it very close to the apparently soon-to-evolve halliard shanties.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 10:07 AM

And here are our references *so far* for "FIRE DOWN BELOW".

{1839} BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY vol 4, New York, Sept. 1839

"The Stoker's Chant" / "Fire Down Below" [riverboat fireman]
-----
{1839} BURTON'S GENTLEMEN'S MAGAZINE

"Fire! Down Below"
-----
{1850s} OCEAN LIFE IN THE OLD SAILING SHIP DAYS, John D. Whidden. Whidden's source is his "old friend, Captain George Meacom, of Beverly [Mass.]." Meacom refers to his own recollection of the 1850s, and his testimony seems to be reliable.

"Fire Down Below"
-----
{1853} A JOURNEY IN THE SEABOARD SLAVE STATES Frederick Law Olmsted, 1861

"Oahoiohieu" / "The Sailor Fireman" ("Lindy Lowe") [riverboat]
-----
{1854} ETHIOPIAN MELODIES, Christy and White, 1854

"Fire Down Below"
-----
{1879} WE FOUR, by Laura L Rees

"Fire down below!"
-----

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 09:55 AM

Rounding up some of our loose ends, here are the references on this thread *so far* that I have found for "Cheerily, Men" in chronological order. I am also including "Nancy Fanana" as a variant.

"CHEERILY, MEN"

{1834-36}, Richard Henry Dana, TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, (1840). Dana does mention "Cheerily Men" in actual use in at least four places (in the 1911 edition from Google), on p. 118 to cat the anchor, on page 197 to bring the anchor to the head, on page 301 to bring the topsails to the masthead, and on page 316 at the halyards.

{1852} "News from Our Digger," Mr. Moon, TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, XX 293, (1853) [Ship "Chalmers," Gravesend to Melbourne, 1852]

{December 1858} article by I. Allen (who looks to have been a student?) in OBERLIN STUDENTS' MONTHLY

{1859} "Songs of the Chantey-Man", Captain John Robinson, THE BELLMAN,

{August 1, 1868}, "On Shanties", ONCE A WEEK, July to December, Eneas Sweetland Dallas, editor (London)

{Feb 8/1886} MEMORIES OF HALBERT DICKSON, Aust Jnl [from Warren Fahey - this may not be the same song]

{1888}, Laura Smith, THE MUSIC OF THE WATERS, p. 22-23

{1927}, Cicely Fox Smith, A BOOK OF SHANTIES, p. 40

{1911} Eleanor Mordaunt, A SHIP OF SOLACE

{1915} Cecil Sharp , ENGLISH FOLK-CHANTEYS


"NANCY FANANA" / "Haul 'er Away"

{October 11, 1839 - 1841}, Francis Allyn Olmstead, INCIDENTS OF A WHALING VOYAGE

{February, 1849}, Ezekiel I. Barra, A TALE OF TWO OCEANS in Boston harbor

A very cursory and quick Google Book Search reveals that there are many more references out there for "Cheerily, Men", although not many very early and mostly mentioned by title only. Also, the phrase itself seems to have been a popular one, and it was also apparently used on board ships as a form of order or encouragement, meaning something like "lively, now!" There are also many literary references that pick up this phrase.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 22 Mar 10 - 09:39 AM

Continuing to parse out Gibb's last post, I find his analysis of the relationship between the dimension of "framework" and "lyrical theme" to be helpful. I've been wondering how "Sally Brown" can show up in so many different variations, as well as different chanties, and this explains it quite well. And the same goes for "Stormalong" but perhaps even more so. With Stormy we are talking about a whole family of chanties.

Gibb says that strong lyrical themes " float around independently of frameworks." And he makes the case for strong, independent frameworks as well with the example of "fire down below", "long time ago," and "blow the man down," and shows how these frames could pick up such diverse themes.

And it may be that some lyrical themes were so strong that they actually "inspired new frameworks". I would like to hear a bit more on this.

I've had "Sally Brown" running around with "Shallow Brown" up and down the "Shenandoah" for weeks. I'm glad to see that there is a possible reason for this. And what is "this "Salambo" thing in the Caribbean?" I've missed that one. I have nothing to base it on at all but somehow, I think that "Faithless Sally Brown" was inspired by the actual sea-going "Sally Brown" rather than vice-versa, and I think that Gibb's suggestion that there may be an earlier, underlying theme reinforces my prejudice on this.

We know that "Shenandoah" may have originated as a river song, on actual rivers, perhaps the "wide Missouri" rather than the "Shenandoah River" itself. And we know it was used as a loading song from Bullen down in Demerara. We have a tiny bit of evidence that what might be an early form of "Sally Brown" might have originated as a rowing song (Moses Curtis account of "Sally was a fine girl" on the Cape Fear River in NC, in 1830). And we have "Shallow Brown" showing up as "Shiloh Brown" in the Georgia Sea Islands, but without any suggestion about its use, but with a strong "stevedore" lyrical theme.

All of this is to say once again that putting these chanties in a comparative frame of reference is important. They must have been ever so much more fluid in the "earlier days" than they seem to be now when one listens to the recorded versions, and one "cover" after another of the same thing that happened to get frozen at some point in print, or of somebody's imaginative re-creation of what might have been. This seems qualitatively different from the spontaneous fluidity of the early work songs. I appreciate these tools for helping us map the fluidity.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 21 Mar 10 - 03:55 PM

I always welcome a clarifying process, and I think that Gibb has given us another set of tools for our work here. He says that what, "we have been documenting are several different chanties on the somewhat mixed basis of frameworks and similar lyrical themes." I want to focus on "frameworks" and "similar lyrical themes". I also want to stress the importance of working with more than one chanty at a time, or what Gibb has called a "complex" of chanties and trying to see the interrelationships among them.

The definitions that he offers in the preceding post for a "framework" and for a "lyrical theme" are clear and precise, and workable. We've already been focusing a lot on the "framework" of the work song genre and I think that it has been very helpful. I certainly understand not only the hauling chanties but their African American sources a whole lot better, as well as the interplay between source and chanty. This has also helped me stay focused on the *function* of these "chanties, proper". They were used on the job to do a particular kind of job. While I still don't have all of those ropes (and I don't think that's the proper term) sorted out, I am beginning to have some sense of the nature of the work.

What Gibb is offering that is new in his last post is a concept of a "lyrical theme" as a way of looking at a complex of chanties. His examples of Old Stormy's death and Sally's character immediately put this in focus for me, along with the example of what I would call "going all around the world".   

The further suggestion of a possible difference between an "African American" sense and a "Euro/Euro-American" sense in the chanties is also helpful.   While identifying the "E/EA" sense with what we normally think of as "ballads" is helpful, I would remind us that there are also some excellent African American ballads, like "John Henry", "Frankie and Albert", "Staggerlee", etc. And yet these so-called ballads of Black origin are a bit different from the more Anglo oriented ones and the difference lies with the nature of the story line.    In the Black traditions, the story line is a lot more fluid. And this matches up with what Gibb has described as a general difference between the African American sense and the E/EA sense in the chanties.

An aside that I have always found interesting is the mention by Charles J. Finger in his little book called SAILOR CHANTIES AND COWBOY SONGS (1923), that when he and several of his mates were castaway on Vellarino Island in the South Atlantic, the time was often passed with the singing of chanties. One of his mates even claimed to have sailed with John Masefield. Finger remembered some of these chanties and wrote them down not too long after he made his way back to civilization. And he says that "it was on a Gulf coasting ship that I first heard "Stackerlee." (p. 15) A little while later he says, "another favorite with sailors of all nations is the ballad setting forth the deeds of derring-do of Jesse James..." (p, 17) Here we have examples of both Black and White ballads at sea (though not being used as chanties, unless they were sung at the capstan of pumps, and Finger does not say).

I think that it is important to note that both story and non-story themes would be blended in the chanties, but, according to Gibb, "early chanteys were more of the non-ballad type."   But even without a coherent story line, both Stormy and Sally have lyrical themes that provide what Gibb calls "unifying coherence."

All weekend, I've been imagining a story about "When Stormy Meets Sally". It could go in any number of directions, given the established themes connected with each chanty.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 20 Mar 10 - 10:59 AM

Thinking about the recent round-outs of references to "Sally Brown" and "Stormalong"...

