From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 06:29 PM

In Allen's SLAVE SONGS OF THE UNITED STATES (1867), a version of "Round the Corn, Sally" is included, pg. 68. Note that this is a different source than the one usually cited...which escapes me at the moment...but on which for instance the chantey group The Johnson Girls have based their rendition. The melody in SLAVE SONGS is different. There is also an interesting note in the introduction.

On the other hand there are very few which are of an intrinsically barbaric character, and where this character does appear, it is chiefly in short passages, intermingled
with others of a different character. Such passages may be found perhaps in Nos. 10, 12, and 18 ; and "Becky Lawton," for instance (No. 29), "Shall I die?" (No. 52) " Round the corn, Sally" (No. 87), and " O'er the crossing" (No. 93) may very well be purely African in origin. Indeed, it is very likely that if we had found it possible to get at more of their secular music, we should have come to another conclusion as to the proportion ot the barbaric element.

Just after is this interesting comment about work-songs:

A gentleman in Delaware writes: " We must look among their non-religious songs for the purest specimens of negro minstrelsy. ....Some of the best pure negro songs I have ever heard were those that used to be sung by the black stevedores, or perhaps the crews themselves, of the West India vessels, loading and unloading at the wharves in Philadelphia and Baltimore. I have stood for more than an hour, often, listening to them, as they hoisted and lowered the hogsheads and boxes of their cargoes ; one man taking the burden of the song (and the slack of the rope) and the others striking in with the chorus. They would sing in this way more than a dozen different songs in an hour ; most of which might indeed be warranted to contain ' nothing religious'—a few of them, ' on the contrary, quite the reverse'—but generally rather innocent and proper in their language, and strangely attractive in their music; and with a volume of voice that reached a square or two away. That plan of labor has now passed away, in Philadelphia at least, and the songs, I suppose, with it. So that these performances are to be heard only among black sailors on their vessels, or 'long-shore men in out-of-the-way places, where opportunities for respectable persons to hear them are rather few."

These are the songs that are still heard upon the Mississippi steamboats—wild and strangely fascinating— one of which we have been so fortunate as to secure for this collection. This, too, is no doubt the music of the colored firemen of Savannah, graphically described by Mr. Kane O'Donnel, in a letter to the Philadelphia Press, and one of which he was able to contribute for our use. Mr. E. S. Philbrick was struck with the resemblance of some of the rowing tunes at Port-Royal to the boatmen's songs he had heard upon the Nile.

The "Round the corn, Sally" is attributed to the "Northern slave states."

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 06:42 PM

Now here's something cool.

Song # 86 in Allen's collection is "Shock Along, John." It is also attributed to "Northern slave states." His note just says "A corn-song, of which only the burden is remembered." By "burden" he means "refrain." He gives a full melody, which is in call-response-call-response form. However, he only has words to the refrain:

"Shock along John, shock along" (both times)

This must be "Stormalong"! "shock" suggests "shuck," as in shucking corn. It best fits the form of the chantey Hugill called "Stormalong, Lads, Stormy" (as does the song in THE ARK, IMO).

So...the possibility (this has been discussed before, in light of "come along," "get along" etc) that "Stormalong" is a mondegreen of some command, i.e. "stow" and/or "shuck."

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 07:23 PM

Robinson's texts are all brief and "Sally Brown" is among the briefest. He gives two melodies. Melody two is unique.

To melody 1:

Sally Brown's a bright-ey'd beauty,
Way, roll and go.
Oh, Sally Brown is sweet and pretty;
I'll spend my money in Sally Brown.

To melody 2:

Sally Brown's a bright Mulatto,
Way, yah!
Oh, Sally Brown's a bright Mulatto,
Oh, walk along, you Sally Brown.

Robinson, an Englishman, went to sea in 1859 at the age of 14. He was over 80 when his five-part article appeared in "The Bellman." Robinson writes that he learned a number of shanties on his first voyage, aboard the brigantine "Emily" to Catania in Sicily. His prime source was an old seaman named Will Halpin, "who had sailed the seas for sixty years, to all parts of the known globe." Halpin had sailed "on the Australian sailing ships during the gold rush, and again during the California rush....[H]e never missed an opportunity to sing his chanties."

Unfortunately Robinson doesn't say precisely which shanties he learned from Halpin. But he does give texts and tunes of the following, which he learned mostly on his first voyages. He says frankly that the solos were "mere disjointed doggerel, merely something to which to hang the chorus....I have endeavored to carry the spirit and sense of the original into the words which I have written down." It's a sizable collection:

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")

What's striking is how familiar most of the titles are. It could mean that the "standard" repertoire was pretty well established by the 1860s - or that Robinson had forgotten some shanties that had fallen from use early in his career. Or it could mean both!

