Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties

Subject: Lyr Req: Tommy's Gone away.
From: Eye Lander
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 01:44 PM

Does anyone have the lyrics for Jackie Oates version of 'Tommy's Gone away' ? From Short Sharp Shanties Vol 1 last track.

I know there are many versions of Tom's gone to Hilo. But it's her version I'd like to sing.

Many thanks

Jillie

Subject: ADD Version: Tommy's Gone Away
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 02:53 PM

Gee, aren't the lyrics collected by sharp from John Short in print somewhere? I'm really having trouble understanding some of the words on the Jackie Oates recording. Sharp's Rnglish Folk-Chanteys has one verse of this song on Page 64, but no additional verses.

OK, here' my work in progress, subject to revision when I listen again. Please help.

TOMMY'S GONE AWAY

Tommy's gone, what will I do?
Tommy's gone away.
Tommy's gone, what will I do?
Tommy's gone away.

Tommy's gone to Liverpool,
Tommy's gone away.
To Liverpool [that noted school???]
Tommy's gone away.

Tommy's gone to Baltimore
Tommy's gone away.
To dance upon that [sandy?] floor
Tommy's gone away.

[instrumental break]

Tommy's gone to Mobile Bay,
Tommy's gone away.
To screw the cotton all the day.
Tommy's gone away.

Tommy's gone to Singapore,
Tommy's gone away.
Tommy's gone forevermore,
Tommy's gone away.

Tommy's gone to [boney's air???]
Tommy's gone away.
Where the girls have long black hair,
Tommy's gone away.

Tommy's gone forevermore,
Tommy's gone away.
Tommy's gone forevermore,
Tommy's gone away.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Tommy's Gone away
From: GUEST,999
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 03:17 PM

http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/lloyd/songs/tomsgonetohilo.html

Place you might care to look to read a really good history of the song.

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 06:06 PM

Refresh. I think I have most of the song down, but I'm still having trouble with the penultimate verse. Where's he going to find those girls with the long black hair?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Dead Horse
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 06:07 PM

Have not heard that recording, but the most usual words for those verses are as follows:-

To Liverpool that packet school. (but I have heard 'noted'

To dance upon that sandy or sanded floor

Tommy's gone to Bonus-airs (Buenos Aires)

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 06:24 PM

Thanks a lot, Dead Horse. Now it's making sense. I changed the one verse to "boney's air," because that's what I hear.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 07:21 PM

Joe-

Yes, now that you've got that shanty down, you're ready to ship out as an able-bodied sailor.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 08:46 PM

There aren't really "versions" of "Tommy's Gone Away" with respect to the solo lyrics. It's a structure on which one hangs lyrics, in the moment or in the spirit, as it were.

The chorus is a constant, but the lyrics of the solos are merely filler of stock couplets. One would think that in "authentic" contexts, a wider varied of more personal, topical, and/or improvised couplets would be sung. One reason why Sharp provides just one verse--i.e. because the others are non-essential.

Oates simply did what a chanty singer would do, and fleshed out the song to a specified length. Since she wasn't a 19th century sailor, she probably selected some "typical"/idiomatic couplets from the widely accessible collections, or what had been sung in revival sessions.

I'm unwilling, however, to call this (i.e. with respect to lyrics) "Oates' version." Moreover, I'd recommend against singing it verbatim, because that is contrary to the method and style of chanties.

If you're not confident about singing "in the moment," and even if you feel that making up your own verses is somehow non-traditional (though it really is), then the best thing to do, in my opinion, is what Oates presumably did: cull some lyrics from various sources.

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Reinhard
Date: 16 Oct 12 - 09:09 PM

This is what the Short Sharp Shanties notes said on this song:

Sharp, Terry and, of course, Hugill are the only collectors to have published Tommy's Gone Away, and all regard it as a version of Tom's Gone to Ilo/Hilo/Ylo.  Definitely not a short-haul shanty. Sharp and Terry both had it from Short: Hugill says "My version from S.Wales seaman who had served in the copper trade." This becomes interesting, because another very close version of Tommy's Gone Away is in the Carpenter collection having been collected at Barry Docks, S.Wales.  So is this particularly shanty a Bristol Channel and/or copper trade version? (Short did sail in the copper trade, on the Conference to Callao in 1867/68 – and he had been familiar with the Bristol Channel since a boy).  Whatever its 'location' in the period when Carpenter and subsequently Hugill were amassing material, Sharp's notes from Short (who was learning it up to half a century earlier) say the shanty was "Used not only for pulling, but, at New Orleans, for screwing the cotton for loading to set the bales in – screwing it up into a very small compass."  Short evidently used similar verses for both Tom's Gone to Ilo and Tommy's Gone Away – we have sought to use different locations in the two recordings.  Jackie's arrangement offers a really melancholic feel to the song – perhaps as many a seaman would have wished the girl they left behind to feel!

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 12:23 AM

Songs with the chorus "Jenny gone away" are documented 1830s-40s for river boat rowing and corn-shuckings by Black Americans in Georgia, Virginia, and South Carolina. Later, a halyard chanty form turns up as "Johnny's Gone Away." It was a widespread trope. Let's not let Sharp and Terry (who collected similar stuff) and Hugill (who pretty indiscriminately incorporated prior printed material) give an illusion that this was a static piece of work.

To an extent, the idea of "Tommy's Gone Away" as a discreet item, seen as a variation of another discreet item, "Tommy's Gone to Hilo," is a construct of the collectors, created from a very small sample.

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Snuffy
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 09:47 AM

Tommy could go any place in the world, provided it had three syllables and could conveniently be rhymed with some other word(s). It helped if it was actually a port, but he could be sent far inland to Milton Keynes or even Las Vegas.