These 2 are actually broad themes, I'd say. What we have been documenting are several different chanties on the somewhat mixed basis of frameworks and similar lyrical themes. Which is fine -- and pretty much unavoidable. And it is actually quite useful to take these chanties all together; they are undoubtably related and might be said to form a cluster or "complex" (or something fancy and jargon-y like that). Yet it is also relevant to remember the distinction between these two dimensions.

The two dimensions, clarified:

1) A formal "framework" consisting of refrains and a basic melody. It is often linked to regulation verses, too, but let's treat it independently of those to make the definition clear.

2) A lyrical theme (not always present). It may consist of a cluster of related lines. Verses about Old Stormy's death, or the character of Sally Brown, cohere as a theme, though they don't depend upon any one verse or ordering of verses. Another lyrical theme of a sort is more like a device, e.g. naming lots of places and rhyming things with them.

Chanties lyrics are not limited to such themes. At one extreme, they may be full blown "stories" (read, ballads) that vary comparatively little and which depend on the inclusion of certain verses in certain order. Ballads like that are their own sort of thing that, I believe, have inspired a particular methodology of "tracing" them. (Possibly, the "typical" approach of ballad tracing has so far led to some failure when it comes to understanding chanties.) My impression is that the ballad structure was not common in the early chanties, but that it was easily added later. At the other extreme is a structure where one verse after another has no relationship to the others. I'd tend to call the this an African-American aesthetic and the former (ballad type) a Euro/Euro-American one (but those are just generalities). Both would come to be mixed in chanty singing, but it looks to me like early chanteys were more of the non-ballad type.

I don't have the sense that the Stormy and Sally Brown themes are of a ballad nature (though they may have been inspired by earlier ballad). Nonetheless, they slide further along the scale towards unifying coherence. Note again though: such unifying coherence was not necessarily a goal at all. The reason for saying it is to explain how they cohere as as "strong" themes (i.e. vs. incidental verses).

The relationship between dimensions:

A framework may contain *reference to* a lyrical theme in the refrain (i.e. "way hey roll n go" does not, but "spend my money on Sally Brown" does). That often inspires the use of that lyrical theme with it. However, as examples have shown (e.g. verses associated with "Blow Boys Blow" w/ refrain of "Sally Brown" or vice versa), the framework can exist completely independently of lyrical theme.

The "way hey roll and go" item with a "Sally Brown" chantey is a different "framework" from the "hi-lo Johnny Brown" one. However, the singer of these may have very well use the Sally Brown lyrical theme with both. Or not.

"Sally Brown" and "Stormalong" are "strong" lyrical themes. They float around independently of frameworks. I think there are also "strong" frameworks, that required no reference to lyrical themes, not even regulation verses, and which were particularly suited to incidental/topical lyricizing for that reason. For example, the "sailor fireman" framework, though the phrase was "fire down below," was not dependent on any "fire" theme. (Distinguish this framework from another "fire down below," which IS all about talking about fire here, fire there.) No, this "fire down below" phrase was likely born of the context of loading up furnaces on steamboats, and became merely customary. The verse lyrics could go anywhere. Some of the most enduring chanties have these frameworks, like "Long Time Ago" and "Blow the Man Down."

I have said before that I consider the framework to be the core identity of the chantey. Yet some lyrical themes are just so strong that they create their own little world of cluster of songs. They probably inspired new frameworks.

To begin to sketch some of the lyrical themes:

-- "Sally Brown." It seems to connect up with "Shenandoah" and "Shallow Brown" and this "Salambo" thing in the Caribbean. While I would not be surprised if the popular Sally Brown theme was inspired by the ballad the 1820s ballad that has been discussed, I also would not be surprised to find that the idea of Sally Brown was born of an even older trope that also gave birth to Shenandoah and the others.

-- "Stormalong". It seems to connect up with "Santianna." Sometimes it is Stormalong who is eulogized. Then it was General Jackson (i.e. Battle of New Orleans, 1812). Then, after 1846/47, it was Gen. Taylor and Santa Anna who were. "Stormalong" may also have been an old "folk hero" (the male counterpart to Sally!). In any case, many different frameworks utilized this common theme.

-- "Places" theme. I.e., "Were you ever in [PLACE]?" or "Tom's/John's gone to [PLACE]"

-- Blow Boys Blow theme, which is about naming the officers/crew members or naming the different meals. It may connect up to the "Places" theme with the line "Were you ever on the Congo River?"

--etc...

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Snuffy
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 12:35 PM

Not much info on the sailors - but currently only the index is available. There may be much more in the actual detail, some of which may be published shortly.

George Simpson, Dundee. First ship Castleroy, 1888; last County of Linlithgow, 1899. This one?

Edward Robinson, Sunderland - Went to sea 1878; left sail 1890; left sea 1928. [Storm Along] heard in the Glen Bervie, 40 years ago. This Glenbervie? (far right on top row)

William Fender, Barry - Went to sea 1878; left sail 1900. Sailed in ship Ingomar, 1880, Valparaiso, Chile.

Harry Perry, S.S. Leviathan - Born 1850 Shipped 1866. Last ship Daylight, 1914

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: GUEST,Gibb Sahib
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 12:01 PM

Yes, most of Luce's genuine shanties came from Adams -- but Luce fixed up the notation!

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 11:51 AM

Lots on Luce (1827-1917): http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/pers-us/uspers-l/sb-luce.htm

Evidently he never served on a merchant ship. Many of the shanties he published came from R. C. Adams.

Factoid: Luce is the only songbook editor to have had three naval vessels named for him.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 10:56 AM

Thanks, Snuffy. The WHITE'S ETHIOPIAN MELODIES (1851) is what Gibb originally put up here:

thread.cfm?threadid=126347&messages=447#2864123

When I was rechecking I must have picked up the later edition. I appreciate your continuing help with the Carpenter Collection. I found a lot of stuff there on "Sally Brown". Please keep us updated as we go along.

The article in HARPER'S MAGAZINE (June to November, 1882) is the one by William Henry Alden on "Sailor's Songs" with the music. He has two versions of "Stormy".

And thanks for the Luce reference. Did anybody ever pin down his time at sea? And does Carpenter give any indication where the "ex-seamen" might have sailed?

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Snuffy
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 10:36 AM

The Carpenter indexcontains the following mentions of publications of Stormalong:

White Ethiopian Melodies ( 1851 ) Is this an earlier version of Christy and White, 1854?
Storm Along, Stormy - O I wish I was in Mobile Bay

Harper's Magazine ( 1882 ) two versions
Storm Along, Stormy - Old Stormy he was a bully old man
Storm Along, Stormy - Old Stormy he is dead and gone

Stephen B. Luce Naval Songs ( 1883 )
Old Storm Along - Old Storm Along is dead and gone

Plus a version collected from Stanton King in 1929
Storm Along - Stormy's gone, that good old man

And four versions from ex-seamen, the earliest of whom first shipped in 1866

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 09:18 AM

"STORMALONG"

We've been accumulating a good deal of information on various versions of "Stormalong" and I thought I would pull it together in chronological form. As far as I can tell, this is what we have *so far*. I realize that this chanty shows up in a number of other collections that we've looked at here, but we haven't mentioned it specifically in relation to those particular collections.

{sometime between 1845 and 1853} THE MERCHANT VESSEL  Charles Nordhoff, (1856)

"Old Stormy"
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{1848} NA MOTU, OR REEF-ROAMING IN THE SOUTH SEAS Edward T. Perkins, (1854)

"Storm along, Stormy!"
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{1852( perhaps recalling somewhat earlier events)} "News from Our Digger," Mr. Moon, TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, XX 293 (1853)

"Storm along, my Stormy"
-----
{1854} ETHIOPIAN MELODIES, Christy and White, 1854

"Storm along. Stormy."
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{May, 1856} William Jackson Palmer, "Diary," A BUILDER OF THE WEST: THE LIFE OF GEN. WILLIAM JACKSON PALMER, John Stirling Fisher (1939)

"Storm Along, Storm Along"
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{1858} OBERLIN STUDENTS' MONTHLY, article by I. Allen

"Storm along my stormies" [windlass]
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{1859} "Songs of the Chantey-Man", THE BELLMAN, Captain John Robinson

"Old Stormy"
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{early to mid 1860's?} SEVEN YEARS OF A SAILOR'S LIFE, George Edward Clark, (1867)

"Storm Along, My Rosa"
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{1867} SLAVE SONGS OF THE UNITED STATES, William James Allen

"Shock Along, John"
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{1869} THE ARK OF ELM ISLAND, Rev. Elijah Kellogg, (1871)

