Reuben Ranzo

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 08:04 AM

(I too once sang "Ringo," but only in my own head.)

Otherwise these are exceptionally interesting tidbits.

Though Harlow gives both "Reuben Ranzo" and "Hilo, My Ranzo Way," he notes in between them (a little strangely) that:

"Ranzo is purely a Southern [N]egro term used in the cotton ships at Mobile and New Orleans, and also sung by 'Badian [N]egros at the fall."


Stanzas of "Ranzo Ray" do relate to the Mississippi - which doesn't ordinarily appear in chanteys. And they never mention "Reuben Ranzo."

The presence of the same unusual

I don't have Bullen at hand at the moment. Will check after lunch to see if he was Harlow's source.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: GUEST,The Sandman
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 05:57 AM

I heard one singer, sing, Ringo. Presumably a fan of the Beatles

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 05:39 AM

Including this to show how a known "Ranzo" song was rendered, by one singer, as "rango."

From a recording in the Library of Congress:

The subject of the recording is Jim Archer, recorded May 29, 1939. His age was estimated 78-80, so, maybe he was born 1859-61. Archer was a night watchman on the Mississippi, starting 1881 or 1882 and ending maybe around 1904. Saw roustabouts carry loads from boats. The mate would load their backs, send them down the stage plank. Captain of the watch, a Black man, stood on the bank to direct the roustabouts in depositing their load, and send them back to the ship.

There was a line of “the Coast Boats” from NOLA up through the Delta. The boats, like Natchez and White, would approach the wharf (they didn’t sing the song on ALL of them) about 400-500 feet away. To discharge cargo they’d come out in a circle under the boiler deck. The captain would be on the boiler deck over head. “It was the rule of the boat to sing.” The mate was down in charge of the labor. When they got a certain distance, they’d sing the song. The roustabouts would select the best man that they had in their gang.

Archer sang, slowly, to the tune we'd recognize by the sailor chanty title as "Ranzo, Ranzo, Ray"

Captain captain gimme your daughter
        Rango, rango oh-o-o
Gimme your daughter I’ll marry her on the water
        Rango rango oh

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 05:18 AM

Continuing down the rabbit hole, here's a supporting piece.

Cameron, Anna Alexander. “Christmas on the Old Plantation.” _The Home-maker_, vol. 3, no. 3 (December 1889): 200-203.

More memories of pre Emancipation Christmas celebration in North Carolina, during the same time and places as the preceding. The author is sister of [Sarah] Rebecca Cameron, of Hillsborough (nee Hillsboro) NC, born 1845.

From UNC:
“The Cameron family of Orange County was one of antebellum North Carolina's wealthiest families. On the eve of the Civil War, Paul Cameron and his siblings owned over one thousand slaves and nearly thirty thousand acres of plantation land in Orange, Wake, Person, and Granville Counties, as well as plantations in Alabama and Mississippi.

Paul and Anne Cameron [parents of the sisters] lived at Fairntosh from 1837 until the late 1850s, when they moved back to Hillsborough.”

From the piece:

//
I allude to the custom of “Coonah dancing.” It is said to be a direct importation from Africa, and has been handed down from generation to generation.

… They bob all around, like so many tottering, awkward goblins, chanting in a low, monotonous tone, when, all at once, from amongst them, spring ten or twelve, or more…the banjos begin to play spiritedly, the bones and triangles to rattle in perfect time, and mellow voices break forth into the “Coonah” song. …

The song is very spirited and sung with an abandon of enjoyment, and yet though it is the very voice of gladness and mirth, deep in the heart of the melody is that pathetic cadence which is the soul of negro minstrelsy. …

From house to house they go, everywhere receiving more or less liberal contributions of money and Christmas cheer. …

This, amongst many other familiar customs, is now a thing of the past,…

“Dance, dance my Coonah John,
        Ho! Lady Sorna,
Coonah’s dance for one cent,
        Ho-sang-du-sanga,
Jump, jump, oh! Coonah John!
        Ho! Lady Sorna!
Pop your whip, oh! Coonah John!
        Ho-sang-du-sanga!
Turn your partner, Coonah John!
       Ho! Lady Sorna!
Hands up fo’ oh! Coonah John!
        Ho-sang-du-sanga!
Swing your corner, Coonah John!
    Ho! Lady Sorna!
Honor your partner, Coonah John!
        Ho-sang-du-sanga!”
//

"du-sanga" doesn't feel like a satisfying connection to "ranzo," unless we account that Sarah Rebecca remembered it as "du-rango," and from there to "ju-ranzo"!

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 23 Jan 23 - 04:29 AM

Following the trail of "juranzo":

Cameron, Rebecca. “Christmas on an Old Plantation.” _The Ladies’ Home Journal_, vol. 9, no. 1 (December 1891): 5.

