From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 11:01 PM

Taking John's list(s), I have done some sorting based on the form/style as I see it. My categories ignore what any writers have said the function of the chanties were. I am basing them on my own analysis and experience singing them only. Other opinions welcome! Oh, and I'm not adding (many) titles, just sorting John's.

1. Call-response-call-response form (with the 2 "pull points" per response):

"Yankee John, Stormalong"
"Stormy Along, John"
"'Way Stormalong John"
"Stormalong, Lads, Stormy"
"A Long Time Ago"
"Goodbye, My Love, Goodbye"
"Roll The Cotton Down"
"Roll The Woodpile Down"
"Sally Brown"
"Knock A Man Down"
"Huckleberry Picking" / "We'll Ranzo Ray"
"Hilo, Johnny Brown"
"The Gal With the Blue Dress On"
"John, Come Tell Us As We Haul Away"/ "Mobile Bay"
"Gimme My Banjo"
"Run, Let The Bullgine Run"
"Walk Along My Rosie"
"Coal Black Rosie"
"Bunch O Roses"
"Way, Me Susiana"
"Round The Corner Sally"
"Sister Susan"/"Shinbone Al"
"Walkalong, Miss Susiana Brown"
"Dixie Land" / "Sing A Song, Blow-Along O!"
"Bully In The Alley"
"Fire Maringo"
"Blow Boys, Blow"
"Poor Old Man" / "Dead Horse"
"John Cherokee" (Colcord)
"Hilo Come Down Below" (Bullen)
"The Bully Boat"/"Ranzo Ray" (a) (Sharp)
"Tommy's Gone Away" (c Sharp)
"Whisky Johnny"
"Billy Riley"
"Hello, Somebody"
"High O, Come Roll Me Over"
"Where Am I to Go, M'Johnnies"
"Roll, Boys, Roll"
"Ranzo Ray" (c)
"Hello Somebody"
"Can't Ye Hilo?"
"John Kanaka"
"Haul 'er Away" (a)
"Haul Away, Boys, Haul Away"
"Walkalong, My Rosie"
"Do Let Me Lone, Susan"
"Sing Sally O" (b)
"Essequibo River"
"Hilonday" L. Smith
"Pay Me the Money Down"
"Walkalong You Sally Brown"
"Hilo Boys Hilo"
"Tiddy High O"
"Heave Away Boys, Heave Away" (b)
"Sister Susan (Shinbone Al)"
"Miss Lucy Loo"
"Heave Away Boys, Heave Away" (a)
"Tommy's on the Tops'l yard"
"Good Morning Ladies All" (b)
"Won't Ye Go My Way?"
"Tom's Gone To Hilo"
"Hanging Johnny"
"So Early In The Morning" (a) / "Bottle O"
"So Handy, Me Boys"
"Leave Her, Johnny"
"Across The Western Ocean"
Across the Rockies
"Hurrah, Sing Fare Ye Well"
"Hoorah For The Blackball Line"
"Lower The Boat Down" (Colcord)
"A Hundred Years Ago" (a) (b)/ "'Tis Time For Us To Go"
Poor Lucy Anna
Round the Bay of Mexico
Doodle, Let Me Go

SUBCATEGORY - These have the same form, and they probably would have worked for cotton-screwing as such, but aboard ship they are typically too slow for halyards. So, I reason, they were adopted for slow, a-rhythmic tramps around the capstan. Their shipboard function, however, does not keep them from being relatives of the others. The same process could happen to any other the above if rendered very slowly. And even the ones in this category could be sped up (e.g. the popular fast, halyards version of Shallow Brown):

Southern Ladies (fr. Sharp)
My Dollar And A Half A Day"/"Lowlands"
"Mr. Stormalong"
"Shallow Brown"
Shenandoah (and variations)

SUBCATEGORY - Here's one that strikes me (a hunch) as something fitting the form but being a creation of later days:

"Serafina"

SUBCATEGORY - And here are two that have a slight irregularity in the form, but which nonetheless could have worked just fine for cotton-screwing. I hypothesize that because they had that irregularity in timing, they could cause slight confusion at halyards, so they were used for capstan, where the timing didn't matter:

"Good Morning Ladies All" (a)
"Stormy Along, John"

This "Category 1" could be broken down further. I think subgroups would cohere that would show such possible groupings as: Southern States songs; Caribbean songs; earlier songs; later songs based in the paradigm of the earlier songs; etc.

In this category the songs are all those that I feel are practically unmistakable as chanties (as opposed to another genre). And the vast majority ("Serafina" might be an exception) seem to me to have a strong African-American connection.

I'll do other categories later.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 10:00 PM

Yep, "Ol' Moke" is an example of what I want to call the "hooraw chorus form," and to my mind, too, it is only a capstan chantey.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 09:53 PM

John-

Well, I'm happy that this thread hasn't entered the doldrums.

And, yes, I love alpha lists!

I've always thought of "Ol' Moke Pickin' on a Banjo" as a capstan shanty.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 09:16 PM

Yep. That should be "windlass".   No wonder this old ship is not moving! Windless???? This work is supposed to stave off the dementia. But at least I got my ABC's right. WINDLASS it is.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 11:36 AM

Gibb, your comments on the "windless chanty form" were very helpful in finally getting me to focus on "the form" of these songs. It also helps me understand how the same song shifts from one job to another. I have gone back and looked at the "windless" chanties in Hugill - and yes, you are right, his layout does force one to look at the relationships among chanties differently than one would if you just follow categories like "capstan", "halyard", etc. - and here is what I've come up with in this context. A few are admittedly a stretch, but if you refer back to the possible African-American songs that may underlie them you can see how they might have evolved. And for Charlie's sake, as well as everyone else's, they are alphabetical this time.

Across the Rockies

A-Rovin' (?)

Billy Boy

Clear the Track, Let the Bullgine Run

Doodle, Let Me Go

Fire Down Below (a)(b)(c)(e)

Goodbye, Fare Ye Well

Heave Away, Cheerily O!

Heave Away, Me Johnnies / We're All Bound to Go (a)

Hooker John

Jamboree (cf. G. Conway's version from Sharp)

Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her

Lowlands Away

Miss Lucy Long (cf. "O Take Your Time Miss Lucy Long")

Mr. Stormalong

Only One More Day

Poor Lucy Anna

Rio Grande

Roller Bowler (cf, "Ladies in the Parlour")

Santiana

- Round the Bay of Mexico

Shenandoah

South Australia

- The Codfish Shanty

Southern Ladies (fr. Sharp)

Ten Stone

How did I do? Also, I should add "Abel Brown the Sailor" as a halyard chanty, according to Hugill on pages 440-442/'61.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 27 Feb 10 - 10:52 AM

Gibb-

Well put, Omph!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 11:01 PM

The job-function categories also leave something to be desired. One needs no further proof than the fact that certain chanties were used for more than one job. A lot depends on the speed of the job at that time. For instance, most halyard chanties have two "pulls" per each refrain. And chanties with just one pull often get filed separately under the category of "short drag" chanties. However, it seems that chanties with one pull –perhaps for example "Sally Racket"-- could also be used at halyards, too. It would just mean that the pace would go faster (or for a lighter hoist, i.e. one of the higher yards). So whether one did one pull per refrain at a fast pace, or two pulls at a slower pace, it would amount to a comparable number of "pulls per minute."