Isaiah's Song "Stow me long, stow me!" [warping to dock]
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{1870s} George Pattison, THE CAREY COLLECTION, (1924), from Warren Fahey

"Mr. Stormalong"
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{1870s} Malcolm Forbes, Adelaide, THE CAREY COLLECTION, (1925), from Warren Fahey

"Mister Stormalong"
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{1882} "Sailor Songs", Henry Mills Alden, HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, VOLUME 65

"Old Stormy, he was a bully man"
----

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 08:23 AM

Lighter-

Probably the earliest full text of "Shenandoah," from The Riverside Magazine for Young People (Apr., 1868), p. 185

That certainly is a composite version, and it may well be what one shantyman cobbled together or the transcriptions of one observer merged. If the observer were a passenger, as evidently she was, all shanties might have seemed "alike" to her and who would care how they were re-assembled in her journal. Or maybe she did have a keen interest in figuring out what it was she was hearing. I'll look forward to seeing what else she came up with. One wonders who she was.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 19 Mar 10 - 07:01 AM

Gibb, your thoughts, especially in the final paragraph are intriguing. I've been trying to think about the differences between San Francisco and say, New Orleans, in the 1850's. Both were jumping places, but, I'm guessing, not the same at all when it came to chanty making. If our hypotheses about the "chanty, proper" call/response work song coming off of the plantations and down the rivers to the shipping ports with African American labor is credible, then one of the basic contextual components for this was slavery. There were probably some slaves in the San Francisco area, but I wouldn't think very many. In fact, I'm still wondering about the overall African American population on the West Coast in the 1850's.

Wouldn't it have been Chinese, and then perhaps Irish labor in San Francisco? Here I'm thinking of the building of the railroads. But what about on the docks? Gibb, your earlier quote about non-African American immigrants replacing both slave and free Blacks as a work force in the eastern ports and even in agriculture was very interesting. In very broad strokes, if that might have marked the beginning of the end of chanty-making in the eastern ports, then it roughly coincided with the rise of what might be seen as West Coast culture, where African American slave labor never was dominant.

In the latter third of the 19th century, Cape Horn and Frisco Bay certainly enter the lyrics of chanties, but they seem to be represented mainly by new "verses" and not new chanties or forms per se.

And then you have some major changes taking place. There is the gradual rise of steam power and iron clad ships. And there is the Civil War, which abolishes slavery. Very roughly speaking, it would seem that the combination of the freeing of the slaves and the Industrial Revolution not only caused the major population shifts to begin taking place in the Southern States, but it also must have directly affected the whole business of chanty making, which significantly, as far as we can tell, tapers off at just this point - say about 1870?

In one sense, the West Coast was never much a part of what one might call "the slave economy" of the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Ports (which is more accurate, I think, than to say "the Southern States"), and was perhaps ahead of the curve following the War in the east.

Of course, the end of slavery did not mean the end of African American call/response work songs. But with the shifting of populations, from South to North, for instance, the kinds of work shifted. In the second half of the 19th century we get a long of railroad building songs, or "hammer songs". And even here, John Henry has to do deal with the steam drill! In fact, John Henry might well be the symbol for the industrial demise of the African American work song. It seems to have survived, as a genre, primarily in the Southern penal context, into the middle of the 20th century.

Here, I'm thinking about both the concerns that Gibb raises and my primary issues in this thread about the West Coast/South Pacific chanty culture in the middle of the 19th century. I think they are definitely intertwined.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 09:40 PM

Lighter,

re: the "historical moment," a few posts back.

I concur with your thoughts; I was thinking along the same lines. I had chosen to use the word "moment" only to make a clear distinction between the a new phenomenon "hitting the scene" (even if it did take several years to be well incorporated) and the opposing idea that shanties developed gradually over a much longer period and could be traced to long-standing maritime practices and where merely further "evolved" at that point. Basically, I wanted to stress the idea of a critical time period, with a reasonable beginning and end.

I have become quite busy and scattered of late, and unable to follow up all the leads in this thread -- which are multiplying like crazy! (If he'd have had Internet in his day, I don't think Stan Hugill would have ever finished SfSS; he'd be discovering "Sally Brown" till doomsday.) However, I hope people don't mind if I contribute you some things now and then that don't strictly fit the flow.

Thanks to John M. for the chronological summary of the chanties discussed. I think we all know that that list can easily grow ten-fold, if for example we're to add information from (for example) other threads where songs have been discussed individually. Be prepared!

While its a tangent from the 1853/5/Julia Ann goal, I'd be interested in using such a list as John has started to map the existing chanties as per a slightly different time frame -- perhaps "up until (or up through?) the Civil War." It would likely give a good sense of if the"chantey creation era." For instance, one might wonder if many new halyard chanties appeared after the Civil War (my impression is: no). Even during the Civil War, I'd guess that most of the new chanties were adopted songs (e.g. "Marching through Georgia") for the capstan. "Roll Alabama Roll" is one Civil War era halyard chantey that comes to mind, but I'd be willing to wager that it was a new theme on an older chantey like "Roll the Cotton Down."

After that, one could begin to ask why fewer new chanties were being made up after a certain point. Had the core repertoire been established, and then it was perpetuated as custom or tradition? Did demographics have anything to do with it? Or was it technology?

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 07:34 PM

Probably the earliest full text of "Shenandoah," from The Riverside Magazine for Young People (Apr., 1868), p. 185:

"Man the capstan bars! Old Dave is our 'chanty-man.' Tune up, David!
                               
O, Shannydore**, I long to hear you!                
Chorus.-- Away, you rollin' river!                                                               O, Shannydore, I long to hear you!
Full Chorus.--Ah ha! I'm bound awAY
On the wild Atlantic!
                                                   
Oh, a Yankee ship came down the river:…
And who do you think was skipper of her?…

Oh, Jim-along-Joe was skipper of her:…
Oh, Jim-along-Joe was skipper of her!…

An' what do you think she had for cargo?…
She had rum and sugar, an' monkeys' liver!…

Then seven year I courted Sally:
An' seven more I could not get her….

Because I was a tarry sailor,--
For I loved rum, an' chewed terbaccy:…

Especially good because it shows the "early" existence of some now familiar verses, the combination of "Shenandoah" with "Sally Brown," and the previously unreported combination with "Blow, Boys, Blow"!

The anonymous author says he (or she) learned this and a couple of other shanties on a recent Atlantic voyage. Will post the others. The author also asserts that "chanty" comes from French "Chantez!"

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 06:11 PM

Interestingly enough, this old minstrel song, "My Mary Ann" is one I can document as being in California in 1854, which is where it was published, and in Port Phillips Head, Australia in 1851, being used as a rowing/pumping song. Here is the account from William Craig in his book MY ADVENTURES ON THE AUSTRALIAN GOLD FIELDS (1903), referring to events in 1851:

http://books.google.com/books?id=sIoDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA8&dq=%22Oh,+fare+you+well,+my+own+Mary+Ann,&lr=&cd=1#v=onepage&q=%22Oh%2C%20f

And here is the sheet music information on "My Mary Ann":

https://sherlock.ischool.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/CSMPSearch2.tcl?CSMP@docid+1279

I'm not sure how Mr. Craig could have been singing this song in 1851 if it hadn't been published until 1854. Perhaps there were earlier versions of it out there. I haven't been able to find any earlier publication dates. Mr. Craig is looking back at least 50 years in his memory here.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 05:03 PM

So we know that "A hundred years ago" was in San Francisco around 1850, and in Hawaii in 1848. And we also have "Storm along, Stormy" in Hawaii in 1848.

And sometime prior to 1852, we have "Storm along, my stormy" and "Cheerymen" [Is Mr. Moon hearing these songs on the way to Melbourne, or is he remembering them from his voyage "up the Mediterranean"?] We also have   "Hi, yi, yi, yi, Mister Storm roll on, Storm Along, Storm Along," … "All on the plains of Mexico,"… "Aha, we're bound away, on the wild Missouri" in 1856 from Liverpool to New York.

And we have "Goodbye, My Riley", "Carry Me Along" at Brooklyn (p. 165); and "Whiskey for my Johnny," "Storm Along, my Rosa" (p. 22); "Rolling River," "Cheerily She Goes" (p. 142); "Paddy on the Railway," "We're Homeward Bound" (p. 312) from George Edward Clark in the early '60's.

Thanks, Lighter.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 04:07 PM

What an incredible wealth of information is being harvested!