This is the memory, I take it, of the author's childhood in pre-Emancipation times. Her father was a slave-owner on the Cape Fear River (North Carolina). At Christmas time, slaves would cut down a tree (for wood for the Yule log) “with great ceremony, while hands chanted a part of the ‘Coonah’ song:—”

‘Christmas comes but once a year
        Ho rang du rango!
Let everybody have a share,
        Ho rang du rango!’ “

We later learn what Cameron meant by "the Coonah song."

Two days after Christmas, “The John Coonahs” came. In masking attire, their procession was accompanied by banjo, bones, triangle, castanets, fifes, drums, and “all manner of plantation instruments.”

“All the while the dance was in progress the musical voice of the leader was chanting the Coonah song, the refrain of which was taken up by hundreds of voices.”

John Coonah is clearly the Christmastide mumming tradition known by various names and especially remembered, now, in the Caribbean. Jamaicans, for example, call it "John Canoe." The author of this account conjectured that it was brought to the area from Barbados, and noted that, in the time of her memory, it was found on the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida, as well as New Orleans.

[I have previously toyed with the possibility that John Canoe has something to do with the chanty "John Kana-Kana-ka." Of note, Hugill learned the song from his Barbadian friend. The chanty's opening lines about "Today is a holiday... we'll work tomorrow but no work today" smack of the Christmas custom: for the slaves to have a respite on the holiday.]

I think it's worth considering a connection between the phrase "du rango" in this song and the previously encountered "ju-ranzo".

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 22 Jan 23 - 03:35 PM

Whall, 1910, presumably from recollection of the 1860s. Whall's text and speculations were often repeated.


“This was - and I daresay is - a well-known shanty. Either Bret Harte or Mark Twain - I forget which - has a character, an old skipper, who is fond of singing about the trials of a certain “Lorenzo. ” Whether this was the original name I do not know . But as far back as fifty years ago it was plain “Ranzo.” Lorenzo it might have been, for Yankee whalers took a large number of their men from the Azores, men of Portuguese descent, among whom "Lorenzo" would have been a common name enough. In the days I speak of the shanty was always sung to the regulation words, and when the story was finished there was no at

tempt at improvisation; the text was, I suppose, considered sacred.

"I never heard any variation from the words here given.

"Brisk...

"Oh, pity poor Reuben Ranzo,
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!
Oh, poor old Reuben Ranzo,
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!

O Ranzo was no sailor,
He shipped on board of a whaler.

And he could not do his duty ,
So they took him to the gangway.

And they gave him nine-and-thirty,
Yes, lashes nine-and-thirty.

Now, the captain being a good man,
He took him in the cabin.

And he gave him wine and water,
Rube kissed the captain's daughter.

He taught him navigation
To fit him for his station.

Now, Ranzo he's a sailor,
He's chief mate of that whaler.


(If Bret Harte or Mark Twain ever wrote of a skipper singing about "Lorenzo," their digitized works are silent about it.)

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 22 Jan 23 - 11:16 AM

GUEST was me.

To whom Gibb's "Lonzo" sounds real enough.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jan 23 - 09:42 AM

Nehemiah Adams,"A Voyage Around the World" (Boston:Holt) 22 [ref. to 1869]:

“Every tune at the pumps must have a chorus. The sentiment in the song is the least important feature of it, — the celebration of some portion of the earth or seas, other than here and now : "I wish I was in Mobile Bay," "I'm bound for the Rio Grande," with the astounding chorus from twenty-eight men, part of whom the fine moonlight and the song tempt from their bunks, is an antidote to monotony. The sailors were a merry set. Though only half of the crew — that is, one watch — were required each night at the pumps, all hands at first generally turned out because it was the time for a song. It was a nightly pleasure to be on the upper deck when the pumps were manned, and to hear twenty men sing. When making sail after a gale, the crew are ready for the loudest singing, unless it be at the pumps. For example, when hauling on the topsail halyards, they may have this song, the shanty man, as they call him, solo singer, beginning with a wailing strain :

Solo : O poor Reuben Ranzo !       (twice.)
Chorus : Ranzo, boys, Ranzo !   
Solo: Ranzo was no sailor!      
Chorus : Ranzo, boys, Ranzo !
Solo : He shipped on board a whaler! “
Chorus : Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!
Solo : The captain was a bad man!   “
Chorus : Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!
Solo : He put him in the rigging!   “
Chorus : Ranzo, boys, Ranzo!
Solo : He gave him six-and-thirty — “

by which time the topsail is mast-headed, and the mate cries, "Belay!"

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Brian Peters
Date: 22 Jan 23 - 06:41 AM

'Does anyone know whether L & H were in contact (via EFSDS, say) in the late '50s? The same question arose here some years back concerning "Blood-Red Roses."'

