Riverboat Songs?

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: Paul G.
Date: 11 Apr 99 - 08:27 PM

Hey, Harpgirl.

How about a Florida Riverboat tune...If you have it, you'll find "The Mandarin Line" on my first CD, "Good Enough For Me"...about the boat line on the St. Johns back in the last century...if you don't have it, drop me a private note and I'll be happy to send you a tape...

pginjax

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: harpgirl
Date: 11 Apr 99 - 08:48 PM

Hey Paul,
Ooohh...those sound like neat songs...I'll just have to buy your CD...harpgirl

Subject: Lyr Add: ST. JOHN'S RIVER (Burl Ives)^^
From: Art Thieme
Date: 12 Apr 99 - 02:04 AM

How about the old Burl Ives recording of "St. John's River"----definitely a Florida riverboat song.

Baby,
Don't ya leave me,
Your sweetie's gonna leave you,
Yes you,
On the St. Johns River,
And nary a cent will I be the giver.

Baby,
Don't you hear me,
Your sweetie's gonna ride the "Cherokee" down the St. John's River,
And nary a cent will I be the giver.

Baby,
Don't you hear me,
Yor furniture's gonna leave you,
Yes, you.
On the St. John's River,
And nary a cent will I be the giver!

That's all I remember. It's a haunting song with much left unsaid. All we're told is someone's leaving someone. They are taking the furniture. They're not leaving any money. And they're taking the STR. (steamboat) THE CHEROKEE on the St. John's River. I do hope the paddlewheel don't hit a manatee.

Art

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 12 Apr 99 - 02:09 AM

This song "ST. JOHN'S RIVER" was on Burl Ives __CORONATION CONCERT__ in London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. He taped it with his own 2-track tape machine with a mike set up near a speaker---just for his own use. The tape came out so fine that Decca issued it on a LP.

Art

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: Mumbles
Date: 12 Apr 99 - 03:09 AM

Thanks for the Cherokee Queen, Art.

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: catspaw49
Date: 12 Apr 99 - 03:14 AM

Wow...You really do appreciate it don't you Mumbles?

catspaw

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: Paul G.
Date: 12 Apr 99 - 09:21 PM

Art...

Thanks for the tip on the Burl Ives St. Johns River song. That big river is an important part of my existance, and the source for much of my writing. I'll try to track down a copy of that recording for my personal archives.

Paul

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: campfire
Date: 22 Apr 99 - 02:44 AM

refreshed for ddw in windsor

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 01:34 PM

Refresh. The above-posted song "St. John's River" sounds interesting but is apparently incomplete. Can anyone supply what is missing?

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 22 Jan 01 - 08:29 PM

Jim,

The word I got wrong ("seetie") in my posting of "St. Johns River" was supposed to be "SWEETIE".

I, like you, suspect that it's only a fragment of a larger song---but that's all that Burl Ives sang.

Art

I fixed your Sweetie, Art. She feels much better.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: walkinman
Date: 23 Jan 01 - 05:34 AM

A great video, filled with riverboat songs, is "Banjoes, Fiddles and Riverboats", by John Hartford(of Course).

John's "living Diary" of the life along the river is really magic and it includes eight original tunes.

wm

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 24 Jan 01 - 08:18 PM

A fellow in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Tom Kenavan, just put together two short films (videos) on the Steamboat Julia Belle Swain-----maybe an hour of lovely footage of the old boat. In one of these the music is from Rick Fielding's LIFELINE CD on Folk Legacy. The other one utilizes my music from the ON THE RIVER cassette. The Julia Belle Swain is the boat I sang on all through the 1990s.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Jan 01 - 09:33 PM

Jim Post's "I Wanna Be a Hammer-Down Riverboat Man" from his show, Galena Rose. Lyrics of the tape turns up.

~S~

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 24 Jan 01 - 09:41 PM

Looking for Jim Post online, I found he has done another whole show on the river theme which is described here:

http://www.wcinet.com/th/News/073197/Features/69639.htm

~S~

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 24 Jan 01 - 11:55 PM

Cathy Barton and Dave Para have just released a CD titled Living on the River, a collection of river songs and tunes. They're backed up by the talented Grace family. It's available from Folk-Legacy (of course!) and will be listed on our web site soon.