Two more mentions of "Sally Brown":

"Cappy Ricks" [pseud.], "Shanties," The Cornhill Magazine (London) (Sept., 1936), p. 355. (Heard in Hong Kong, perh. ca1900, sung by an all black crew hoisting a new mainmast aboard the "Yankee clipper" "El Capitan.")

Hjalmar Rutzebeck, probably the last American shantyman, has a   version called "Shanghai Brown," with idiosyncratic lyrics, on Folkways 2 LP set "Leave Her Johnny, Leave Her," rec. in 1981.

The Norwegian Rutzebeck went to sea for several years about 1910.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 07:42 PM

In an article, "The Sailor's 'Chanties,'" the African-American sailor and writer James H. Williams mentions "Sally Brown" as having "sentimental or romantic" words. Unfortunately he doesn't give them.

The article appears in the magazine The Independent (N.Y.C), July 8, 1909, pp. 76-92. Williams went to sea in 1876 or '77.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 08:00 PM

Lighter-

Can one assume that "The Ox-eyed Man" was related to the "Hog-eyed Man"?

Maybe the shanties/chanteys/chanties orginated in Noah's Ark?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 08:07 PM

Yes. And no.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 08:18 PM

What's striking is how familiar most of the titles are.

Colcord threaded many of Robinson's into her work, it seems, perhaps accounting for much of the familiarity.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 14 Mar 10 - 09:03 PM

More fireman stuff.

THE RAMBLER IN NORTH AMERICA, 1832-1833, Vol 2., by CJ Latrobe, 1835.

Of a steamboat, "the wild song of the negro firemen." (pg 214).

THE BALTIMORE PHOENIX AND BUDGET, 1.11, Feb 1842.

Carried a story with this line in reference to a steamboat on the Ohio:

"The half-naked negro firemen busily casting huge sticks of wood into the mouths of the row of yawning furnaces beneath the serried boilers, accompanying their labor by a loud and not unmusical song;"

And a passage from MARYLAND STATE COLONIZATION JOURNAL, 1851. It mentions the firemen singing, but also the sort of "death of chantying" hypothesis that links it to the disappearance of Black laborers in related trades. I don't remember if it was Hugill (or who?) that has said this; maybe I imagined it myself! In no way did chantying "die" by the 1850s. But there is the idea --which Hugill has said -- that after the American Civil War, few new chanties were devised. Obviously, that is not strictly true, either. However, one can make a case that 1) Most of the "core" chanties were in existence by then -- cf. Lighter's list of chanties from Robinson; and 2) the later creations can be qualified in some way. For instance, "John Brown's Body" was simply taking up the march for the capstan. This was not the adding of new "frameworks" to the "chanties, proper" repertoire. The author of BLACK JACKS describes how, by the Civil War, African-Americans were largely pushed out of the maritime trades. What I am suggesting (and I really can't remember who may have also argued along these lines) is that the "formative period" of chanties had some correlation with the presence of African-Americans in the maritime trades. Anyways, here is the passage:

During the year 1850, the total immigration to the United States from all foreign countries, can hardly have been less than four hundred thousand persons; persons of a class that, at once, enter into competition with the black man in all the avenues of labor—and in most of them drive him to the wall. In Baltimore, my home, ten years since, the shipping at Fell's Point was loaded by free colored stevedores. The labor at the coal yards was free colored labor. In the rural districts around Baltimore, the principal city of a slave State, free colored laborers, ten years since, got in the harvest, worked the mine banks, made the fences, and, indeed, supplied, to a great extent, all agricultural wants in this respect. Now all this is changed. The white man stands in the black man's shoes; or else is fast getting into them. And where, fifteen years ago, nearly all the signs above shop doors on Fell's Point showed English names, now two-thirds of them are German—a fact of notoriety and almost daily comment.
In Cincinnati, the labor that used to be performed by free blacks in the great pork establishments, is now performed by white men—Irishmen and Germans ; and, as Mr. Coleman can bear witness, coming as he does from that city, the firemen on the steamboats on the western waters are now whites, where they used to be free colored men. The negro's song, as he filled his furnaces, has ceased on the Ohio and Mississippi. Instances of this sort, where the white man has driven the black man to the wall, might be multiplied indefinitely.

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.

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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 09:37 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: 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: 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 - 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 - 11:34 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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 - 01:23 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 - 01:45 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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"
-----
{1848} NA MOTU, OR REEF-ROAMING IN THE SOUTH SEAS Edward T. Perkins, (1854)

"Storm along, Stormy!"
-----
{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."
-----
{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"
-----
{1858} OBERLIN STUDENTS' MONTHLY, article by I. Allen

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mister Stormalong"
-----
{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: 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 - 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: 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: 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!