I did try to look into this when I was studying Lloyd's sea songs (many of which, of course, he modified substantially) a couple of years ago. I didn't find a smoking gun, and Dave Arthur (Lloyds biographer) didn't know of any early meetings between them, but my strong suspicion is that, in the case of 'Off to Sea Once More', the 'Liverpool' version that Hugill published in 1961 was put together by Lloyd around 1957 for 'Thar She Blows'. It may be the same story for 'Reuben Ranzo'.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 21 Jan 23 - 11:12 PM

A song sung by whalermen of St. Vincent and the Grenadines was presented (with musical score) by Roger Abrahams in _Deep the Water, Shallow the Shore_ (1974) as "Little Boy Lonzo." Abrahams doesn't make clear what task (if any) the song was put to, but I suppose it may have been to pull a boat out of the water.

Pp. 96-7

Oh, me Lonzo
>Little boy Lonzo

Oh, me Lonzo
>Little boy Lonzo

Oh, me Lonzo
>Big man Lonzo

Here come Lonzo
>Little boy Lonzo

The stanzas continue with little variation. Abrahams notes 16 in total, followed by "etc." After the first six, the choral response is consistently "Lonzo, Lonzo."

Though I've spaced the stanzas as Abrahams did, each repetition of the melody comprises two such stanzas. In other words, the true musical verse is: solo-chorus-solo-chorus.

The tempo is 96 BPM—one reason to suppose that, at that speed, it may have been a hauling song rather than a rowing song. The score is marked "Very rhythmic," which is helpful in that the rhythm noted probably is, as a result, a very good representation of the sung rhythm, as compared to some of the whalermen's other songs (which I know, for example, from hearing them perform live on two occasions), which are sung rather rubato or unmetered and which Abrahams struggled to notate precisely.

I suppose Abrahams audio recorded the whalermen's performance (and his presentation represents a transcription of that recording), but I haven't looked into finding the recording. I did, to aid envisioning the song, attempt a performance of it from the score. (No attempt was made to follow the lyrical text verbatim, as I assumed it was not fixed, and inserted my own ad-libs. Somehow I neglected to vary the chorus lyrics. I guess I found it weird that a group of singers would know how to be together on randomly shifting lyrics.)

https://youtu.be/rECWqv3hCaI

Some friends associated with the chanty performance group Pressgang Mutiny have been working, with the facilitation of Dan Lanier, with some of the folks who inherited St. Vincent's song traditions, and I look forward to what they might share if this song came up in their experience. Nevertheless, I've never heard it outside of my own feeble attempt to render the score.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: EBarnacle
Date: 21 Jan 23 - 08:10 PM

As the poet Omar put it, I believe in quatrain 27, I left by the same door through which I entered.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 21 Jan 23 - 02:27 AM

"who cares?"

Well, I care insofar as I said when/why I care -- while in other respects, sure, I don't care :) It's the same as how in some cases I feel like the spelling of "shanty" is the most useless thing to care about, while in other cases, attention to the spelling can open or preserve lines of thought.

If I'm trying to get at the history of this song (which may not be *the* project but it is *a* project), I don't want to get off course looking for Sicilian fishermen and Cape Verdean whalers and foreclose the likelihood that I would think to look for corn song material.

I care because to locate that corn song material helps to elucidate a bigger story about the chanty genre, piece by piece, which I don't think is well served by the frame of Sea Stuff.

Because I think Sea Stuff feeds an "algorithm" through which conventional ideas grow ever stronger as it is fed the same diet, obscuring other ideas. Google etc. run on algorithms that are affecting the shape of ideas people have, most obviously, but the Archive and scholarship are not immune to a similar process. As someone currently in classrooms, I see how dissemination of information is affecting the current generation's ideas in a different way, where the previous not knowing while being cognizant of what we don't know, which I think you speak to, Lighter, is being replaced with a greater confidence in believing they know something which is not true. So, I seek ways to buffer that from happening, and my way of doing that is by not being indifferent to topics that I think can benefit from informed speculation. If we don't speculate with good information, then foregone conclusions based on poor information -- by the majority of people who won't follow the "rule" of refraining from drawing conclusions that now overwhelm the ability of other ideas to be heard-- get the upper hand.

I'm admittedly a little nuts about this stuff because I've been disturbed by seeing more people enthralled by Artificial Intelligence. The thinking we are doing here is something that AI cannot do (yet!?) so I'm enthusiastic to do it no matter what comes of it, even if only for the sheer pleasure of it.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 09:52 PM

Hugill and other writers (he wasn't the first) were easily distracted by a desire to identify the "real" Reuben Ranzo. Hugill even spun a non-falsifiable and fanciful yarn about the possibility that the "original" Ranzo was a Sicilian fisherman named Lorenzo.