Still, most halyard chanties had two pulls. I imagine these as the "proper" "chanties" because I think that was probably the same form as for cotton-screwing. The form was:

(Solo) Lift him up and carry him along
(Refrain) FIRE maringo, FIRE away
(Solo) Stow him down where he belong
(Refrain) FIRE maringo, FIRE away

The turn of the screws, or the fall of the pick ax, or the heaving of coal (if that's what firemen did!)…i.e. the forceful action that needed coordinating, occurred on the capitalized syllables. The key trait to the form was the call and response and these moments of action.

If one thinks with that criterion in mind, one can see across the job-function categories. I will explain.

Take "Hieland Laddie" as a cotton stowing chant:

(Solo) Was ya never down in New York Town?
(Refrain) BONnie laddie, HIElan laddie
(Solo)Walking Broadway up n down?
(Refrain) BONnie hielan LADdie o

We know the Scots song "Hieland Laddie" as a march – though I'm not sure when it first came that way. In any case, it is as a march that it is used, as a walkaway or capstan chanty. However, it could not have been like a march when the Mobile Bay gents used it to screw cotton – that's way too fast. You can see from my illustration, however, how it could be used as a screw/haul type work song.

What's more interesting is the chorus (by which I mean "grand chorus") of some of these chanties. Some have what I want to call a "mock" chorus. Contained within the chorus are still the "pull" phrases. That means, people doing work at the screws or halyards could still use these there…even if in later days their choruses suggest they were being used for capstan or windlass. So the extended chorus, which everybody sings, for "Hieland Laddie" goes:

Way, hey, and away we go
BONnie Laddie, HIElan Laddie
Way hey and away we go
BONnie hielan LADdie o

You've got the same phenomenon in "South Australia," in "Santiana," and perhaps in "Goodbye Fare Ye Well." So one thing not to do is separate "South Australia," for example, from the "proper" chanties category, since, although it is associated with heaving tasks, its form is related to the halyard ones. Also note how, although "Blow the Man Down" is clearly ascribed to halyards, it has been sung with a grand chorus too, of the likes of

(All) Blow the man up, bullies, Blow the man down
WAY hey BLOW the man down, etc…

The time points for pulls are still there. (This inclusion of a grand chorus in BTMD would appear as something "wrong" that some current performers do – similar to the way revival singers have added a mock chorus to "Bulley in the Alley." However, the "Knock a Man Down" in Cecil Sharp's collection has such a chorus.)

A lot of these chanties with the mock chorus appear well suited to windlass (pump style). The halyard and windlass chanties are closely related, if not interchangeable. So I would keep an eye towards both of them.

As a point of distinction from the mock chorus chanties, there are the "hooraw chorus" type. They have "true" choruses – and ones that don't mark any time points. The "hooraw chorus" type is appropriate ~only~ to capstan work (for which it was usually pulled in from other sources, like marches) and would not work for halyards/screwing. For instance:

Gwine to run all night, gwine to run all day…

Or

Hurrah, hurrah, for the gals o' Dub-a-lin Town…

No pulls.

Versus "South Australia":

Heave away you rollin king
HEAVE away, HEAVE away

To summarize:

Halyard chanty (and probably cotton screwing chant) form:

Call-response-call-response. Clear "pull points" in the response.


Windlass chanty form:

Call-response-call-response, often with additional mock chorus that also contains "pull points." In this case, the "pull points" coincide, instead, with heaves on the pump handles.


Capstan chanty form:

1) Windlass chantey form (perhaps borrowed)
or
2) Long solo, long chorus (ex. The Limejuice Ship), as in many ballads and marches.
3) Call-response-call-response + long chorus (ex. Sacramento). It is debatable, to my mind, whether the call and response part of this form takes from halyard form or whether it is just coincidence. I lean towards the latter (and an example would be "A Rovin'", where the short, "mark well what I do say" does not strike me as a "pulling" refrain). The long form of "Roll the Cotton Down" is a good example of the transformation of a clearly for-halyards chanty into a clearly for-capstan one.

Lastly, some of the really slow cotton screwing type songs seem to have been adapted for slow capstan work. Even though their form looks like it would be well suited for (heavy) "2 pull" work, these songs (ex. "Lowlands"/$1.50) were much to slow to work in hoisting a yard. Due to their slow tempo and rubato rhythm, the old "pull points" cease to be emphasized at the capstan.

Gibb

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 09:36 PM

Thanks, Lighter!

I wonder where I got "1850s" from (???) Good call.

Gibb

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 09:30 PM

John,

The strange ordering of Hugill's text is, strangely, one things that led me to "study" it in the first place. I found it very difficult to follow the layout when looking for individual pieces, and realized that one has to read it ALL first! Although it leaves MUCH to be desired, as you say, it also serves to draw informed connections between certain chanties that tends to get erased by the often incidental filing of them as "halyard," "capstan" etc by other collectors.

Gibb

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 09:16 PM

Thanks, Charlie. However, "Bully In The Alley" is there, between "Dixie Land" and "Fire Maringo", just about half way down.

I did manage to drop another one though, from "Old Smith" of Tobago, called "Lowlands, Low", which is different from the other "Lowlands" songs. It is on pages 70-71 of the 1961 edition of Hugill's SHANTIES FROM THE SEVEN SEAS.

Since my list has evolved over the past several days, it has lost all inherent logic that it might have once had. It began with pulling the "halyard/hauling" songs from my earlier list and from Gibb's listing of chanteys from Hugill's Caribbean informants. Then I went back and added all of the other "halyard/hauling" songs given by Hugill and others from his book. And along the way there was some degree of shuffling.

The ordering of this list of "halyard/hauling" chanteys has no particular significance. Perhaps I've been going through Hugill too much. I have definitely found that *his* ordering leaves a lot to be desired! I've worn out the index.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 08:34 PM

John-

I don't see "Bully in the Alley" on your list as a halyard shanty from the West Indies and it should be there.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 06:34 PM

Thanks, Gibb. However, I believe your date of "circa 1850s" is optimistic. On p. 205, Adams reports his meeting with a pseudonymous "Captain Blowhard," who tells him of his service in the Civil War.

That would put Adams's voyage no earlier than late 1865.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 04:09 PM

Here are a few corrections:

"Roll The Cotton Down" needs a "c" for having do with cotton!

"Sally Brown" versions (b) & (c) - there is no (d), and it doesn't have anything to do with cotton

"Shallow Brown" version (d) has to do with cotton (according to Hugill)

I have listed "Sister Susan" / "Shinbone Al" twice

"(Olmstead)" should come after "Nancy Fanana" instead of "Good Morning Ladies All"

Sorry about that.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 12:10 PM

Here is my list:

Hauling & Halyard Chanteys

"My Dollar And A Half A Day"/"Lowlands" c
"Walk Me Along, Johnny" / "General Taylor" c
"Mr. Stormalong"
"Yankee John, Stormalong"
"Stormy Along, John"
"'Way Stormalong John"
"Stormalong, Lads, Stormy"
"A Long Time Ago" (a) / "In Frisco Bay" [h]
"Goodbye, My Love, Goodbye"
"Roll The Old Chariot"
"Roll The Cotton Down"
"Roll The Woodpile Down"
"Sally Brown" (b) (c) (d) c
"Rolling Home By The Silvery Moon" (later)
"Knock A Man Down"
"Huckleberry Picking" / "We'll Ranzo Ray"
"Hilo, Johnny Brown"
"Shallow Brown"
"The Gal With the Blue Dress On"
"John, Come Tell Us As We Haul Away"/ "Mobile Bay" c
"Gimme My Banjo" [h]
"Run, Let The Bullgine Run"
"Walk Along My Rosie"
"Coal Black Rosie"
"Bunch O Roses"
"Way, Me Susiana" [h] c
"Round The Corner Sally"
"Sister Susan"/"Shinbone Al"
"Walkalong, Miss Susiana Brown"
"Dixie Land" / "Sing A Song, Blow-Along O!"
"Bully In The Alley"
"Fire Maringo" c
"Blow Boys, Blow"
"One More Day"
"Yankee Dollar"
"Poor Old Man" / "Dead Horse"
"John Cherokee" (Colcord)
"Hilo Come Down Below" (Bullen)
"The Bully Boat"/"Ranzo Ray" (a) (Sharp)
"Little Sally Racket" (Laura Smith)
"Cheerily, Men"
"Tommy's Gone Away" (c Sharp)
"Whisky Johnny"
"Billy Riley"
"Hello, Somebody"
"High O, Come Roll Me Over"
"Where Am I to Go, M'Johnnies"
"Roll, Boys, Roll"
"Ranzo Ray" (c)
"Hello Somebody"
"Can't Ye Hilo?"
"John Kanaka"
"Haul 'er Away" (a) [h]
"Haul Away, Boys, Haul Away"
"Walkalong, My Rosie"
"Do Let Me Lone, Susan"
"Sing Sally O" (b)
"Essequibo River"
"Dan Dan"
"Hilonday" L. Smith
"Pay Me the Money Down" [h]
"Walkalong You Sally Brown"
"Hilo Boys Hilo"
"Tiddy High O"
"Heave Away Boys, Heave Away" (b) c
"Sister Susan (Shinbone Al)" [h]
"Eki Dumah" [h]
"Miss Lucy Loo" [h]
"Heave Away Boys, Heave Away" (a) c
"Tommy's on the Tops'l yard"
"Haul 'er Away" (b)/ "Nancy Fanana"
"Good Morning Ladies All" (b) c (Olmstead)
"Won't Ye Go My Way?" [h]
"Tom's Gone To Hilo"
"Hanging Johnny"
"So Early In The Morning" (a) / "Bottle O"
"So Handy, Me Boys"
"Golden Chariot" (Doerflinger)
"Shanandore" (Bullen) & "Shanadar" (Sharp)
"Leave Her, Johnny"
"Seraphina"
"Baltimore"
"Across The Western Ocean"
"Hurrah, Sing Fare Ye Well" [h]
"Hoorah For The Blackball Line"
"Lower The Boat Down" (Colcord)
"A Hundred Years Ago" (a) (b)/ "'Tis Time For Us To Go"

"Hieland Laddie" c [stamp 'n go]
"Rise Me Up from Down Below" [stamp 'n go]
"Drunken Sailor" [stamp 'n go/hand over hand]
"Johnny, Come Along" [stamp 'n go]
"John Dameray" / "Johnny Come Down The Backstay" [stamp 'n go]
"Boney" / "John Francois"   [short haul & halyards]
---
A number of these chanteys were used for multiple purposes.
c = cotton stowing/screwing
[h] = "hauling" (Hugill)
(a) (b) (c) = different versions in Hugill '61

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 26 Feb 10 - 12:05 PM

I want to shift my attention to what Gibb has called "chanteys, proper", the "halyard" chanteys. Gibb has argued that these chanteys are a product of African-American culture, and that they originated as or were based on "work songs" from within that culture.

The importance of this for my purposes is that this may give us some kind of time marker. I want to explore this possibility in relationship to my my project of trying to imagine what chanteys may have been used on the "Julia Ann" between 1853 and 1855. Were any of these halyard chanteys well enough established and known to have made it out to San Francisco by 1853, or further out to Sydney by then?   I think that the chances are pretty good that some of them were there.

Starting (over) with and limiting myself to these halyard chanteys and hauling songs (for now), I would like to explore the possibility of developing some sets of criteria and arguments that might be used to suggest some likely candidates for the "Julia Ann".

My knowledge of things nautical is very limited. I have read the different descriptions of these nautical work songs and have only a beginner's grasp of their functions and differences. I am going to put up my list of "Hauling & Halyard Chanteys", realizing that a "halyard" chantey is a sub-category of a "hauling" chantey (at least according to Hugill, p. 26/'61). Hugill refers to a number of chanteys in his book at simply "hauling" songs. I including these "hauling songs" with the assumption that they fall into the same general category of being products of African American culture as the halyards.   This is why I am calling this list "Hauling & Halyard Chanteys".

I welcome any and all corrections to my list and to my understanding of these categories.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 24 Feb 10 - 07:58 AM

Well, I've now read the other thread on "Shanty or Chantey?", which I highly recommend here:

thread.cfm?threadid=125224&messages=90

And I especially recommend this note from Gibb posted there as another good summary of some of his thinking on chantey forms and origins:

thread.cfm?threadid=125224&messages=90#2771153

And, honestly, I had not read Kenall's note when I said what I said above:

thread.cfm?threadid=125224&messages=90#2771851

I was also glad to find the note from Q with the reference to "Across the briny ocean" from Nordhoff, which I had missed:

thread.cfm?threadid=125224&messages=90#2771869

and one of the many places from Nordhoff himself:

http://books.google.com/books?id=TGFGAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA70&dq=%22Across+the+briny+ocean%22&cd=10#v=onepage&q=%22Across%20the%20br

I also liked this note from Gibb because he conveniently lists a lot of dated references:

thread.cfm?threadid=125224&messages=90#2772035

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 10:07 PM

Thanks for the link, Gibb. I have been so caught up in this project that I haven't been paying very much attention to the rest of Mudcat. I'll catch up tomorrow. And then there are all of those other threads on chanteys/shanties at the top of the thread that I have been unable to find on the Mudcat search machine! As my sweet wife would say: "Yikes!" No wonder I keep re-inventing the wheel and rolling off the deep end. Man-yana.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 07:47 PM

Hi John,

Lots of fun in the twists and turns of this thread!

And I suspect that even when these work songs were first labeled as "chants" that this was a word/category that was not indigenous to the realm of sea labor. It almost sounds like something from a liturgical context!

I've not pursued it very far, by my attempt at sorting the term might include investigating the term "chaunt". See this thread for what I mean:

http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=125224#2771310

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 04:11 PM

New Orleans had fights among the stevedores; at different times, southern Europeans, Irish, and later Blacks became dominant on the docks.

Why should Smith have known more about the role of black stevedores?
Even in my somewhat later time, Whites in Gulf cities did not associate socially with Blacks and dealt only with those in servant or business jobs.
On the docks the White bosses would have run her off or called the police.
The Black dock workers lived and worked in a segregated environment.
Catfish Row in "Porgy" (the book, not the opera) was fictional, but very close to the truth.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 03:38 PM

Q-

What you say about "Smith's attitude towards Blacks" certainly rings true. It's also evident to me that her attitude blinded her to the major contribution that the Gulf Port Black stevedores made to our inventory of shanties. Here's some more of what she had to say in A BOOK OF SHANTIES, p. 12:

"The usual arguement put forward in favour of the negroid derivation (of shanties) is the structure typical of the shanty-- the solo part with regularly recurring refrain, as in

'Whiskey is the life of man --
Whiskey, Johnie!'

which, incidentally, dates back, according to some authorities, some four centuries; that is, before Sir John Hawkins had laid the foundation stone of the trade in black ivory and hence of the negro population in the West Indies!