Lighter-

I really like the detailed observations made of sailors singing at work as in "News from Our Digger." They really transport one to the deck of a ship in 1853.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 03:47 PM

From FLORIDA FOLKLIFE FROM THE WPA COLLECTIONS, 1937-1942, here are two "rowing songs", sung by Mrs. Isabel Barnwell, who was six years old when the Civil War began. She was 85 when she recorded these two songs for John Lomax on August 14, 1939. Apparently she was the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner in Florida. The introductory notes are very interesting:

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?lomaxbib:73:./temp/~ammem_ua2p::

Here is "Jump, Isabel, Slide Water":

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?flwpabib:2:./temp/~ammem_jWtM::

And here is "Marse Tommy's Son":

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/flwpabib:@field(NUMBER+@band(afcflwpa+3521b2))

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 01:45 PM

Concerning "Goodbye, My Riley": it may have been the shanty George Edward Clark heard in the early 1860s (Seven Years of Sailor's Life, p. 165):

"The anchor came to the bow with the 'chanty' of 'Oh, Riley, Oh' and 'Carry me Long,' and the tug walked us toward the wharf at Brooklyn."

As several writers have mentioned, Edwards also names these shanties:

"Whiskey for my Johnny," "Storm Along, my Rosa" (p. 22); "Rolling River," "Cheerily She Goes" (p. 142); "Paddy on the Railway," "We're Homeward Bound" (p. 312).

I guess "Storm Along, My Rosa" (which he describes as "loud") was a version of "Storm Along, Boys, Stormy." I can't place "Cheerily She Goes."

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 01:23 PM

Some very early mentions:

1856 William Jackson Palmer, "Diary," in John Stirling Fisher, A Builder of the West: The Life of Gen. William Jackson Palmer (Caldwell, Ida.: Caxton, 1939), p. 49: "[May, 1856]…A short favorable run of 20 hours would 'tie us up by the nose' in the North River, or, as the sailors say in their songs, 'Run her into clover.'…[The sailors' songs are] musical but after a certain wild mood that is very appropriate to the words and the scene:
        "Hi, yi, yi, yi, Mister Storm roll on, Storm Along, Storm Along," … "All on the plains of Mexico,"… "Aha, we're bound away, on the wild Missouri."

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 01:21 PM

"Stormalong" and "Cheer'ly Man" were evidently early faves:

1853 "News from Our Digger," Tait's Edinburgh Magazine XX 293 [Ship "Chalmers," Gravesend to Melbourne, 1852]: "Songs Afloat.—There is one thing in particular which is sure to attract the attention of a landsman when he first sets his foot on board ship, and this is the songs sung by the seamen whilst performing their various duties. These songs, which often, as regards words, are made impromptu, are most enlivening and spirited; and a good singing crew, with a clever leader, may, in my opinion, be looked upon in the light of a blessing on board any ship. In a little schooner in which I made a voyage up the Mediterranean, we had some excellent singers; and scarcely was a rope touched, sail set, or other heavy work done, without a song; and this may, in some measure, be accounted for by the encouragement given them by our captain, who would often promise all hands a tot of rum, if they did their work in a seamanlike manner, and sang well. The good effect of this was very visible on the men, who evidently pulled the ropes more cheerfully and with double vigour. The following are specimens:—

                On Hoisting up Topsail Yards, after Reefing.

        Polly Racket, hi-ho, cheerymen—(pull),
        Pawned my jacket, hi-ho, cheerymen—(pull),
        And sold the ticket, hi-ho, cheerymen—(pull);
        Ho, hawly, hi-ho, cheerymen—(pull).

        Rouse him up, hi-ho, cheerymen—(pull),
        Pull up the devil, hi-ho, cheerymen—(pull);
        And make him civil, hi-ho, cheerymen—(pull),
        Oh, hawly, hi-ho, cheerymen—(pull).

                        -------------------------

        I wish I was old Stormy's son,
        Hurra, and storm along;
        I'd give the sailors lots of rum,
        Storm along, my Stormy.

Chorus—Hurra!—hurra!—hurra!—storm along,
        Storm along, my roving blades,
        Storm along, my Stormy.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 01:17 PM

The Preface to Johnson's book is dated "April, 1850" and the first edition (with exactly the same pagination as the fourth) was copyrighted in 1851.

Try this too:

1854 Edward T. Perkins, "Na Motu, or Reef-Rovings in the South Seas" p. 97 [ref. to 1848; Perkins had served on an American whaling ship]:

         I dug his grave with a silver spade;
                O! bullies, O!
        And I lowered him down with a golden chain,
                A hundred years ago!


P. 99: "I jumped onto a rock, swung my tarpaulin, and sung that good old song—

                'O ! storm along !
                O! my roving blades, storm along, stormy!'"

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 01:09 PM

And here are two "cotton loading songs" from the John Lomax Collection at American Memory. The "Wake Up, Sleepy" seems to be more of an actual work song. I don't think either of them are being sung in an actual work situation with a work gang.

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?lomaxbib:84:./temp/~ammem_ua2p::

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?lomaxbib:73:./temp/~ammem_ua2p::

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 12:57 PM

Here is Captain Leighton Robinson's "Sally Brown" from Sydney Robertson Cowell's collection CALIFORNIA GOLD, from the American Memory website at the Library of Congress. It was recorded November 12, 1939.

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?cowellbib:12:./temp/~ammem_QAu9::

And here are her notes (scroll down):

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?cowell:1:./temp/~ammem_Gs7G::

She says that Captain Robinson "went to sea in 1888, sailing out of Cornwall to San Francisco."

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 12:51 PM

Great find, Gibb! As near as I could tell this came out in at least 1850. And here is an actual fragment from your chanty!:

http://books.google.com/books?id=6G9HAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA88&dq=%22The+Oregons+a+jolly+crew,+O,+yes,+O!&lr=&cd=3#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: GUEST,Gibb Sahib
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 12:32 PM

Guys, I am at work and no time to scope out all the details, but someone might like to look at this reference. It contains a reference to "A Hundred Years Ago," perhaps around SF/West Coast around our time period (?)

HERE

Subject: Lyr Add: FAITHLESS SALLY BROWN
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 09:54 AM

John-

Thanks for refocusing me on "Faithless Sally Brown" by Thomas Hood. I think it is indeed the precursor to the shanty once it escaped the comic stage to the Thames watermen, and then was carried out to sea. When Hood reprinted "Faithless Sally Brown," under his own name, in the first series of WHIMS AND ODDITIES, he prefaced them with these following words:

"I have never been vainer of any verses than of my part in the following Ballad ("Faithless Sally Brown")...Sally Brown has been favored perhaps with as wide a patronage as the Moral Songs, though its circle may not have been of so select a class as the friends of 'Hohenlinden.' ... The lamented Emery, dressed as Tom Tug, sang it at his last mortal benefit at Covent Garden; and ever since it has been a great favorite with the watermen of Thames, who time their oars to it, as the wherrymen of Venice time theirs to the lines of Tasso. With the watermen it went naturally to Vauxhall, and over land to Sadler's Wells. The Guards--not the mail coach, but the Lifeguards--picked it out from a fluttering hundred of others, all going to one air, against the dead wall at Knightsbridge. Cheap printers of Shoe Lane and Cow Cross (all pirates!) disputed about the copyrights, and published their own editions; and in the meantime the authors, to have made bread of their song (it was poor old Homer's hard ancient case!), must have sung it about the streets. Such is the lot of Literature! the profits of 'Sally Brown' were divided by the Ballad Mongers;--it has cost, but has never brought me, a halfpenny."

The original poem has at least 20 outrageous puns:

Poem by Thomas Hood (1799-1845)
Published in London Magazine, circa 1820's

Faithless Sally Brown

Young Ben he was a nice young man,
A carpenter by trade;
And he fell in love with Sally Brown,
That was a lady's maid.

But as they fetch'd a walk one day,
They met a press-gang crew;
And Sally she did faint away,
Whilst Ben he was brought to.

The Boatswain swore with wicked words,
Enough to shock a saint,
That though she did seem in a fit,
'Twas nothing but a feint.

"Come, girl," said he, "hold up your head,
He'll be as good as me;
For when your swain is in our boat,
A boatswain he will be."

So when they'd made their game of her,
And taken off her elf,
She roused, and found she only was
A coming to herself.

"And is he gone, and is he gone?"
She cried, and wept outright:
"Then I will to the water side,
And see him out of sight."