Well, who knows? And my own feeling is who cares? What possible difference could it make if Ranzo was really "Lorenzo" somebody, whose real life story is nearly as obscure as Homer's?

Sure, maybe there was an inept Lorenzo that his shipmates ridiculed into celebrity. But if so, so what?

All kinds of speculation are easy to come by. Whether "Shana(n)do(re)" originally meant Shenandoah or something else entirely makes me wonder how many angels actually walk like Egyptians on the head of a pin.

(Was Alexander Selkirk the "real" Robinson Crusoe? Or just one of several inspirations? Who was the "real" Mademoiselle from Armentieres? There were many contenders.)

There were so many chantey singers that almost any possible interpretation of anything must have been held by someone - if they even thought about it. The Ranzo of the chantey is imaginary.

J. Grey Newell, M.D. "Among Our Sailors" (N.Y.: Harper 1874):

"When hauling up the foretop-sail yard, after reefing or shaking out the reefs, they sing a song of more pretensions, as follows :

'Lorenzo was no sailor —
(Chorus.) — Renzo, boys, Renzo!
He shipped on board a whaler —
Renzo, boys, Renzo!
He could not do his duty —
Renzo, boys, Renzo!
They took him to the gangway,
And gave him eight and forty —
Renzo, boys, Renzo!
He sailed the Pacific Ocean—
Renzo, boys, Renzo!
Where'er he took a notion —
Renzo, boys, Renzo!
He finally got married,
And then at home he tarried —
Renzo, boys, Renzo!"

As Gibb has reminded us, the essence of a given chantey is in the frame and the tune, not the words.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: EBarnacle
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 09:11 PM

Mark Lovewell and I developed a theory that Ranzo was a Cape Verdean recruited by the whaler in which the action takes place. As a newby polliwog, the crew could reasonably ae called him a rube. Hey rube, Lorenze could readily have transmuted into Reuben Ranzo.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 07:04 PM

Hopefully this is not an unwelcome thread-drift-- I just want to register something I think is important to consider with songs like this. Which is, that the choruses can be considered to be unrelated to the solo lyrics and should be when exploring all options of how the songs developed.

My hypothesis -- which I can't prove and which I *can* argue but won't have the massive amount of time required to do it adequately! -- is that the chorus with "ranzo" came first. Only later was the morpheme "ranzo" taken from the chorus to form the name of a person who becomes the subject of the narrative.

Because of that, searching for "Ranzo" as the name of a person (in some speculations, a Portuguese, or a Jewish (!?) tailor, etc) may become a red herring.

I do feel compelled by Abrahams idea, which I mentioned above, that a paradigm (in the Levi-Strauss sense, ha) of someone being beaten by a superior shifted from a master-slave relationship to a captain-seaman relationship. Similarly compelling to me is the idea that some of the slave songs about being "sold off" to another plantation and being separated from family had their paradigms substituted so as to tell the tale of a sailor going across the sea being separated from home/beloved. Continuity of the "superior beats inferior" could be passed on without the "surface" elements of the inferior being called Ranzo, his being a tailor, etc.

I think the choruses are their own animal, in which certain sound formations were salient.

I think these sound formations, chorus phrases, popular morphemes -- whatever you want to call them -- transformed not only through oral transmission over time (ie "the folk process"). I theorize, further, that the transfer across cultural borders caused them to change.

If, as I subscribe to, a body of repertoire was transferred from an African American community to others outside of that community, then the "outsiders" would not understand everything they heard. The Irish, German, Scots, English men you found themselves, say, with a cotton jackscrew in their hands and tasked to acculturate to singing songs in the manner of an African American community that had been the sole practitioners of cotton screwing for decades before they arrived, would essentially be creating mondegreens as they learned the songs and attempted to parse unfamiliar phrases.

I've shared this view often in the case of "Shenandoah," where my hypothesis is that singings may not have been singing, originally, of "Shenandoah" (the river, the valley) but rather something else that later singers rationalized as the word "Shenandoah". From there, supposing that the word is Shenandoah, creators of solo lyrics would riff on lines that related to the Shenandoah (as opposed to "Sally Brown" or whatever chimera formed the object of longing in the paradigm of love and separation). I realize that that example is a tough one to argue convincingly.

As simpler example is "Hilo," wherein we know that the morpheme "hi-lo" (holler? hollow? etc) was a feature of the choruses of numerous plantation songs. In the hands of Davis and Tozer (and maybe working sailors), lacking the full understanding that "hilo" was simply a "chorus word", it was rationalized as a place, and the solo line is created, "Hilo town is in Peru"!