This structure, we are told, is precisely that found in negro songs, both on the plantations of the New World and in the black man's native continent. No doubt it is -- only, unfortunately for the convincingness of the theory, it is also typical of practically every kind of primitive verse form in the world...That is not to say that many of the shanties are not definitely 'nigger.' It would be strange if they were not: for, as it happens, a considerable number of those which survive belong to the mid-nineteenth century, when a flood of nigger minstrelry had poured over the land, and it was by no means necessary to go to the West Indies to find it."

Again, my major point is that Smith should have known more about the role of Black stevedores in the Gulf Port area in generating what we know as shanties (prior to the popularity of minstrel singing), and that her racism evidently blinded her to that realization.

It's also true and well-documented that there were White stevedores at work in the Gulf Ports, and they certainly played a major role by adopting the Black stevedore work chants and later adapting them to work at sea.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 02:59 PM

"Roll the Cotton Down" is a hybrid, probably partly from minstrel shows and partly from work songs heard from river steamboat men and workers in ports from the Carolinas on the East coast to the ports of the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas.
There are many versions of the chanty, one in Hugill mentions New Orleans; Galveston and Beaufort also were important Gulf ports.
Mobile's two syllable name works well in these songs.
Much of the work of baling cotton was done along navigable rivers with steamboat transport, and it was in them that much cotton was "rolled down."
Mobile was just one of the Gulf ports; it just happens to be the one mentioned in the chanty versions heard by Smith. She wondered why it was the port mentioned; perhaps it was because that part of Mobile at sea level was notorious for booze, easy women and lack of control, and because of its ease of use in the chantys.

Smith's attitude towards Blacks was that of most white people of that time; sometime pick up the famous 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and read the entries on Negroes and African blacks.
They are depicted as lower in intelligence, prone to fighting, but some proficiency in music. This attitude was taught in schools as well as being the common belief of the white general public.
One must accept her attitude as that prevalent in her time.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 12:15 PM

John-

Lord knows I have enough C. Fox Smith books within arm's reach to keep this room warm for the rest of the winter!

The relevant quote you ask for from Smith, A BOOK OF SHANTIES, p. 8:

"Everywhere one goes nowadays (1927) one hears shanties -- or, as it appears to be, for some inexplicable reason, customary to call them 'sea shanties.' I have yet to hear a land shanty; and as for the air shanty, it is still on the knees of the gods, and like, 'pace' Mr. Kipling in 'With the Night Mail,' to remain there."

What is more curious to me is why in Smith's discussion of the origin of the term shanty/chantie she adamantly ignores the Gulf Coast stevedore experience. It's even more curious because one of the shanties she collected was "Roll the Cotton Down" and she certainly knew what port it was associated with. The answer, sadly, may have more to do with her ardent dismissal of what she described as "negro" or "nigger" origin theories for shanties. With the exception of some individual Black sailors that she personally knew and respected, Smith's attitude toward Blacks in general was thoroughly racist. Her attitude about Asians was the same.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 09:57 AM

Charley, I don't have access to C. Fox Smith's book A BOOK OF SHANTIES. I would be interested in seeing what she had to say about "sea shanties" and "land shanties". Could you put some of that Introduction up on this thread? Thanks.

Your point on pronunciation is well-taken. And I suspect that even when these work songs were first labeled as "chants" that this was a word/category that was not indigenous to the realm of sea labor. It almost sounds like something from a liturgical context! I suppose that "sea-going work songs" is a bit awkward and I don't want to get bogged down in terminology.   My interest is in how these categorizations may skew our understanding of real differences and how these things evolved.

And of course I am always looking for ways to establish earlier datings for these songs. I think that Gibb's suggestions may point in that direction.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 09:14 AM

Jphn-

Good points. The earliest work songs called "chanties" do appear to be the stevedore songs from the Gulf Coast. And once they went to sea and were adapted for the work there, sailors probably still referred to them as "chanties" but they certainly pronounced the word as "shanties" at sea or on shore, as "ch" would have been pronounced in Gulf Coast creole.

C. Fox Smith in the introduction of A Book of Shanties (1927) derided the practice of calling the nautical work songs "sea shanties" as superfluous because she was not aware of any "land shanties." But maybe if she had given it some more thought, and had access to the Low, Nordhoff and Whidden books, she would have come to a different conclusion.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 23 Feb 10 - 08:47 AM

&qI am intrigued by the possibility raised in Gibb's comments that a later category, namely "sea chanties" applied to all of the work songs on board a ship and even for the loading and unloading of a ship, may have obscured real differences in origin, time and location for the different kinds of work songs. I know it's debatable, but when did these work songs begin to be called "chanties"? And when was this label applied to everything being sung on board ship except the "forebitters" or "entertainment songs"? Captain Lowe, who went to sea in 1842, talks about the "chantey men", but his first reference is to the "hoosiers" in New Orleans and Mobile stowing cotton "and in the summer sailing in the packet ships".   

http://books.google.com/books?id=j-JE7K-dE_sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Captain+Charles+P.+Low&cd=1#v=onepage=chantey%20men&f=fal

I think that it is often the case, at least in my experience of academia, that later categories obscure earlier realities, and the categories take on a "misplaced concreteness" that gets substituted for earlier discrete particularities and details and real differences. What I would call Gibb's "functional" understanding of chanties makes some real distinctions between the "halyard" work songs and the "short drag", "capstan", and "pumping" work songs. Only later were they all lumped together as "chanties". He seems to me to be suggesting that "chanties, proper" were the "halyard" work songs. And he's making a very strong case for their origin: the African American work song.

I am finding these distinctions to be very helpful in rethinking this whole "genre" called "sea chanties". And, yes, I am also convinced that they were more originally "chants" than "shants", so I am switching my terminology to "chanties".

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 22 Feb 10 - 07:42 AM

Well, just when I am beginning to think that I'm heading into the "doldrums",

"doldrums |ˈdōldrəmz; ˈdäl-; ˈdôl-|
plural noun ( the doldrums)
low spirits; a feeling of boredom or depression : color catalogs will rid you of February doldrums.
• a period of inactivity or a state of stagnation : the mortgage market has been in the doldrums for three years.
• an equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds.
ORIGIN late 18th cent. (as doldrum [dull, sluggish person] ): perhaps from dull , on the pattern of tantrums." [all of the above!]

there happens some good wind in the sails. Thanks, Gibb. I finished the day yesterday not being clear about where I was heading next. I'm still not clear this morning, but my Grandpa used to say, "We don't know where we're bound, but we're on our way!" I definitely feel like we're moving.   

I really appreciate you using this thread to present some of your thinking on these matters. It continues to help me clarify my own very *beginning* thoughts about these songs and their history. My ongoing project here is to try to imagine, within the bounds of historical context, what shanties *might* have been sung on board the "Julia Ann" in her voyages from San Francisco to Sydney in 1853-1854.

And perhaps it's time to clarify why I'm interested in the "Julia Ann" and in Captain B.F. Pond. Benjamin Franklin Pond was another of my great-grandfathers. He was one of my mother's grandfathers, the other being George Edward Semple who came over from Ireland in 1849, that I mentioned earlier. This is why I happen to have a copy of Pond's type-written "Autobiography". I got it from my own Grandpa, who was his son.

I'm not interested in focusing this thread on me in a personal way. But, I do have a personal interest in trying to reconstruct the history of these voyages and in trying to imagine what kinds of work songs were sung on them.