A waterman came up to her,
"Now, young woman," said he,
"If you weep on so, you will make
Eye-water in the sea."

"Alas! they've taken my beau Ben
To sail with old Benbow;"
And her woe began to run afresh,
As if she'd said "Gee woe!"

Says he, "They've only taken him
To the Tender-ship, you see";
"The Tender-ship," cried Sally Brown
"What a hard-ship that must be!"

"O! would I were a mermaid now,
For then I'd follow him;
But Oh!--I'm not a fish-woman,
And so I cannot swim.

"Alas! I was not born beneath
The virgin and the scales,
So I must curse my cruel stars,
And walk about in Wales."

Now Ben had sail'd to many a place
That's underneath the world;
But in two years the ship came home,
And all her sails were furl'd.

But when he call'd on Sally Brown,
To see how she went on,
He found she'd got another Ben,
Whose Christian name was John.

"O Sally Brown, O Sally Brown,
How could you serve me so?
I've met with many a breeze before,
But never such a blow."

Then reading on his 'bacco box
He heaved a bitter sigh,
And then began to eye his pipe,
And then to pipe his eye.

And then he tried to sing "All's Well,"
But could not though he tried;
His head was turn'd, and so he chew'd
His pigtail till he died.

His death, which happen'd in his berth,
At forty-odd befell:
They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton toll'd the bell.

Hardly no more than the name "Sally Brown" survives in the shanties but they surely (but who is Shirley?) are a lasting tribute to her!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 18 Mar 10 - 08:05 AM

"More and more old newspapers are becoming available on-line which does make this type of newspaper research potentially more fruitful."

You're right about that, Charlie. In this age, one can never say that the research is over! Out of curiosity more than a really serious attempt, I did a quick Google Book search yesterday afternoon on "Whiskey Johnny" thinking this would be a good candidate, like "Sally Brown", for some early stuff, but was really disappointed in the results. I turned up quite a bit of later stuff and a lot of literary stuff with Harte and O'Neill, but no early stuff.

Lighter, I was wondering about the Hood poem and how much it might have muddied the water on "Sally Brown" throughout the 19th century. But from the description give on Mr. Wallack's performance, it sure sounds like a bona fide chanty {not a new category!}. I did find newspaper references to the Hood poem being performed in Australia after the turn of the 20th century.

So what is the thinking about which way the influence may have gone with regard to "Sally Brown" the bona fide chanty, and Hood's "Faithless Sally Brown"? Or was it possibly back and forth? Could Hood have been inspired by an early form of the chanty and then once his poem became popular, it reacted back on the chanty? But I don't see any real evidence of the poem in the chanty versions we have today. I couldn't find an "earliest" publication date for Hood's poem.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 10:54 PM

John-

The best I've come up with from vintage newspapers was from a letter period in the early 1900's in Victoria, BC, and it was an article on sea chanties by Frank Bullen. There were also a poem or two by C. Fox Smith while she was resident there, which was why I was straining my eyes on the microfilm viewer for hours.

More and more old newspapers are becoming available on-line which does make this type of newspaper research potentially more fruitful.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 12:59 PM

No explanation seems likely for Wallack's early "Sally Brown," but it is possible that he was simply "chanting" Hood's poem. The Monthly Magazine and British Register for Dec., 1826) says that the poem was known to "everybody" by that that time.

Interestingly enough, the Sally of the poem is just as faithless as the Sally of the shanty. In both the sailor-protagonist sails away and returns to find Sally with somebody else. The similarity could well be a coincidence, but with so little data it's hard to resist grasping at straws. Maybe the shanty arose as a "recomposition," a la Dick Maitland, of the situation in the poem. It's impossible to know, but it would be perfectly consistent with a birth of shantying in the 1820s and '30s.

I agree that there must have been a "historical moment," but that "moment" could have been some years in duration. It isn't enough to have one crew of oddballs singing call-and-response at a job : that might have happened at any time after ships got big enough. The "moment" had to begin when a small repertoire of shanties - even just one or two - had become so familiar that an influential number of crews (maybe inspired by a single crew of innovators whose habit of shantying gained some "folk notoriety" in one or more ports) were using them. The "moment" would have ended (probably by 1850) when shantying was a well established practice.

A number of factors must have come together to create that innovative "moment": the adoption of stowers' chants, the desirability of adopting them, advances in ship design, more demanding schedules, more sailors, maybe even more citizens coming down to the wharves to watch vessels heaving anchor. That by itself might have done wonders for the capstan shanty especially. (In fact, maybe singing at the capstan - any old song - may have been the model for singing more specialized songs while hauling.

The more primitive-form bunt shanty like "Paddy Doyle" might also have been early: "Paddy" is hardly more than a creative elaboration of a spontaneous chant like "To me one! two! three! four! Get ready you sailors to PULL!" As I've said before, few writers would have found something so simple to be worth writing down. The level of atmospheric, documentary detail expected in popular fiction and nonfiction today is vastly greater than it was even a hundred years ago.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 11:34 AM

Gibb, I appreciate your coments on Scarborough and Talley. That saves me ploughing through them again. The last time I looked at them, I was not looking for chanties.

I think that this is an important hypothesis for us:

"I'd also like to (re)impress the idea that the work -- let's say halyard hauling -- and the singing were inseparable. By analogy, think of the way some African cultural groups don't use a distinct word for "music" alone. "Performance" includes singing, dancing, and drumming, all together by requirement. It may be inappropriate in those contexts to expect to only sing without dancing, say. The physical aspect is as much a part of it as the sound. This rings with the statements about "no hand was put on a rope without raising a song."

I reason that if the things were inseparable, that they also CAME *together*. That is, although earlier in history there were calls to help pull, there was also pulling *without* sound. I hypothesize that there was a historical moment, not when sailors just started singing a lot more, but when the inseparable paradigm of a certain kind of song with a certain method of action was introduced to the scene."

And, unless this had pretty much already happened by the 1850's, it wasn't likely to be generated on wharves at San Francisco! Wrong place, wrong culture. So these songs had to be imported to California by the sailors themselves, most likely. And, I'm wondering if the Black population of San Francisco was at all significant in this period, other than on board ship.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 11:22 AM

Lighter, thanks for the info on Robinson. I will try to pursue that and get a copy of his articles. It is strange that this has not been gathered up and published.

And I appreciate the note on your newspaper research with regard to the Gold Rush. The silence so far is truly deafening. At least this saves me the time of looking there. Thanks.

I don't have Davis & Tozer and have not seen it, and as far as I can tell, the UVA library does not have it. Maybe it is time for some library loan stuff.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 11:02 AM

Part II 1855-1870

{1858} SEA DRIFT, Hercules Robinson

"Oh Sally Brown, Sally Brown, oh!"
-----
{1858} OBERLIN STUDENTS' MONTHLY, article by I. Allen

"Jim along Josey"
"Outward and Homeward Bound" [windlass]
"Storm along my stormies" [windlass]
"Oh haulee, heigho, cheeryman!" [topsail halyards]
"Heigho, heave and go" [windlass]
-----
{1859} "Songs of the Chantey-Man", THE BELLMAN, Captain John Robinson

Maid of Amsterdam
Oh My Santi (i.e., "New York Girls")
Ranso Ray / Huckleberry Picking (two versions of the same song)
Blow, Boys, Blow!
Derby Ram
Dance the Boatman Dance
Old Stormy
We're All Bound Away (i.e., "Heave Away, My Johnnies")
Sacramento
Shenandoah!
The Black Ball Line
Sally Brown (two melodies)
Rio Grande
Sailors Like the Bottle O!
Catting the Anchor (i.e., "Cheer'ly Men!")
Haul Away, Joe!
Reuben Ranso
Poor Old Man
Hanging Johnny
Highland Laddie
Paddy on the Railway
Shallo Brown!
One More Day!
John Cherokee
Bangidero
Galloping Randy Dandy O!
Blow the Man Down
Whisky for My Johnny
Haul the Bowline
Young Girls, Can't You Hilo?
Santa Anna
My Tom's Gone to Hilo!
To the Spanish Main - Slav Ho!
'Tis Time for Us to Leave Her!
Paddy Doyle
Boney Was a Warrior
We're Homeward Bound (i.e., "Goodbye, Fare Ye Well!")
The Ox-eyed Man
Farewell and Adieu (i.e., "Spanish Ladies")
-----
{1861-1872}SEA SONGS AND SHANTIES, W.B.Whall, (1910), East Indiamen

"Sally Brown"
-----
{1863} J.S. Scott, London, England,
{1864} James Wright, Leith, England

"Sally Brown"
-----
{1862} From Rev. Thomas H. Stacy, "Rev. Otis Robinson Bacheler, M.D., D.D., FIFTY-THREE YEARS A MISSIONARY TO INDIA, printed on shipboard during a voyage from Boston to Calcutta.