Here's a listing of the ports of Britain and Ireland, plus a few of the major ports in the British Empire during the Victorian heyday of shantying. This may help you to make up your own itinerary - one of my "versions" goes to towns and villages in "Shakespeare Country", far from the sea or even an inland waterway in many cases.

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Snuffy
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 09:53 AM

A bit of thread drift: what is the "sandy floor" in Baltimore that appears in Tommys Gone, Haul Away Rosie, Donkey Riding, Hieland Laddie, etc?

I can find no trace on the net other than lines from shanties.

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Eye Lander
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 01:29 PM

Cheers Joe, exactly what I wanted.

Jillie

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Mick Tems
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 01:38 PM

I (and Calennig) sang Tommy's Gone Away in 1994 on the CD Trade Winds (on the Sain label.) Hugill said he heard a South Wales sailor sing it, and we included it in the Carpenter collection. Extra verses include:

Tommy's gone to Cardiff town
Tommy's gone away!
Where the girls they come on down
Tommy's gone away!

Tommy's gone to Swansea Bay
Where the girls they shout Hooray!

Tommy's gone to Abergwaun
That's Sheila haulin' on the line

If Eye Lander does want to sing it, she can have my blessing. Llantrisant FC misses you both very much!

Mick Tems

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 01:40 PM

re: "sandy floor"

Baltimore and the sandy floor evidently were part of an older song. An 1868 reference has,

"As I came home from Baltimore,
One foot behind and t'other before,
I told my my mother my feet was sore
A dancin' on a sandy floor."

(The Model House: A Comedy in Five Acts.Albany, NY, 1868. Pg. 30)

The song must have come to mind when a chantyman was "in the moment." Its construction has an internal logic of its own.

L.A. Smith publish the phrase in her 1888 collection, in the lyrics to "Tommy's gone to Hilo." This is one rendition that Smith appears to have collected directly in the field.

Others would go on to recycle the material in Smith's work. People like C Fox Smith and Stan Hugill borrowed lines from previous publications and inserted them in there versions. I am doubtful that the line "sandy floor" was *necessarily* sung by anyone else except Smith's informant. It's a case of the chantyman's method to create in the moment, rather than the case of a standard lyric. Even if it were at all standardized, its repeated appearance in print and in revival singers' mouths would be false evidence of that, I think.

This exactly what I mean by the writers constructing a false sense of discreet, standardized texts. And when we sing those texts verbatim, we end up reinforcing them.

In context, the lyrics Smith's chantyman sang were:

There's pretty Sall and Jenny Brown,
A-dancing on that stony ground,
Tommy's gone to Baltimore,
A-rolling on the sandy floor, ...

So "sandy floor" proceeds from "stony ground", which latter which seems to probably have been sung just to make rhyme. The whole thing proceeds from a bit of stream of consciousness. Starting with the generic "gal's name", e.g. "XYZ Brown," one makes a rhyme as "[stony] ground. Stony ground, perhaps, then evokes the "sandy floor" as a contrast, and the remembered song.

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: SylviaN
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 03:16 PM

Hi Folks

Might I suuggest that the best person to answer any queries about the Short Sharp Shanties project and the CDs is Dr Tom Brown.

You can reach him om http://www.umbermusic.co.uk/

Cheers

Sylvia

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: doc.tom
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 05:26 PM

Can't really add anything to what's been said above! - and it was me who 'constructed' the set that Jackie sings on SSS.
TomB

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 17 Oct 12 - 08:21 PM

Tom,

I wouldn't say you 'constructed' it, but rather 'synthesized' (synthesized?) it -- which is standard practice in today's world of chanty singing.

Just wanted to make sure you understand that that process is something different from creating chanty 'constructs' that I argue the early 20th century collectors did.

It is possible to say (in my opinion of course) that if others now do "cover versions" of your "synthesis"...without reading your project notes and disclaimers... it will become (though group action, not yours) a "construct."

Sorry for all the jargon! But I hear you're a Dr. and you must be used to it! :)

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: Eye Lander
Date: 18 Oct 12 - 05:10 AM

Oh and Dead Horse, for not thanking in the above message, I was too busy changing the words I had noted!!!

Jillie

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: GUEST,Ted
Date: 13 Jan 13 - 10:40 AM

It must be Buenos Aires.

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 13 Jan 13 - 10:46 AM

Gibb is of course correct that many shanty "performances" were mostly improvised.

But it must also be true that many shantymen were happy with their own "version" and pretty much stuck to it unless made to improvise by the length of the task. It's easier to sing from memory.

Subject: RE: Req: Tommy's Gone Away-Short Sharp Shanties
From: doc.tom
Date: 13 Jan 13 - 12:09 PM

Just caught up with the thread. Thanks Sylvia. Yes, as the one who gave Jackie the words to sing I am probably the best source.

Tommy's gone what shall I do
My Tommy's gone away
O Tommy's gone away what shall I do
My Tommy's Gone Away

Tommy's gone to Liverpool
To Liverpool, that noted school

Baltimore
Tho dance upon that sandy floor

Mobile Bay
Screwing cotton all the day

Singapore
Tommy's gone for evermore

Boney's Airs [Buenos Ares, of course]
Where the girls have long black hair

for evermore
O Tommy's gone for evermore

AND AS ONE SCHOOL PUPIL SAID WHEN WE GAVE THEM THE OPORTUNIY TO MAKE AND TAKE POSSESION OF THEIR OWN VERSES: -

Johnny's gone to Pizza Hut
He went because McDonald's was shut

ENJOY!

TomB