Gibb, I like your definition of a shanty/chanty [this sounds a bit too much like something an ice-fisherman would be singing to himself as he sits in his little shelter doing whatever it is these folks do in such a place - not knowing anything about such things myself]. You say: "that its core identity is a tune (roughly) and a chorus phrase". And then you say: " the form the chanties take, at a certain early period, at least, is something that I think emerged from African-American work song style". It is obvious that a lot of work has gone into the making of these two theories. I find them to be very clear and helpful points of orientation for my thinking on this. I also like your suggestion that you like the "term "African-American" in this case because it has the possibility of being inclusive of U.S. and Caribbean Black expressions, i.e. "American" as the Americas, the New World...and the idea that people of African heritage, having come to the New World, created a form of expression that was both based in African practices and also had an essential element of European culture to it".

My categories have been feeling clumsy and blurred and your definitions feel like a lifting of some fog.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 10:36 PM

Lighter,

My interpretation is based on inferences drawn from the text references and on the text of the chantey, as well as many hunches based on what I think I understand about the genre. Not much to go on, but something to consider.

I'm pasting some of the sketchy notes on historiography here, from my YouTube vid.

Being [ostensibly] a song of the translatlantic packet ships (1840s-50s),[perhaps these dates are really too early] as per oral accounts retold in later days, "Blow the Man Down" *appears* to have existed since those days. However, in the textual record, so far as I am able to tell at present, "Knock a Man Down" actually appears first.

Adams, in his 1879 ON BOARD THE ROCKET, describes some of the chanteys he heard circa 1850s. It is one of the first books to present chanteys WITH musical notation (albeit with some irregularities). Among them is "Knock a Man Down," but NOT "Blow the Man Down." ...Adams noted just the first [verse], but he goes on to say that on that pattern, one "can wish he was in every known port in the world, to whose name he can find a rhyme." ... So, here is THE classic chantey lyric paradigm, that goes back to the earliest documented samples of chanteys' predecessors, the cotton-stowing songs of Mobile Bay. And, accordingly, the first verse here is about that. So, "Knock a man Down" has the earmarks of an African-American "chant" from the early days. [in the verse style/content] [interpretation]

Adam's notation of this chantey was reproduced, fixed up, in Luce's 1883 collection NAVAL SONGS. Elsewhere in that collection, Luce also includes an item called "BLACK BALL. 'Chanty' Song. Sung in the merchant service in heavy-hauling." Funny, he makes no comparison between the two songs. Perhaps this was because the melody of the latter was quite a bit curvier and had a completely different text -- the "Black Ball Line" theme. ...

What this shows is that, at that time, "Blow the Man Down" was certainly not a "famous" one in the contemporary sense. However, in LA Smith's book from 1888, she does mention "Blow the Man Down" by name, just not with a big hullabaloo.

Back to "Knock a Man Down" -- it appears again in 1914 in Cecil Sharp's chantey collection. He got it from John Short. ...

I find the "blow the man down" chorus with the common lyric variations of that chantey to be incongruous, inspiring me to believe that BTMD is the result of grafting some text upon a previously existing form.

So that's part of it. It's hard to lay out the musical analysis and hunch-y parts of it.

On the other hand, I don't see any proof that KAMD and BTMD are variants and which would make my interpretation wrong.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 08:54 PM

Gibb, why do you say that "Knock a Man Down" was an African-American antecedent of "BTMD" instead of a variant of it?

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 08:34 PM

John and Gibb-

I really love what you're accomplishing here, some critical re-ordering of what some of us wanteebee shantymen have been singing for years.

One West Indies shanty that appears to be missing from the list is "Lowlands Low":

Hugill learned this one from his shantying companion Old Smith from the Island of Tobago in the 1930's. It's described as a halyard shanty but it's really only to be used for light sails which can be swiftly raised. Very similar to how they would have used "Coal Black Rose."

"Lowlands Low" has nothing do do with the other "Lowlands" night visiting songs.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 08:06 PM

My couple thoughts here are not really directed at any one specific thing. Mostly I am just following up on my mention that "Heave Away" (Sandburg) had me thinking.

I am inclined to think that this "Heave Away" example is brilliant evidence brought in by Hugill to illustrate one of the common ways chanties had developed.

"Heave Away" mirrors the "story" exemplified by "Blow the Man" -- and we're in the realm of interpretation here, not proof. "Blow the Man Down" looks like it was based in an African-American work song, "Knock a Man Down." When I say "based in", keep in mind my take on the definition of a chanty -- that its core identity is a tune (roughly) and a chorus phrase. And the form the chanties take, at a certain early period, at least, is something that I think emerged from African-American work song style. I like the term "African-American" in this case because it has the possibility of being inclusive of U.S. and Caribbean Black expressions, i.e. "American" as the Americas, the New World...and the idea that people of African heritage, having come to the New World, created a form of expression that was both based in African practices and also had an essential element of European culture to it.

That being my interpretation, I see the various, once-used solo verse lyrics of Blow the Man Down as something peripheral to the chantey's fundamental identity. Sets of ballad-like verses had been spliced onto the chantey, like those from "Ratcliffe Highway", "The Fishes," "The Milkmaid," etc. These verses were more likely supplied by Anglo-Irish-Americans, one would imagine.

Taken as as specific instance, one can look at a version of BTMD and say that such and such was Black influence and such and such is Irish influence, etc. And I would agree with that. Moreover, I would say that it becomes fairly pointless at that level to try to attribute the chantey to any particular ethnic/national group. So I am not trying to say that BTMD must be acknowledged as a Black chantey.

I am saying, rather, that I think the base form of BTMD emerged at one point from African-American culture, as that was just a fact of the chantey genre of that time/type. I would not say, when strictly speaking, that BTMD was "Black-influenced", because that 1) downgrades my assertion that its genre was, *at its core*, Black and 2) implies the chantey genre's genesis was not of any particular culture. It is like talking about "Black-influenced Rap." I mean, it is recognized today that anyone can and will Rap, and that many have had an influence on the genre. Rap is not the property of Black people [anymore]. But we do reserve an awareness that, however the genre is used, it was mainly a product of Black culture. "Black-influenced chanty" is almost like "Chanty-influenced chanty"--i.e. a proper chanty of the period. And if *that* sounds really weird, try this. Suppose we remove the identifier "Black," not wanting to ascribe chanties too closely to an easily-identified ethnic group. Well, I'd still say that chanties are to be ascribed to *some* cultural group (be it "screwman's culture" or "sailor's culture") and it would amount to the same thing that he chanties have a fundamental cultural basis that is not to be skewed by incidental or latter additions/variations.

I am not trying to force my interpretation of "chanties, proper" as a product of Black culture. I'm establishing it so you'll know how I read the various attributions of chanties to lists like "Black-influenced chanties." So for instance, I consider "A Long Time Ago" to be a Black chantey --in the context of an "origins" discussion-- and as such to attribute only one form of it as Black-influenced just sounds weird to me. The variations are neither here nor there. They tell us about the trajectory of the genre, who was singing the chanties at certain points, etc. They don't affect a given chanty's "original" identity.