So, I suspect as well that "ranzo" was part of a chorus phrase that was rationalized as the name "Ranzo", whence later singers made Ranzo the name of the subject of the narrative in solo lyrics.

I think it's possible that several choruses are mixed up in this way. Some singers were supposed to have sung "Highland day" while we find elsewhere "Island day." There's "Hooker John" (a chanty noted by Hugill) on one hand and "hoojun" in other songs (which, possibly related, is among the variants of the mysterious word "hoosier" [probably a term for a rustic/redneck White working class fellow, in Black dialect) which after Hugill is sought out as a kind of boat!

I'm intrigued by the possibilities of choral phrases like "Lowlands away" and "Maringo." "Lowlands away" appears as "Lowlands a-RAY" in Alden's article, which I think is an article of such quality that I'm not prepared to dismiss the "ray" part as random. What about the chorus of "ranzo, ranzo, ray"? When I sing "lowlands a-ray" it sounds like "low ranzo ray." When I sing "Stormy's gone" it sounds like "Tommy's gone" with an S in front of it. (There's a recording of Caribbean singers who mix Tommy and Stormy in the same song.) "hilo my ranzo ray" -- "fire ma-ringo fire away." Is "maringo" really a thing, or is it "MY ringo"? I have a steamboat loading song I transcribed at the Library of Congress from a recording. It's recognizable as the "Bully Boat / Ranzo ranzo ray" song but the singer is clearly singing "rango". Is "rango" a variation of "ranzo" (it would seem to be in this context) that could lead us to "maringo" (my rango)?

I suppose all this is to say that "juranzo" and "juranzie" are pregnant with possibilities -- surely the listeners in the two accounts had no idea what they were hearing and "juranzo" was only their best attempt to transcribe the sound -- that compel me not to seek "ranzo" as a narrative character's name nor, necessarily as an independent word. Add to that the fact that "ranzo" occurs in songs that don't contain Reuben's narrative; it could have an independent existence.

The Chenault reference ("juranzie) is something I read in Abrahams and then followed up with the source. Then, with the clue of "ju-", I started searching with different spellings to find "juranzo" (the Richardson account).

Back to the thread: I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not inclined to put too much stock in the narrative of Reuben up to a point. We may locate the approximate point by which singers started to apply the Reuben narrative to a ~ranzo chorus (after which, it solidified and continued), whereas other aspects of the song may have had a more obscure life before the Reuben narrative was created.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 01:55 PM

Eloise Hubbard Linscott, "Folk Songs of Old New England"(N.Y.: Macmillan, 1939). Sung by Captain Charlton L. Smith of Marblehead, Mass. Learned in 1890s:

Roving Reuben Renzo,
Renzo, boys, Renzo,
Roving Reuben Renzo,
Renzo, boys, Renzo.

Renzo was no sailor.
He might have been a tailor.

Renzo took a notion,
That he would plough the ocean.

So he sold his plough and harrow,
And likewise sold his barrow.

And Renzo had a pony
And sold him to a loidy.       [No way "pony" rhymes with "lady" -JL

He went to London City,
Where the barmaids are so pretty.

He joined a limejuice whaler,
And tried to be a whaler.

The mate he was a bad man,
He took him to the gangway.

He gave him five and twenty,
And that was a plenty!

But the skipper he was a fine old man,
He took him to his cabin.

And taught him navigation,
And now he ploughs the ocean.


(No drinks or romance here. A tailor is unlikely to own a plough or harrow, his transition from ploughing furrows to ploughing the ocean is a nice touch.)

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 01:26 PM

W. H. Angel, "The Clipper Ship Sheila" (London: Heath Cranston, 1919) [referring to 1877]:

                   "Reuben Rantzau""

Solo "Hurrah...for Reuben Rantzau!"
Chorus "Rantzau...boys... Rantzau."
Solo "Hurrah for Reuben...Rantzau!"
Chorus "Rantzau...boys...Rantzau."

Solo "Rantzau was...no...sailor,"
Chorus "Rantzau...boys...Rantzau."
Solo "Rantzau...was a...tailor."
Chorus "Rantzau..boys...Rantzau."

Solo " Rantzau...joined...the...Beauty,
And did not know his...duty."

N.B. — If not wanted, the chorus is left out of the rest.

Solo "The skipper was a dandy,
And was too fond of brandy."

Solo "He called Rantzau a lubber.
And made him eat whale blubber."

Solo "'The Beauty' was a whaler,
Rantzau was no sailor."

Solo "They set him holystoning.
And cared not for his groaning."

Solo "They gave him lashes twenty,
Nineteen more than plenty."

Solo "Reuben Rantzau fainted,
His back with oil was painted."

Solo "They gave him cake and whisky,
Which made him rather frisky."

Solo "They made him the best sailor,
Sailing in that whaler."