"Santa Anna"
-----
{late 1865 (Lighter, 2/26)} ON BOARD THE ROCKET, Adams Robert Chamblet, [as "Blow, My Bully Boys, Blow"]. Specifically hears "Walk along, my Sally Brown" in Genoa, Italy as Virginia tobacco is being unloaded

"Sally Brown"
-----
{1867-1885} Jack Murray, Aberdeen, Scotland

"Sally Brown"
-----
{1867} SLAVE SONGS OF THE UNITED STATES, William James Allen

"Shock Along, John"
"Round the Corn, Sally"
-----
{late 1860's (Lighter 2/1)} Harding, West Indies, British, American and Blue Nose (Nova Scotia) ships
        & perhaps Tobago Smith, West Indies
{1868} Captain Edward B. Trumbull, Salem, MA
{1869} Robert Yeoman, Dundee, Scotland
{1869} Richard Maitland, Atlantic, San Francisco, Blackball Line to Liverpool, Hong Kong, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Scotland

"Sally Brown"
-----
{1869-1880} SONGS OF SEA LABOUR, Frank Bullen, (1914)[ weighing anchor & flywheel pumps] Bournemouth, England; West Indies, Gulf of Mexico ports

"Sally Brown"
-----
{1869} THE ARK OF ELM ISLAND, Rev. Elijah Kellogg, (1871)

"Hoojun, John, a hoojun" (hoojun/hoosier/hooker ?)
Isaiah's Song "Stow me long, stow me!" [warping to dock]
Flour's Song "Hilo, boys, a hilo!" [warping to dock]
"Hand Ober Hand" [warping to dock]
Walking Song "Fire down below" [warping to dock]
John John Crow "John, John Crow is a dandy , O!" [halyard]
"Highland laddie"
-----

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 10:42 AM

I have tried to round up and organize in a chronological order the songs and sources we have been collecting so far on this thread. I will put this up in two parts: Part I 1800-1855, and Part II 1855-1870. I haven't gone beyond 1870 at this point, even though I know some of our materials reflect this later period. I am still primarily interested in the early 1850's. These {dates} are roughly the historical dates of the event being recorded and are the organizing dates for this list.

[I long ago learned the importance of "reading the footnotes". Please don't hesitate to do your own double-checking on any or all of this information. I take full responsibility for any mistakes in this post and welcome corrections - jm]

Part I 1800-1855

{1811} LANDSMAN HAY. The memoirs of Robert Hay, 1789-1847 By Robert Hay (of Paisley.), Jamaica, stevedore apparently working at capstan

"Grog Time Of Day"
-----
{possibly as early as 1822 or earlier} WEST INDIA SKETCH BOOK, Volume 1, Trelawney Wentworth (Published 1834 or earlier? and referring to events possibly as early as 1822 or earlier)

"Fine Time of Day"
-----
{1826} HORACE IN NEW YORK, Isaac Starr Clason,

"Sally Brown, oh, ho" (Mr. Wallack) [performance]
-----
{circa 1826} WALDIE'S SELECT CIRCULATING LIBRARY, Volume 1 (12 March 1833), Italian visitor to London, in a pub

"Haul way, yeo ho, boys!"
-----
{circa 1829} Sold wholesale by L. Deming, No. 62, Hanover Street 2d door from Friend Street, Boston, minstrel version

" Coal Black Rose"
-----
{1830} THE WATERMAN'S SONG, David S. Cecelski, 2001, collected by Moses Curtis, on the Cape Fear River, NC

" Sally was a fine girl, ho!" / "Sally Brown" [rowing]
-----
{1832} THE QUID, on a voyage to the Orient on an East India Company ship

"Pull Away now, my Nancy, O!"
-----
{1833} SERVICE AFLOAT, appears to describe observations from during Napoleanic Wars, so 1815 or earlier), Antigua,

"Hurra, my jolly boys, grog time a day" [rowing]
-----
{Dec. 24,1833} WALDIE'S SELECT CIRCULATING LIBRARY II

"'Tis grog time o' day!"   [WI canoe rowing song]
-----
{1836} "Tar Brush Sketches", Benjamin Fiferail, in CORRECTED PROOFS, H Hastings Weld

" Grog time o' day"
-----
{1834-36} TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, Richard Henry Dana, 1840 edition, and John Kemble's 1964 edition

"Grog Time a Day"
"Heave, to the girls!"
"Nancy oh!"
"Jack Crosstree"
"Cheerly, men"
"Heave round hearty!"
"Captain gone ashore!"
"Dandy ship and a dandy crew"
"Time for us to go!"
"Round the corner, Sally"
"Tally high ho! you know"
"Hurrah! hurrah! my hearty bullies!"
-----
{26 Dec. 1834} TELEMACHUS, OR, THE ISLAND OF CALYPSO, 1850, James Robinson Planché, Charles Dance

" Grog time of day, boys"
-----
{Tuesday, the 22nd of September, 1835} VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD, W.S.W. Ruschenberger, M.D.,"When she moved more easily, those at the capstan sang, to the tune of "The Highland Laddie,"

"The Highland Laddie"
-----
{April, 1837} A DIARY IN AMERICA, VOL. 1, 1839, Capt. C.B. Marryat, , Portsmouth, England, on Western Ocean packet to New York

"Sally Brown" [capstan]
-----
{1838} LETTERS FROM ALABAMA, Phillip Gosse (1859)

"Fire the ringo, fire away"
-----
{1839} BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY vol 4, New York, Sept. 1839

"The Stoker's Chant" / "Fire Down Below" [riverboat fireman]
-----
{1839} BURTON'S GENTLEMEN'S MAGAZINE

"Fire! Down Below"
-----
{February 11,1840} INCIDENTS OF A WHALING VOYAGE(1841) Frederick Law Olmsted

"Drunken Sailor"
"Nancy Farana"/ "Haul 'er Away!" / "Hill 'n Gully Rider"/ "Sally                 Rackett"
"O, Hurrah, My Hearties, O"
-----
{1841} THE ART OF BALLET (1915) An anecdote about two sister Austrian ballet dancers touring America in 1841.

"Grog time o' day"
-----
{Sept. 11, 1842} Isaac Baker's diary aboard whaleship "Taskar" RITES AND PASSAGES, Margaret S. Creighton, (1995)

"The Taskar is the thing to roll" / "Sally Brown"
-----
{circa 1844} Lowe, on the London docks

"Roll and go for that white pitcher, roll and go"
-----
{1845, maybe} TWENTY YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, Charles Erskine, New Orleans

"Highland Laddie" [screwing cotton]
"Fire Maringo"
-----
{sometime between 1845 and 1853} THE MERCHANT VESSEL  Charles Nordhoff, (1856)

"Old Stormy"
"Yankee Dollar"
"Fire Maringo"
"Highland Laddie"
"Across the briny ocean"
-----
{1845} AMERICAN JOURNAL OF MUSIC AND MUSICAL VISITOR, Feb. 25, 1845

"Ho, O, heave O" / "Row, Billy, row" [heaving anchor]
-----
{February of 1849} A TALE OF TWO OCEANS Ezekiel I. Barra, in Boston harbor, preparing to sail out to California,

"Nancy Banana" [halyards]
-----
{1850s} W Craig , ADVENTURES IN THE AUSTRALIAN GOLD FIELDS, 1903 "Two shanty fragments as sung on the sailing ships bringing gold seekers to Sydney

"Oh fare you well, my own Mary Anne" [pumping]
" When first we went a-waggoning" [anchor hauling]
-----
{1850s} OCEAN LIFE IN THE OLD SAILING SHIP DAYS, John D. Whidden. Whidden's source is his "old friend, Captain George Meacom, of Beverly [Mass.]." Meacom refers to his own recollection of the 1850s, and his testimony seems to be reliable.