Thinking again about how the halyard chanties seem to be more of the "original" chanties (or Black chanties, if you will)... (And again: how many non-Black halyard chanties can we think of? The short hauls existed earlier than the "chantey creation era"; I am thinking of the "Haul on the Bowline"s. AND, there were "capstan songs" (e.g. THE QUID); one could scarcely imagine no songs at all being sung at some point during that older chore. But remember that halyard chanties -- the intermittent action kind of work song, like for cotton-screwing, and which should really be distinguished well from capstan chanties -- emerged during the period of the new packet ships. I think there is a really important correlation between the time period, the type of work (heavy yard hoisting) on the ships, and African-American work song genres that brought it all together. In the least, one should really differentiate this era of chanties and the form of halyard chanties (which were the ones that Hugill notes were the most irrevocably "salty") from the mass of other stuff thrown in under the term "chantey." Earlier there were maritime work songs, yes. And later on, once the habit of singing became ubiquitous on ships, there were many more songs adopted and filed under "chantey." But there was something distinct about the genre (seemingly) first born of the 1830s-1840s. Black influence being a given on that, for me "Black-influence" actually becomes irrelevant to the discussion.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 04:42 PM

I realize how tentative some of this information may be. But, as I said in my previous note, there may be some useful broad outlines here. I wanted to bring my list of "Black-influenced" shanties into a little more focus by presenting the ones that may have been used in the Gulf ports for stowing cotton, etc.

I suspect that there were at least two different sets here. One was the set of work songs coming down the rivers, from the plantations and wherever else the slaves were working, to the ports, where they were used for loading and unloading the cargo from the ships. Another set may have been the ones which were already shanties and which came into port on the ships and were picked up and modified by the workers on shore. The supposition here is that both sets were incorporated in one form or another into the larger sea-going collection of shanties.   And both were probably heavily influenced by the Black work force.

Cotton-screwing song given by Phillip Henry Gosse near Mobile (December 31,1838):

"Fire the ringo"

Songs given by Erskine as "cotton-screwing" songs in New Orleans (September of 1845):

"Bonnie Laddie"
"Fire Maringo"

Songs given by Nordhoff as "cotton-screwing" songs in Mobile (between 1845 and 1853):

"Hieland Laddie"
"Fire Maringo"
"Stormalong"
"Yankee Dollar"

Songs given by Captain Whidden from Captain Meacom's collection of pumping shanties that may have come from the wharfs of New Orleans (1850s):

"John, Come Tell Us As We Haul Away"/ "Johnny Come Tell Us And Pump Away!"
"Fire Down Below"
"One More Day"

Songs that Hugill associates with the cotton hoosiers and the Gulf ports and cotton-stowing (he does not offer any documentation for his suppositions):

"My Dollar And A Half A Day" ("Lowlands")
"Walk Me Along, Johnny"
"Round The Bay Of Mexico"
"Hieland Laddie"
"Roll The Cotton Down" (b)
"Knock A Man Down" from Sharp
"Hilo, Boys, Hilo"
"Hilo Come Down Below" (Bullen)
"Shallow Brown"
"The Gal With the Blue Dress On"
"The Hog-eye Man"
"John, Come Tell Us As We Haul Away"/ "Mobile Bay"
"Hooker John"
"Heave Away" ("I'd rather court a yellow gal than work for Henry Clay") from Sandburg
    [As Gibb has pointed out above, this may not be a shanty.]
"Paddy Lay Back"/"Mainsail Haul"
"Good Mornin' Ladies All" (b)
"Walkalong, Miss Susiana Brown"
"Dixie Land" / "Sing A Song, Blow-Along O!"
"John Cherokee" (Colcord)
"Billy Riley"
"One More Day" (Colcord)
"Bully In The Alley"

Others:

"Tommy's Gone Away" (Sharp) cotton-screwing
"A Long Time Ago"   (Hugill (d) & Sharp)
"Hooraw For The Blackball Line"   (Sharp)
"Roll The Cotton Down" (Hugill (a) & (b)
"Shenandoah" / "O Shenandoah, My Bully Boy" (Bullen)
"Ten Stone" (Hugill)

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 03:54 PM

Hey, Gibb, I just lost my reply to your post, so I will try again. I hate that! Thanks for the clarification on the lists. I have been trying to sort out the difference between "Harding" as a source of a shanty and a shanty coming from the West Indies. I would welcome your "tally of possibly Caribbean-influenced chanteys in Hugill". I'm just getting ready to put up another list of the possibly Black-influenced shanties that "passed through" the cotton ports and were used as cotton-stowing/screwing songs and later became shanties. I've given the ones for which there is written documentation (that I know about so far) as well as the ones that Hugill "suggests" might have been used that way. It gets a bit fuzzy for me. His suggestions seem more than a little bit tentative. But maybe there are some broad outlines in all of this.

With regard to "Heave Away", I really don't have much to go on and would trust your judgement as to whether you think it is a shanty or not. Sandburg simply says: "This is among the few known work songs of the slave days of the American negro." (407). Hugill mentions the statement in A TREASURY OF AMERICAN SONG that this is a "*Negro fireman's* song". I don't have access to the TREASURY so I can't say any more about that. I really like your rendition, and I encourage everyone to read your YouTube commentary since it sums up very this song very well.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 03:08 PM

Thanks for the shout-out, John. Just to clarify: I don't consider those to be "all of the West Indian related shanties from Hugill." They are chanties "contributed by stated Caribbean informants." The list considers who supplied the info, not the actual origin of the chanties.

That list has 54 chanties; I think I may have added 2 or 3 since then. By contrast, my tally of possibly Caribbean-influenced chanteys in Hugill is 49 -- It is a different set, and I have not posted a list of that. Elsewhere in the thread, I had begun to make a cumulative, on-going list of chanties that I was judging to fit in the nebulous category that is the topic of the thread -- and which does not draw a distinction between Black American and Caribbean sources. (I've not gotten around to "finishing" that inquiry.) So, three *different* sets of data.

On a different note: Is "Heave Away" (Sandburg) a "chantey"? My sense is that it is included by Hugill as a comparative example alone (just as "Yellow Meal" is a ballad that is also being compared to "Heave Away My Johnnies"). When I get time later, I hope to say more about that. I've just learned "Heave Away", so it stirred up some thoughts :)

Heave Away

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 21 Feb 10 - 12:10 PM

Thanks for those additions, Charlie. I've enjoyed Barry's renditions of both of them and always have appreciated his historical awareness as well as his singing.

I want to add a few more suggestions to my list of shanties that have *possibly* been influenced by Black culture:

"Larry Marr"
"The Sailor Fireman" - a riverboat version of "Fire Down Below" Hugill, p. 115
"Lower The Boat Down"   from Colcord
"Billy Riley"
"Heave Away" from Sandburg
"Paddy Lay Back"/"Mainsail Haul"
"Walk Me Along, Johnny"

And, I want to offer this link from Gibb Sahib that has all of the West Indian related shanties from Hugill:

thread.cfm?threadid=119776&messages=218#2687144

There will be some overlap of the West Indian shanties with my lists. And here are a couple of additions to Gibb's list of West Indian related shanties:

"So Early In The Morning" - Hugill's (c), p. 57/'61
"A Long Time Ago" / "Johnny Jernan' wuz a Portugee man" from Hugill, p. 103/'61
"Hilo, Johnny Brown" from Hugill, p. 254/'61
"Walkalong, Miss Susianna Brown" Hugill, p. 391-392/'61

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 19 Feb 10 - 09:34 AM

John-

So these songs are in addition to those you suggested above.

Barry Finn revived a two more on his CD titled Fathom This (2007) that might be added to the list:

Hard Times in Ol' Virginia (Georgia Sea island Singers as recorded by Lomax on Southern Journey; Lydia Parrish in Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands)

Good-Bye My Riley-O (also in Parrish above)

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

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

&messagesI would like to make these additions to my proposed list of shanties that may have been influenced by Southern Black culture.

thread.cfm?threadid=126347=1#2839983

I am continuing to make the rather artificial distinction between "Southern Black" (US) culture and that of the West Indies with regard to shanties. There is overlap.