Sandy

Subject: Lyr Add: ANNIE CHRISTMAS (Art Thieme)
From: Art Thieme
Date: 15 Feb 01 - 11:43 PM

ANNIE CHRISTMAS -------- After Roark Bradford and Lyle Saxon in The New Orleans Times-Picayune. Also see as a possible source CARL CARMER's 1939 THE HURRICANE'S CHILDREN. Both of the above were reprinted in B.A. Botkin's Treasury Of Folklore books. Jackie Torrence's retelling of Annie Christmas seems to be taken from Carl Carmer's piece.

The ANNIE CHRISTMAS I told was from all of the above---plus puns etc. and off the top o' my head changes---some of which stayed in---but some didnt.(see below)

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

The black folks say Annie was black and the white folks say she was white. Happened so long ago nobody knows for sure. What they did agree on was that she was just one hell of a woman. Annie Christmas stood 7 and a half feet tall in her stocking feet. She weighed 750 pounds and made her living as a keelboat pilot on the Mississippi River---poling those boats up against the current---stickin' the pole in the mud of the bottom and pushin' with all her strength. Muscles werejust a-ripplin' on her arms. Folks lined the shore for miles just to watch Annie work. It was such a prodigious effort. Mostly she wore buckskin and she had a red turkey feather in her hair. She was some sight to see when she was working.

There wasn't a man that Annie couldn't beat in a fight -- fair or otherwise. They came from all over to fight her. Even Mike Fink showed up to fight her one time. You know 'bout Mike Fink on the Ohio? He tried to jump the Ohio River once. Got half way across & saw he wasn't gonna make it-----so he turned around and went back.

Now, Annie saw these new steamboats every so often and she thought they were pretty fine lookin'. To her they seemed like floating wedding cakes comin' down the river in the misty light of mornin'. She saw the fancy ladies and the gamblers too. They looked fine to Annie too and she set her mind to takin' a ride on a steamboat. She went and got SYXTY YARDS of red satin and made herself a fine little shorty frock. She put the turkey feather in her hair---and she put on her famous necklace-----the one made out of ears and noses and eyes she had bit and gouged off o' guys in those fights she had. When Annie Christmas died, folks said that necklace was 28 feet long !)

Well, Annie got on board The River Queen and she met and fell in love with Charlie---a gambler. For both of 'em it was love at first sight. Just a few days after meeting Charlie and Annie Christmas asked the captain to marry them. Exactly one year to the day after gettin' hitched, Annie Christmas gave birth to twelve sons. And all were born at the same time. Within 6 months all of her sons stood 7 and a half feet tall and weighed 750 pounds each---just like their mother. And you think people lined up to watch when Annie was workin' ? Hell, when that family was working they were lined up 5 and 6 deep along the shore.

Charlie, himself, never did any work 'cept play roulette. One day he felt lucky --- and he bet on red. Red won ! Charlie yelled, "Just let it ride"---and he planted his hand down on the table to support all his weight. Twenty-five times in a row Charlie won ! The captain came over and told Charlie that he had to cut him off. Seems Charlie had won every dollar that boat had on it...

...Annie walked over to Charlie, took his arm to lead him away--------and Charlie keeled over----dead as a doornail. Apparently he had been dead for quite a while. That steamboat had been losing to a dead man !

Well, you know Annie felt pretty sad then ---. She pined away and died herself not too long after that. And her 12 sons built her a coal black coffin. And it was a very special coffin. It had a pilothouse up top and boilers and a red turning sternwheel behind. And on the darkest night of the year----they cut the rope and Annie Christmas's coffin glided out into the foggy night.

And folks say that if you're down on those lowland backwaters of the Mississippi River -- if ya listen close -- you can hear the slapping of the coffin's bucketboards as it glides on by.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 05:06 PM

Hi all, This is a great old thread and I am using it to see if anyone remembers a female photographer from the thirties who was blind and lived aboard a houseboat on the Mississippi River??? Her photographs were remarkable, many of giant catfish caught from her houseboat????.

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: deepdoc1
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 07:35 PM

Not sure about the blind part, but there was Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre. Powerful good photos of river folk.

Subject: RE: Riverboat Songs?
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 18 Mar 13 - 10:37 PM

deepdoc1

I do believe Maggie Sayre is the one...can't find the iconic photographs in my mind's eye yet. Many thanks. Who are you?