Solo "They put him navigating,
And gave him extra rating."

Solo "Rantzau now is skipper
Of a China clipper."

Solo "Rantzau was a tailor.
Now he is a sailor."

"This is a good hoisting shanty."

(The suspension points suggest that this was sung rather slowly - exactly as 1880s American chanteyman Stanton H. King noted
in 1918. Modern singers, perhaps starting with Lloyd, are in more of a hurry. I don't believe Hugill ever recorded it.)

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 12:57 PM

Hi, Gibb and Tim. I hoped you'd get in on this.

"Juranzo" is tantalizing, esp. in tandem with the chantey line "Pretty gall but can't get at her.

R. A. Fletcher, "In the Days of the Tall Ships" (London: Brentano’s, 1928):

“The chanty ‘Reuben Ranzo’ is unlike most chanties as it tells something of a definite story, besides consisting of several verses. [i.e., "standard verses"- JL]. For some unknown reason, chantymen seldom attempted to alter its words much. It was sung a great deal when the topsails had to be hoisted, and its length was justified in ships that carried the old-fashioned single topsails. It began indifferently with the lines, sung as a solo, ‘O pity old Reuben Ranzo,’ or ‘Poor old Reuben Ranzo,’ or ‘Do you know old Reuben Ranzo?’ Every line was repeated twice, and the chorus was sung after every line and repetition. As far as I remember the second verse was:

        Solo – Poor Ranzo was a tailor.
        Chorus – Ranzo, boys, Ranzo.
        Solo – Oh, Ranzo was a tailor.
        Chorus – Ranzo, boys, Ranzo.

Sometimes the second time of the chorus was ‘Poor old Reuben Ranzo.’

        “Subsequent solos were, each line being a verse: --

        His father was a jailer.
        He shipped on board of a whaler.
        O Ranzo was no sailor.
        He could not do his duty.
        The mate, he being a hard man,
        Took him to the gangway,
        And gave him five and twenty.
        O Lord, how he did holler.
        The captain, being a kind man,
        Took him to his cabin,
        And gave him wine and brandy.
        And taught him navigation,
        To fit him to his station.
        
    “About this time the mate’s gruff ‘Bela-ay!’ ended the story of Ranzo for the time being, and the topsail halliards were made fast. The story does not end there, however. One version is that he kissed the captain’s daughter, another is that he married the owner’s widow, and both agree that ‘Now he’s Captain Ranzo.’ Who or what Reuben Ranzo was I have never been able to learn.

    “Every chantyman was privileged to alter the words to suit the needs of the moment. He had scope for doing so in ‘Ranzo.’ He might make out that the captain was a hard man and not the mate, or vice versa according to their popularity on board, or that they were both hard cases, or that being stung by remorse they vied with each other in offering hospitality to Ranzo, but the last was rare."

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 02:56 AM

Correction to above: "seen years fallen'/cookin'" should be "seben" (7)

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 02:50 AM

Chenault's memory of the corn song is supported by another's memory, this time of the Bayou Teche country in south-central Louisiana of the 1830s. It was a sugar cane growing area. Here's the passage with lyrics quoted:

[begin quote]
In 1830, more than half the population of the Teche country were negroes, who were much pleased with the change from cotton to sugar. True, during the harvest or rolling season it was more laborious, with its woodcording and night watches, which they called
"towers,” which lasted from about October to January. But even this was better than the cold morning baths of cotton picking, which often lasted from August to February, the most continuous labor of all the field crops. ... Then, again, there was something inspiring about a cane-yard at night, all illuminated, that kept them in a merry mood, and the well-cared for negro seemed to be in his native element in scenes like this. His jokes and loud-ringing laugh kept time with the rattle of the cane as he dashed it on the carrier and wheeled to get another turn. All this was varied every now and then with some wild melody far superior to the Ethiopian minstrelsy of commerce. A leader gave it out line by line, often his own improvised words, when all, men, women, and boys, would join in the chorus that fairly made the old cane-shed shake. It was a long time ago, but we hear it still:

Dat little dog his name was Venter,
O juranzo, ho!
And he could run de coldest scent-er,
O juranzo, ho!
Possum good wid sop and tater,
O juranzo, ho!
Pretty gall, but can't get at her,
O juranzo, ho!

This short meter corn-song would hardly die away in the stilly night when another would be started up, perhaps on the dirge order, the negro's specialty, and then another and another—so with jests and laughter and songs the night would pass away.
[end quote]

Pp. 594-5 in Richardson, F.D. “The Teche Country Fifty Years Ago.” _The Southern Bivouac_ [Louisville, KY] Vol 1, no. 10 (March 1886).