We've already mentioned these six shanties:

"Highland Laddie"
"Fire Maringo"
"Blow Boys, Blow"
"Fire Down Below"
"One More Day" (Colcord)
"South Australia" (Parrish, Abrahams)

I would also add:

"Sing Sally O!"/"Mudder Dinah" (Bullen)
"Poor Old Man" (Colcord)
"John Cherokee" (Colcord)
"Hilo Come Down Below" (Bullen)
"Hilonday" (L. Smith)
"The Bully Boat"/"Ranzo Ray" (Sharp)
"Running Down to Cuba" (Whall, Shay - one line)
"Hurrah, You Santy, My Dear Honey" (a version of "Can't You Dance The Polka - Alden)
"Little Sally Racket" (a version of "Cheerily, Men" - Laura Smith)
"De Sandy Boy"
"Yellow Rose of Texas"
"Tommy's Gone Away" (cotton screwing, Sharp)
"Whisky Johnny" (some verses)
"Haul Away, Joe" (some verses)
"Slapandergosheka" (according to L. Smith)


Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 08:09 PM

Lighter-

Feel free to review the on-line copy of Some Recollections, there may be more gold to sift out.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 07:14 PM

Great find, Charley.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 03:59 PM

Oh, here's some more fun, references to "shanty singing" in the 1840's. I've been following up some leads in Bill and Gene Bonyun's book Full Hull and Splendid Passage and this one paid off:

Some Recollections, by Captain Charles P. Low, published by Geo. H. Ellis Co., Boston, US, © 1906 (http://www.archive.org/stream/somerecollection00lowciala/somerecollection00lowciala_djvu.txt)

Commanding the Clipper Ships "Houqua," "Jacob Bell," "Samuel Russell," and "N. B. Palmer." in the China Trade 1847-1873.

Aboard the "Toronto" from Boston to London, circa 1844, p. 35

We had a crew of thirty seamen and four ordinaries, no boys. The crew was made up of the hardest kind of men; they were called "hoosiers," working in New Orleans or Mobile during the winter at stowing ships with cotton, and in the summer sailing in the packet ships. They were all good chantey men; that is, they could all sing at their work and were good natured and could work hard, but they did not care much about the officers and would not be humbugged or hazed. Besides this large crew, we had as steerage passengers twenty men from the ship Coromandel, an East India ship that had come home from a two years' voyage, who were going to London on a spree. The steerage passage cost only "fifteen dollars and find themselves." They were also a jolly set of fellows and when we reefed topsails or made sail they all joined in with us, so that our work was easy and we could reef and hoist all three topsails at once, with a different song for each one. In the dog watch, from six to eight in the evening, they would gather on the forecastle and sing comic songs and negro melodies.

Arriving at the London docks: p. 37

The London docks are all enclosed, and you can only enter at high tide, slack water; and as soon as the ship is in, the gates are shut. It was very late in the evening when we entered, and while hauling in, the two crews united in singing, and made such noise that the dock master requested the mates to stop them, as they would wake up the whole of London. But when the sailors heard this they only sang the louder and only stopped when the ship was made fast.

Loading Cargo: p. 38

We had a great many tons of these cheeses on board as freight. Some weighed one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds and were very ugly things to handle. The sailors discharged the cargo and hove the sling loads up by a winch at the mainmast. If very heavy we took the load to the capstan; and while we were heaving away, at eleven in the morning, the sailors struck up "Roll and go for that white pitcher, roll and go," and the steward would come up with a great pitcher filled with rum, and give each of us a drink. The same thing was repeated at four in the afternoon. This was varied when we were taking in cargo, which consisted of a great deal of railroad iron and we had to pass it in from a lighter alongside and then down the hold. It was terribly hard work, and instead of the rum, a quart of beer from the tap room was brought to each one at eleven in the morning and four in the afternoon. I do not think we could have held out without it.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 10:07 AM

John-

Some real progress, and agreement here!

I do doubt that an individual cotton-screwing team (four men and a foreman/chantieman) were mixed Black and White. On the high seas it seems more likely that Black and White were mixed together within a watch, although Hugill mentions that sometimes watches were segregated "checkerboard" fashion.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 09:34 PM

In the light of our discussion above, perhaps we can add "Highland Laddie", from Nordhoff's discussion in MERCHANT VESSEL, which he heard as a cotton-screwing song in Mobile, to our list of shanties that may have been influenced by Black culture. Here is my previous discussion of this shanty earlier in this thread:

thread.cfm?threadid=126347&messages=1#2826380

And from the same source, Charley's suggestion of "Fire Maringo". Charlie has also suggested "Congo River". I would qualify this slightly and say some versions of "Blow Boys, Blow".

Q's point about the make up of the cotton-screwing gangs is important. It would seem that sometimes there were separate white and black gangs and sometimes they were mixed. There certainly must have been plenty of opportunity to share songs.

Lighter, thanks for the additional information on Captain Whidden and his source, Captain Meacom, and for the dating on this. Meacom also mentions "Fire Down Below" and "One More Day" being used as pumping "chanties". See the link above to Captain Whidden's work, page 99. So I would also add these two shanties to my list of ones influenced by Black culture.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 07:35 PM

Specifically, Meacom supplied the "chantie" texts, but Whidden's experience concurs that shanty singing was widespread in N.O. in the early '50s.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Lighter
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 07:27 PM

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.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:46 PM

Gibb, I find your last paragraph above fascinating. You take Hugill's idea of "the shanty mart" a step beyond itself. If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that at least most of the halyard shanties didn't just "pass through the shanty mart" of the cotton ports, but actually were born there, or thereabouts. Both "Black" and "White" songs were perhaps adopted as work songs and were transformed into what became shanties.

I also find your statement that "in 1853, the concept/definition of "chanty" had to have been much more narrow than it was by the 20th century" intriguing.   You go on to say, "*in my opinion*, a "Black" element was part and parcel to the genre, such that it is *very* difficult to distinguished them as a separate category at that time period!" The category of "shanty/chanty" was not so all inclusive back then and it was by its nature as perhaps a work song deeply influenced by Black culture.

This just might be a clue about how to better focus my lens on the early 1850s. Try looking for - at least halyard - shanties that definitely have a "Black" influence to them, which is closer to the surface.

Charley's note above about Captain Whidden in New Orleans describing how the cotton-screwing songs went to sea and became shanties seems to make sense in the context of what you are saying. And the pumping shanty that he quotes could well be an example of how "Hieland Laddie" became a shanty. And it just might be an earlier version of that shanty. Here is the book by Whidden:

http://books.google.com/books?id=MOtDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Ocean+Life+In+The+Old+Sailing+Days&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=fals

and here is the page:

http://books.google.com/books?id=MOtDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA99&dq=Were+you+ever+down+in+Mobile+Bay&cd=2#v=onepage&q=Were%20you%20ever%20d

Hugill gives this as "John, Come Tell Us As We Haul Away" on pages 287-288/'61, which is in my list above.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 05:02 PM

Gibb, I appreciate your work and your insights. I like what you say about the possible Black origins of "South Australia" and I meant to include it because it shows up in Lydia Parrish's SLAVE SONGS OF THE GEORGIA SEA ISLANDS.   

I know I've seen your list and was trying to find it this morning but I couldn't put my hands on it. Is it in the "Rare Caribbean" thread? I'd like at least a link to that.