"Mobile Bay" /"Johnnie Come Tell Us As We Haul Away"
"Fire Down Below"
"One More Day For Johnnie"
-----
{1853} A JOURNEY IN THE SEABOARD SLAVE STATES Frederick Law Olmsted, 1861

"Oahoiohieu" / "The Sailor Fireman" ("Lindy Lowe") [riverboat]
"Oh, John, come down in de holler" [riverboat]
-----
{1854} ETHIOPIAN MELODIES, Christy and White, 1854

"Storm along. Stormy."
"Fire Down Below"

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 09:37 AM

Davis & Tozer, inspired perhaps by L.A. Smith, deserve credit for creating public interest in shanties. Though Smith was the first to publish shanties in a book, they take up only a small portion of it, which is mainly devoted to other kinds of sea songs, many of them from non-anglophone cultures. Her tune transcriptions are often careless and her lyrics are generally brief.

D & T's book, however, is shanties only, of singable length, published with words that would be attractive to a general audience, and (very importantly) arranged as serious music by a trained composer.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 09:29 AM

Some time ago I searched 19th C. databases containing numerous S.F. and California newspapers and found nothing on "chanty," "chantie," "chanties," "sailors + chants," "shanties," "sea shanty." "Sailor + chant" yields too many hits to investigate fully, but I haven't found any that are relevant.

U.S. newspapers in general barely mention shanties at all until the 1880s and '90s, and even then there's little of interest.

"Sailor(s) song(s)" finds very little, and "sea songs" nothing of interest (mostly parlor sea songs are meant).

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 09:09 AM

John, Robinson's articles have never been reprinted. You should be able to get a scan or photocopy through the interlibrary loan department of your local library. It may take ten days or so.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 17 Mar 10 - 07:46 AM

Gibb says: "Incidentally, when this thread was started, I was thinking that a better question would be (**assuming "historical imagination" is at work**) "What shanties were NOT around in 1853?"! " I'm in the process of gathering up what we've found so far and arranging it in chronological sequence. And as I do this realize that we've just begun the process. I don't know why we can't use your statement, Gibb, as a working hypothesis and then go looking for the rest of these chanties.

The prize, however, will go to the person who can actually place some of them in San Francisco in the early '50's. I spent a whole day reading Gold Rush materials and I didn't find a single mention of chanties, work songs on board ship, etc. The closest I could come was the "rounding Cape Horn" verses, but they tend to be floaters so it's hard to pin much on them. There were so many people going to California and so many ships sailing and so many letters home and journals, etc. and this all happens when these chanties have supposedly been already well-used on the Western Ocean packets, and were emerging from the Gulf Ports, that it is amazing that the literature of the time is not loaded with references. The crews on board these ships were surely cosmopolitan by that point. And many of the passengers were literate and some were well-educated and liked
to keep records. Why no mention of these songs?

What was the African American population like in San Francisco in the Gold Rush period? Who unloaded all of those ships which were bringing all of those supplies to the gold fields? And then, in 1851, gold was discovered in Australia and it happened all over again. I have remembered these two songs from Warren Fahey's webpage:

{1850s} W Craig , ADVENTURES ON THE AUSTRALIAN GOLD FIELDS, 1903 "Two shanty fragments as sung on the sailing ships bringing gold seekers to Sydney

"Oh fare you well, my own Mary Anne" [pumping]
" When first we went a-waggoning" [anchor hauling]

http://warrenfahey.com/maritime-3.htm

Probably the best way to try to track down Gold Rush era chanties is to do what we've been doing and pursue references on individual songs. And perhaps to focus on "going round the Horn".

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Mar 10 - 11:08 PM

Sorry about all the typ-os in my recent posts! My eyes were fried from looking at the computer all day.

The description of corn shucking is interesting because it seems to fit the rough paradigm of chantying as in cotton-screwing and some other labour of African-American gangs. There's the pile of corn, and the lead singer sat/stood atop it, not "working" per se, but leading the song. (They say he also threw down ears to the shuckers.) Surely it is significant that, in cotton screwing, there was one "chantyman" who just did the singing and no "work"! Similarly, the chanteyman on board ships just sat on the capstan or took his place at the front of a halyard block ("coasting" a bit, I'd imagine.) (And did he also sometimes just stand by halyards without pulling?) One of the recent sources I'd mentioned, too, talked about a stevedore getting paid just to sing. What I'm trying to impress is that this concept of one who sings as an absolutely essential part of a group of workers is surely something distinctive. We can say that many peoples/cultural regions have their work-songs; we can also say that call-and-response is a phenomenon that developed simultaneously in several cultural regions. However, if we add this concept of the (paid!) professional singer-worker, we can get a sense of the cultural background from which "chanties, proper" emerged.

I'd also like to (re)impress the idea that the work -- let's say halyard hauling -- and the singing were inseparable. By analogy, think of the way some African cultural groups don't use a distinct word for "music" alone. "Performance" includes singing, dancing, and drumming, all together by requirement. It may be inappropriate in those contexts to expect to only sing without dancing, say. The physical aspect is as much a part of it as the sound. This rings with the statements about "no hand was put on a rope without raising a song."

I reason that if the things were inseparable, that they also CAME *together*. That is, although earlier in history there were calls to help pull, there was also pulling *without* sound. I hypothesize that there was a historical moment, not when sailors just started singing a lot more, but when the inseparable paradigm of a certain kind of song with a certain method of action was introduced to the scene.

On a slightly different note, I scanned through Scarborough's book, and I've looked at Talley's before. Besides some of the usual suspects ("Charleston Gals" as "Poor Old Horse"), I don't see a lot in common with our chanties. Certainly, very many of the chanties borrowed from minstrel songs (which borrowed from and tended to get mixed up with authentic Black songs in these books). People have discussed that a lot and elsewhere on Mudcat. And although the borrowing from minstrel songs does not necessarily mean the derivative chanties (lacking any other attestation, that is) were originated during 1830s-40s-50s (typical minstrelsy years), it is generally enough for *me*, not as proof but as strong-suggestion, that those chanties *did* probably emerge in that time frame. Incidentally, when this thread was started, I was thinking that a better question would be (**assuming "historical imagination" is at work**) "What shanties were NOT around in 1853?"!

However, what I/we have also noted is that while many chanties do have phrases that were most likely picked up from minstrel songs, there are not many that actually take over the song wholesale. In other words, only phrases have been borrowed. I want to suggest that this is because, although these "hooks" were wildly popular in the musical culture of the time, the forms of the minstrel songs did not usually fit the chanty-act. Phrases had to be grafted onto the chantey form. Moreover, in cases when the minstrel song forms *were* used (e.g. "Camptown Races," "Oh Susanna,"), they were generally as heaving (capstan) shanties - those with a different, more flexible form than the "classic halyard work-song" structure.

So...in Scarborough and Talley (the latter which I've not read carefully lately), there is not a whole lot that is like chanties. This has been my possible explanation *why*.

I was also looking in what might be considered a Jamaican equivalent to those books, Jekyll's JAMAICAN SONG AND STORY (1907). In my opinion --although this is a vague sense-- the melodies there have more in common with chanties. Still, there are few that are just like chanties. I once identified a variation of the revival era chantey "Bring 'Em Down" in Jekyll, but that one, like most of the work-songs there, is more of the "Hunhh!" (grunt), one-pull at regular intervals (like "Eki Dumah") type. Then again, none of these collections have much maritime-related material.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 15 Mar 10 - 09:08 AM

Lighter, thanks very much for the information on Robinson. I 'm going to have to try to find a copy of that material. Was it ever published as a collection or is it stil only available as a series of articles? And thanks for the continuing stream of bibliography on "Sally Brown". Surely this tread is living proof that it takes more than one of us to round up the material! I appreciate being able to work with the rest of you. I think it's a rare opportunity and a rare occasion.

Gibb, I am particularly interested in what you are finding out from WHITE, and the dating on that - 1854. The fact that this work on minstrel music, which takes a maritime work song into its collection certainly demonstrates that "Storm along Stormy" had been around for awhile by 1854! And it looks like you are turning up some of the roots for that in a corn shucking song, of all places. I am partial to corn-shucking/shelling songs. Do you know "Sheep shell corn by the rattle of his horn"? [Not a chanty as far as I know.]

I also like the way you are bringing in the riverboat songs. Don't forget that very interesting man named Lafcadio Hearn. A number of years ago, I did a study on "Limber Jim" here on Mudcat, and he wrote a fascinating article for a Cincinnati paper on the songs of the waterfront there. Here's the thread, and a specific post on Lafcadio Hearn's version of "Limber Jim":

thread.cfm?threadid=48893

thread.cfm?threadid=48893#736536

I think the quote from Allen (and the one from the MARYLAND...JOURNAL]) is amazing and confirms a lot of what we and you in particular have been suggesting. As I mentioned earlier, the sense of the fluidity of this process is beginning to really take hold with me. The quote sums that up very nicely.