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Gibb Sahib
Date: 20 Jan 23 - 01:34 AM

Firsthand observations from the autumn of 1860 (I think) in central Kentucky at a corn sucking bee on a plantation. Hands, consisting of enslaved Black people, have come from another plantation voluntarily to help (and to partake in the food, liquor, and sociality). The work began with this song:

[begin quote]
"Old Master shot a wild goose."
A hundred voices answered from all parts of the field, and
each man grabbed a stalk for shucking.
"Ju-ran-zie, hio ho."
"It wuz seen years fallin'."
The multitude of voices cried out as at first.
"Ju-ran-zie, hio ho.
"It was seen years cookin'.
Ju-ran-zie, hio ho.
"A knife couldn't cut it
Ju-ran-zie, hio ho.
"A fork couldn't stick it.
Ju-ran-zie, hio ho."

There was harmony and perfect concord, although the men were scattered. The Norris farm was not far from the Kentucky River but it was higher than the surrounding land. Consequently,
the great volume of sound rolled off across the river and echoed and re-echoed in the Estill County hills beyond; and strangely enough these reverberations rolled away across Muddy Creek and echoed and re-echoed in the cedar hills. Such singing this generation will never hear, for I am writing this account many years after it occurred, and only those who have heard something of the kind will believe that echoes from a hundred vigorous voices can cause one to feel that he is listening to thousands of singers scattered over a large area. But it is true, as many yet living will bear me witness or at least it was true in Old Cane Springs.

I attended many other huskings during the remainder of that season and during my stay at Old Cane Springs, and I was always thrilled while listening to what seemed to be a thousand voices
in one melodious harmony. Not only were the common Negro melodies of the ante-bellum period sung, but such Foster songs as Old Black Joe, Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground, and My Old Kentucky Home rang out on the cool night air. And when Pike's [the song-leader] clarion tenor voice led in these songs, especially in Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Nellie Was a Lady, followed by a score of deep bass voices, the melody thrilled one beyond description.
[end quote]

Pp. 47-48 in Chenault, John Cabell and Jonathan Truman Dorris. _Old Cane Springs: A Story of the War Between the States in Madison County, Kentucky_. Louisville, KY: Standard Print Co., 1936.

In _Singing the Master_, Roger Abrahams suggested that the sailor form of "Reuben Ranzo" transmutes the a tale of a master whipping a slave into a ship's captain whipping a sailor.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: RTim
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 11:30 PM

A version collected in Portsmouth Workhouse, Hampshire in 1907 from James Bounds by Dr. Gardiner....

Oh, poor old roving Ranzo,
Ranzo boys Ranzo
Poor old roving Ranzo
Ranzo boys Ranzo

Now Ranzo came to New Brunswick
And he shipped on board of a whaler

Now he shipped for an able seaman
Now Ranzo was no sailor

Now Ranzo was a tailor
So he could not do his duty

So they took him to the first mate
Now the first mate being a bully

He triced him to a grating
And he gave him four and twenty

Now the captain being a good man
He took him down in the cabin

And he gave him wine and brandy
And he married the captain’s daughter

And he learned him navigation
Now Ranzo is a captain

Of a fine old Yankee clipper
Good Luck to poor old Ranzo.

-----------------------------------------
Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 06:48 PM

One of the more creative versions, sung for Helene Stratman-Thomas and Aubrey Snyder by Noble Brown of Woodman, Wis., 1946. Brown said he "learned that aboard a sailing ship on a voyage from San Francisco to Falmouth, England,” app. ca1900.

Poor old Reuben Ranzo,
Ranzo, boy, Ranzo,
Poor old Reuben Ranzo,
Ranzo, boy, Ranzo.

He shipped aboard a whaler,
Ranzo, boy, Ranzo,
But Ranzo was no sailor,
Ranzo, boy, Ranzo.

He could not do his duty.
For neither love nor beauty.

He could not find his sea legs.
Used clumsy, awkward land pegs.

He could not coil a line right.
Did not know end from rope's bight.

Cold not splice the main brace.
He was a seasick soft case.

He could not box the compass.
The skipper raised a rumpus.

The old man was a bully.
At sea was wild and woolly.

Abused poor Reuben plenty.
He scourged him five and twenty.

He lashed him to the mainmast,
The poor seafaring outcast.

Poor Reuben cried and pleaded,
But he was left unheeded.

Some vessels are hard cases.
Keep sailors in strict places.

Do not show any mercy,
For Reuben, James, nor Percy.

The ocean is exacting,
Is often cruel acting.

A sailor never whimpers,
Ranzo, boy, Ranzo,
Though shanghaied by shore crimpers,
Ranzo, boy, Ranzo.


Once again, Ranzo (not a tailor this time) is a victim - because he's ignorant and "soft." The apprentice in "The Cruel Ship's Captain" suffered more, though, as did "Andrew Ross."

