'New' Sea Songs & Shanties & Nautical Songs

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 08:03 AM

Opening the door to old nautical poems by Cicely Fox Smith releases some 70 or so poems that have been adapted for singing by our contemporaries since 1987. That door is a veritable floodgate!

Tow Rope Girls
Sailor Town
Lee Fore Brace
Long Road Home
Race of Long Ago (Racing Clippers)
So Long (All Coiled Down)
Copper Ore
Port o' Dreams
Limehouse Reach
Tryhena's Extra Hand
Mariquita
Lumber
Hastings Mill
Sea Dream
Shipmates
A Ship in a Bottle
Mobile Bay
By the Old Pagoda Anchorage
News in Daly's Bar

And that doesn't include other old sailor-poets whose poems have been adapted for singing such as John Masefield, Burt Franklin Jenness, Bill Adams, Harry Kemp, and William McFee.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: The Sandman
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 06:27 AM

I nominate Sailortown[FOX SMITH /MILES]

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs (Non-Traditional)
From: GRex
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 05:36 AM

Three of my favourites are:
         
             Dutchman's Trousers (Tom Lewis)

             The Old Figurehead Carver ( Cody & Swain)

             Tow Rope Girls (C Fox Smith)

                   GRex

Subject: RE: Favourite Non-Traditional Nautical Songs
From: bubblyrat
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 05:14 AM

Anything by Shipmate Cyril, and "Let Her Go Down". Neither should we forget Shep Wooley's "Down By The Dockyard Wall",which seems to have found a niche in the UK, although I find anything with the words "suit of blue" in it a bit cheesy,personally .
( Ex- suit of blue wearer )

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs
From: Charley Noble
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 11:12 AM

The focus of this thread is "recently" composed nautical songs rather than traditional ones. "The Stately Southerner" is a fine ballad but it's at least 200 years old.

I'm also fond of songs composed by Rudy Sunde (NZ) such as "Auckland to the Bluff" and Ron Baxter's (UK) "Tramps (Chantey for Coaling)."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs
From: scouse
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 10:53 AM

Cyril T. of course next would have to be Stan Rogers The "Jeannie C." makes me cry every time I hear it and what can one say about the "Lock-keeper." that already hasn't been said. Such words!!!

As Aye,

Phil.

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs
From: agingcynic
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 10:11 AM

Humbly submitted, "The Old Sailor"

Top of the jukebox:

http://www.myspace.com/karmafarmers

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs
From: IanC
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 10:08 AM

Oddly enough, for me it's The Ranger ("Stately Southerner".

:-)

Subject: RE: Favourite Nautical Songs
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 09:36 AM

Jack the Lad, Home to the Haven,by Dick Miles,
Whitby Whaler by Richard Grainger

Subject: ADD: The Jim Johnson (Bob Dyer)
From: GUEST,JimP
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 08:54 PM

My favorite right now is a riverboat song by Bob Dyer, apparently a folk singer/songwriter from Missouri who has passed on. I don't know much about Mr. Dyer, but I am indebted to him for this great song:

^^ THE JIM JOHNSON
(Bob Dyer)

You've heard about the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee,
The famous Grand Republic and the big Belle Key.
But the greatest floating palace that ever has been
Is the side-wheel giant called the Jim Johnson.

    Look out, boys, she's coming up the river
    And, oh Lordy, she's building up steam.
    Good God! She's as big as a mountain.
    That's the biggest darn steamboat I ever have seen.

She had forty rubber boilers and a forty-hinged hull,
Forty big smoke stacks a hundred feet tall.
She had four big side wheels, two at the stern.
A paddle took a day just to make a full turn.

She could slide through the bends of the mean Muddy Mo
When the river was flooding or the river was low.
And it took her two weeks just to pass by a town.
The people come to see her from miles around.

The Jim Johnson ate enough wood on a run
To build fifty courthouses and a good-sized town.
With all of her passengers, provisions and freight
She could call herself an independent floating state.

The Jim Johnson pilot was a mighty mean man,
Weighed seven hundred pounds and stood eight feet ten.
He had one good eye in the middle of his head
And a voice that could raise up people from the dead.

Subject: RE: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: Charley Noble
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 08:10 PM

Kerry and Mandy-

That's one I've never run across before: "Rageing Sea" by Ron Trueman-Border.

I would add Archie Fisher's "Final Trawl" and another couple by Bob Watson "Neptune's Daughter" and "Tasman Buster."

Cheerily,
Charley noble

Subject: RE: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: kerry and Mandy
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 02:48 PM

hi Ron
our fav song has to be "Mollymauk" by Bob followed by "Sally Free and Easy" by cyril and then "Rageing Sea" by Ron Trueman-Border.
hope your keeping well.
kerry and mandy

Subject: RE: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 12:32 PM

Gordon BOk is hands down my favorite. Many if not all of Gordon's songs will be considered gems. Particularily The Ways of Man, Frankie on the Sheepscot, Three Boot Philbrick's Lament, his long ballads, Seal Djirl and Saben The Wood Fitter just to mention a few.

Don

Subject: RE: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: greg stephens
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 12:24 PM

Anything of Cyril Tawney's. Er, that's it.

Subject: RE: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 10:19 AM

All of Cyril's and John C's

Subject: RE: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: Charley Noble
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 09:23 AM

"Pump Shanty" (1989) by Tony Goodenough is another composed one that many contemporary nautical singers assume is traditional.

Similarly, there is "Roll Down" by Peter Bellamy (1970) from his folk opera The Transports.

I also agree that Cyrill Tawney and Tom Lewis have made major contributions to the nautical song repertoire.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 09:05 AM

All of Cyril Tawney's songs.

No one did it better.

Dave H

Subject: RE: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: Leadfingers
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 08:34 AM

And Tom Lewis carried on where Cyril left off !

Subject: RE: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:02 AM

Cyril Tawney the name that springs at once to mind — I should start with "On a British Sumbarine" & "Chicken On A Raft"...

Hi-O = Hey-O...

Subject: FAVOURITE NAUTICAL SONGS
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 05:58 AM

As a writer of'nautical' lyrics I was wondering which 'composed' [rather than traditional] nautical songs are'caters' favourites. For myself, amongst my favourites are, Bob Watson's 'Mollymauk' & 'Shantyman', John Connely's 'Trawler town requium, and Stan Rogers 'Lockeeper'.