Two other places to look are Thomas Talley and Dorothy Scarborough. A version of Talley's NEGRO FOLK RHYMES is here [but the currently available one in print is updated and expanded if I remember correctly]:

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/negro-folk-rhymes/

And Dorothy Scarborough's ON THE TRAIL OF NEGRO FOLK-SONGS is here:

http://www.archive.org/stream/onthetrailofnegr027463mbp#page/n5/mode/2up

Well, today I get to choose whether to look at Gold Rush literature, riverboat literature, or minstrel literature. What a life!

Charley, thanks for the info on Mr. Kellogg. And let us know what you turn up from the moulder bin!

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Mar 10 - 08:25 AM

Gibb-

I agree with Lighter that "John Rowley" is most likely a version of "John Riley's Gone Away" aka "Good-bye My Riley-O."

Here's some basic bio info with regard to Rev. Kellogg above:

KELLOGG, Elijah, clergyman, born in Portland, Maine, 20 May, 1813. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1840, and at Andover theological seminary in 1843. The next year he was ordained pastor of the Congregational church in Harpswell, Maine, and in 1855-'65 he was chaplain of the Boston Seaman's Friend Society. Since the latter date he had for the most part been engaged in writing juvenile books. He had also delivered various lectures, and is the author of the popular "Address of Sparticus to the Gladiators." His books include "The Elm Island Series" (Boston, 1868-'70); "Pleasant Cove Series" (1870-'4); "Whispering Pine Series" (1871-'3); "Good Old Times Series" (1877-'82); and "The Forest Glen Series" (1878). He died in 1901.

ELIJAH KELLOGG: The Man and His Work, by Wilmot Brookings Mitchell, published by Lee and Shepherd, Boston, Massachusetts, US, © 1903:

Born in Portland, Maine, May 20, 1813.

At the age of about fifteen he went to sea (1828)

Returned from sea to Portland, Maine, in his early 20's

Enrolled at the age of 24 at Bowdoin College (1836)

Graduated from Andover Theological Seminary (1843)

Became pastor of Harpswell Congregational Church, Maine (1844)

Became pastor for the Mariner's Church in Boston (1854)

Resigned as pastor of the Mariner's Church in Boston (1866) and devoted himself primarily to literary pursuits in Boston:

Good Old Times (1867, 1878)
Norman Cline (1869)
Elm Island Series (1869-1870)
Pleasant Cove Series (1870-1874)
Whispering Pines Series (1871-1873)
Forest Glen Series (1874-1878)
Good Times Series (1881-1883)

Returned to Harpswell, Maine in 1882.

Died in 1901.

Kellogg did have seven or eight years of merchant sailing experience to draw on when writing his books for adolescent boys (i.e. Elm Island); he also had the stories of sailors from his work with the Sailor's Home in Boston to draw on as well. Some of his journals are in residence at our State Library twenty miles away and I might just drop by and see if there's a folder of sea songs mouldering away in some long neglected cabinet.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 11:30 PM

More on "Sally Brown":

James Taft Hatfield, "Some Nineteenth Century Shanties," Journal of American Folklore (Apr.-June, 1946), p. 111. Heard in 1886 on a voyage from Pensacola to Nice.

J. E. Thomas, "Sea Shanties," Journal of the English Folk-Song Society (Dec., 1928), p. 97. Coll. from John Farr (b. 1850) at Gwithian, Cornwall, 1926.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 11:03 PM

You may be right about "John Cherokee." But of the Robinson-Colcord shanties, it's still the only one to be "revived."

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 10:42 PM

That's an informative article for its day, Gibb.

As for "Rowley," I wonder if that's the source of the "Riley" shanty Lomax collected in Georgia with "Stormy"-type verses like, "I wish I was Cap'n Riley's son!" The tune is "Tom's Gone to Hilo."

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 10:35 PM

"John Cherokee" has often been "revived," mostly in Hugill's version

Actually, it is based in Robinson/Colcord's version :) The only people I ever heard sing Hugill's (i.e. Harding's) proper version are Hugill, a Polish group, and me! If I recall, however, Hugill caught the revival wave and switched over to "their" version midstream.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 10:28 PM

There is a December 1858 article by I. Allen (who looks to have been a student?) in OBERLIN STUDENTS' MONTHLY here, that describes "Songs of the Sailor." Please forgive me if we have covered it, but it is not jogging my memory.

A windlass song:

"We've a bully slop and a bully crew,
      Heigho, heave and go;
We've a bully mate and a captain too;
    Heigho, heave and go.''

Evidently, for topsail halyards:

"Oh haulee, heigho, cheeryman!
O! pull like brothers, heigho, cbeeryman,
And not like lubbers, heigho, cbceryman;
O ! baulee, beigho, cheeryman!"

Windlass, performed by "swarthy forms" "amid the barbarous jargon of tongues,"

" I wish I were a stormy's son;
Hurrah, storm along!
I'd storm 'em up and storm 'em down;
Storm along my stormies.
Hurrah! John Rowley,
John, storm along—
We'll storm 'em up and storm 'em down,
Storm along, my stormies.
We'll make them hear our thundering guns,
Storm along my stormies."

And then it proceeds patheticallv to inform us that "Old Rowley is dead and gone," and that "they lowered him down with a golden chain," and that they'll proceed to storm somebody or other.

So..."John Rowley" = "Stormy, John"?

Again at the windlass, it's the song Hugill called "Outward and Homeward Bound":

"And now our prize we'll take nu tow,
And for old England we will go ;
Our pockets all well lined with brass,
We'll drink a health to our favorite lass!
Hurrah! we're homoward bou-ou-ound!
Hurrah ! we're homeward bound."

But strange as it may seem, however varied the appearance and nationality of the ship and its crew, be they from Archangel's icebound coast, or India's coral strand, Saxon or Celt, Frenchman or Turk, Russian or African, we invariably find that the strain of the sailor's worksong has the same plaintive minor key, strongly reminding one of their similarity in this respect to the sad-toned melodies of the negro race.

I don't know about this "plaintive minor key" -- relatively few chanties are actually in a minor mode. It is possible that there is a sound to "typical" African-American songs --perhaps "blue notes" -- that, back in the day, people categorised under "a plaintive minor key." Still, the comments are interesting.

And one more passage. It is fascinating, at this early date, that someone would write an essay opining about the Black influence on sailors' work-songs.

Along the African coast you will hear that dirge-like strain in all their songs, as at work or paddling their canoes to and from shore, they keep time to the music. On the southern plantations you will hear it also, and in the negro melodies every where, plaintive and melodious, sad and earnest. It seems like the dirge of national degradation, the wail of a race, stricken and crushed, familiar with tyranny, submission and unrequited labor.

And here I cannot help noticing tho similarity existing between the working chorus of the sailors and the dirge-like negro melody, to which my attention was specially directed by an incident I witnessed or rather heard.

One day we had anchored off a small town, and soon the canoe fleet of the natives was seen coming off to trade. Suddenly a well known strain of music comes floating to us on the land breeze. "Where's that singing?" cries one, " can't be that yon ship is weighing anchor ?" " Why, it's the darkies I" shouts another of the listeners; and, sure enough, there were five or six hundred of them coming off singing in two parts and keeping time with their paddles to

"Heigh Jim along, Jim along Josey, Heigh Jim along, Jim along Jo!"

They had made an advance in the scale of civilization and taken their place in the world of harmony. Then the conclusions of my speculation on the probable cause of this evident similarity between the chorus melodies of the sailor and the negro were something like these—First, the similarity of the object; that is, the unifying of effort in labor, and thus to secure simultaneous action, as in rowing, pulling, hoeing, &c., &c., by the measured and rythmical occurrence of vowel sounds.

Quaintness aside, theory-wise it sounds like it could have been written in 2010!

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 10:19 PM

Most (not all) of Robinson's shanties are covered in other pre-Colcord collections. Colcord seems to have taken less than half a dozen rarities from him: Derby Ram, Bangidero, Slav Ho!, John Cherokee, maybe one more. I haven't checked, though. Of these, only "John Cherokee" has often been "revived," mostly in Hugill's version.