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 03:02 PM

The earliest full text (The Riverside Magazine for Young People, 1868):

                You hear of Reuben Ranzo,
                        Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo!
                You hear of Reuben Ranzo,
                        Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo!

                Oh, Reuben was no sailor….

                He shipped on board a whaler--…
                
                He could not do his duty:….

                They took poor Reuben Ranzo--…

                They took him to the gangway--…

                They lashed him to the --… [sic; should be "grating"
                
                They gave him five and fifty:…

                I pity Reuben Ranzo….

                Our Captain bein' a good man,...
                He took poor Reuben Ranzo;…

                He took him in the cabin….
                
                An' give him wine and water….

                He kissed the Captain's daughter!
                        Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo!
                He married the Captain's daughter!
                        Ranzo, boys, O Ranzo!


(But he's still a plain sailor, at least for now. As for "wine and water," some singers - including the original - may have been thinking seltzer, not flat H2O.)


Ranzo is less fortunate in the version collected by Helen Hartness Flanders in 1934 from James Seaborn Adams, who learned it, apparently, around 1900:

O poor old Reuben Ranzo,
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo,
O poor old Reuben Ranzo,
Ranzo, boys, Ranzo.

O Ranzo was no sailor....

He shipped on board a Whaler....

He could not do his duty....

We took him to the gratings....

O! that was the end of Ranzo....


(A word to the wise.)

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 01:10 PM

Doerflinger's singer calls Ranzo "the worst old bastard on the seas." He affords no innuendo about the captain's daughter, however.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 12:21 PM

Haste makes waste, especially if multitasking. In Lloyd's version it isn't the captain who's bastard, of course; it's Ranzo.

But the bit about the daughter is still apposite.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 12:05 PM

Thanks, Wm.

Hugill's book appeared in 1961, but Lloyd recorded RR with those words on "Thar She Blows!" in 1957.

Does anyone know whether L & H were in contact (via EFSDS, say) in the late '50s? The same question arose here some years back concerning "Blood-Red Roses."

But surely Hugill had heard Lloyd & MacColl's nautical albums? When Hugill performed at Mystic in the '80s, he said he performed material that "sounds genuine to me." Lloyd's words do "sound" genuine - which is enough for everyone but us pedants.

Lloyd's great talent as an editor of trad songs was his perfect sympathy with the material. No sailor of the late 19th century would have objected to Lloyd's lyrics as strange or of questionable origin. Unlike many modern pastiches, they sound perfectly natural in both sentiment and vocabulary.

OTOH, no chanteyman in his right mind, within the captain's hearing, would have called the usual kind of captain a bastard or suggest that his his daughter was sexually "loose." The expected result would have been "fistic criticism" or the like.

Subject: RE: Reuben Ranzo
From: GUEST,Wm
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 11:28 AM

At a quick glance, "bit more than she oughter"(verse 18) and "toughest barstard [sic] on the go" (verse 27) are both in Hugill. Hugill says he got his assortment of RR couplets from one A. Spencer, but I don't think that necessarily rules out the possibility of Lloyd's influence on Hugill.

Subject: Reuben Ranzo
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Jan 23 - 11:02 AM

Surprised there's been so little discussion of this familiar chantey.

The DT version is a composite.

This text was collected by Robert W. Gordon, possibly in the San Francisco Bay area, about 1923. (I copied it twenty years ago from Gordon's papers in the Library of Congress.)

                         ROVING RANSO
                       (Topsail halliard)

Oh, we'll sing of Roving Ranso,
Chorus: Ranso, boys, Ranso,
Oh, we'll sing of Roving Ranzo,
Chorus: Ranso, boys, Ranso.

[Similarly:]

Oh, Ranso was no sailor....

But the son of a Boston tailor....

He shipped aboard of a whaler....

But he couldn't do his duty....

So they took him to the gangway....

And they lashed him four and twenty....

Aboard was the captain's datter....

She ran and told her father....

The captain being a kind man....

He took him to the cabin....

And fed him cakes and brandy....

And taught him navigation....

And now he's Captain Ranso....


One or two other early versions have "Rovin'" rather than the usual and now demanded "Reuben." The earliest text I've seen, however, - a single stanza from 1867 - has "Reuben." Captain John Robinson, recalling few lines from the same period, also had "Reuben."

For a chantey, the words of the ballad-like "Ranzo" are unusually stable. The well-known story rarely varies, and sailors seem not to have improvised the words very much: most variant words seem to reflect forgetting rather than creative innovation. (Bert Lloyd seems to have come up with the now-universal lines about a "bit more than she oughter" and "the hardest bastard on the go"; if not, where'd he get them?)

"Datter" represents an old-time New England pronunciation (between "flatter" and "hotter").

More in future.