I'm a pluralist and I always like more than two alternatives, so the more categories the better, and if a song shows up in every one of them that's probably an important song, if my very arbitrary categories have any validity at all. I can easily imagine a song coming out of the cotton fields and down the rivers to New Orleans and being used on the docks by the Black stevedores, and being picked up by the Yankee/British/Irish packet guys down for the winter, and sailing back to Liverpool with the cotton, and then back to New York, just in time for the Gold Rush and off around Cape Horn to San Francisco, and then on board the "Julia Ann" and out to Sydney, where it meets its cousin coming from the other direction on an immigrant ship. I can't document any actual songs doing this from written historical records, but I can imagine it.   

Where I am "going" is an exercise in historical imagination. For me that means that while the content is fluid because we don't have any exact referents to speak of, the broader contexts are well-documented.   We actually know quite a bit about what was going on in the 19th century. That gives me the historical parameters for my imagination.

I doubt if "just any" or "all" of these shanties were crossing back and forth across the Pacific in the early 1850s. But some of them probably were. And there must be some ways to tighten the boundaries and say "more likely" this one than that one. But maybe that's not even possible. So then, I'll go for the possibility that this or that particular shanty family could have been around by such and such a time, and might have made it out to the West Coast.

I'm trying to imagine what it was like to make those voyages and most particularly, what it might have sounded like. Harlow does a remarkable job of giving such a picture for a time period 20 years after the "Julia Ann". That may be the closest I can come, but it's worth the effort to try to be a little more specific.

And also, where I am "going" is I am finally taking the opportunity to learn as much as I can about all of these shanties and their history in the 19th century.

I appreciate your statistics and your intuition that say "at least a good HALF of English language chanteys were of Black derivation to some degree."

[I had to interrupt this note to listen to my all time favorite group "The Carolina Chocolate Drops" on NPR. What a truly wonderful group and what a fine way to get in touch with a unique interpretation of some of the music that might just lie behind some of these shanties!]

I just got through looking at Bullen for a different purpose and now you've given me a different set of lens to take another look. I think that your "personal interpretation" rings true for me:

" that chanteys were born of a Black tradition -- African-American -- which no doubt in itself was the result of a culture combination that included English...but which nonetheless was distinct. The paradigm was adopted by others (non-Blacks) who had become acculturated to that culture. Once the *practice* and the model forms were adopted, they became a shell into which many more cultural influences and songs could be incorporated."

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 02:51 PM

Remember that the cotton screwers were often English; they were specialists at a demanding job and were paid accordingly.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 02:41 PM

"Hieland Laddie" is specifically cited (somewhere!) as an example of a shanty that the cotton screwers would use for compressing bales of cotton in the gulf ports. What's unclear is whether it originated there or was simply reprocessed.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 02:12 PM

Hi John

Again, I'm not sure exactly where you're going with this :) But your methods are yours, so more power to ya!

I have done an "analysis" of SfSS -- HIGHLY contentious, to be sure. But anybody's is bound to be, for reasons you have listed. I too had to impose some criteria to give the data SOME kind of tangibility. My criteria were very similar to yours. I also allowed each chantey to come under multiple categories. So one that I have marked with "Black" may also be marked "Irish," for example. I also had a category of "indeterminate" for when I really did not want to skew the figures too much by allowing my biases to creep in. For example, my personal feeling is that "South Australia" comes from something of Black origin, or at least something "American" that was born out of the combined experience of Black and other cultures in my country (where the Black contribution was a key element). But I thought it would be irresponsible to label it as such without a bit more evidence, ...and I don't think it is definitely "English," either....so I put it down as "indeterminate". Of course, MOST of the chanteys could be called of "indeterminate" origin, but if I had taken that approach, it would defeat the goal of the whole exercise. So, like you, I had to impose some positive criteria.

I am not going to post my own "list." So this is all "for what it's worth." Anyways, the count of chanteys that I tagged with "Black" (exclusive of Caribbean) was 70 (for comparison, you have about 52 here). That made, according to my reckoning, 22% of the chanteys in the collection. If I added "Caribbean" to that, I got 37%. That percentage is very low, in my opinion, because Hugill is so inclusive of chanteys that at one time or another may have been used --i.e. he includes a lot of forebitters and such that do not have core chantey characteristics-- that the numbers are skewed. And just another comparison "for what it's worth": If one looks at the abridged edition, where all the non-English language texts are removed, the Black+Caribbean percentage rises to 52%. Again, there is so much uncertainty in all this, but I do feel confident that at least a good HALF of English language chanteys were of Black derivation to some degree.

If you take a collection that is full of HARDCORE chanteys :) by which I mean true, unequivocal work songs that really sit square in the genre, not as a catch-all category, but with more coherent characteristics... then take Bullen's book. Bullen only begrudgingly allowed his editors to include two forebitters, and he makes sure to mark them off clearly -- he does not say, "Well, if you wanted to, you could also tramp around the capstan to this English shore ballad." So if you were analyze his list, you'd find the vast majority of them to be Black, and indeed his stated opinion was that most were "of Negroid origin."

I have no issue with Hugill's inclusiveness. But I encourage people to read it with that in mind. In other words, though he includes so many pieces, very many of them were probably infrequently used. If somehow we could boil down a list of the "most used" chanteys, then I think we'd find a rough balance between Black and Anglo-White influences -- the chanteys could not exist without both. My personal *interpretation* is that chanteys were born of a Black tradition -- African-American -- which no doubt in itself was the result of a culture combination that included English...but which nonetheless was distinct. The paradigm was adopted by others (non-Blacks) who had become acculturated to that culture. Once the *practice* and the model forms were adopted, they became a shell into which many more cultural influences and songs could be incorporated.

This is getting off topic. But it is to say that in 1853, the concept/definition of "chanty" had to have been much more narrow than it was by the 20th century. And, *in my opinion*, a "Black" element was part and parcel to the genre, such that it is *very* difficult to distinguished them as a separate category at that time period! Even a chantey like "Hieland Laddie," which would seem to have some obvious Scottish origin, was perhaps already transformed in a Black setting before it became a chanty. (Consider as well that much of the material in SfSS that seems decidedly non-Black was material that accrued to the genre in later eras, e.g. of the 4 masted barks of Europe, the guano trade, etc.) The probably-older chanties that seem to me less likely of Black influence are mainly short hauls. (In later years, capstan chanties are the ones adopted from other sources.) Certainly, by far the area most concentrated with Black chanties is halyard chanties. A fun challenge would be to see how many halyard (yard-hoisting) chanties we could try to name that do NOT seem to have some Black origin.

Gibb

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: John Minear
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 12:23 PM

The only songs that have a specific reference to the business of sailing, in the above listing for which we have written documentation are:

"Sally Ann" (from Captain Marryat's DIARY IN AMERICA)
"Stormalong" (along "Yankee Dollar" and "Fire Maringo" from Charles Nordhoff's MERCHANT VESSEL) .

And, "Sally Ann" is the only song actually referred to as being used on board a ship at sea in what we have come to know as a "shanty" function. The reference to "Stormalong" is in relationship to stowing cotton in port.

We may be able to find written documentation for certain antecedents or parallels to other songs in the list, but probably not for their use as sea shanties. This does not mean that they were not in use as sea shanties prior to 1855.   But our suggestions about such use can only be speculative.

Subject: RE: From SF to Sydney - 1853 Shanties Sung?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 Feb 10 - 12:17 PM

To the list should be added:

Fire Maringo
Congo River

Cheerily,
Charley Noble