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Origins: The Glendy Burk
DigiTrad:
GLENDY BURKE
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Subject: THE GLENDY BURK From: MMario Date: 05 Jul 02 - 01:15 PM THE GLENDY BURK (Stephen Foster) Oh, the Glendy Burk is a mighty fast boat With a mighty fast captain too He sits up there on the hurrican roof And he keeps an eye on the crew. I can't stay here, 'cause they work too hard I'm bound to leave this town, I'll pack my duds and tote 'em on my back When the Glendy Burk comes down. Ho, for Lou'siana! I'm bound to leave this town. I'll pack my duds and tote 'em on my back When the Glendy Burk comes down. Oh. the Blendy Burk has a mighty fine crew And they sing the boatman's song. they burn the pitch and the pine knot too for to shove the boat along. The smoke goes up and the engine roars And the wheel goes round and round So fare thee well, I'll take a little trip When the Glendy Burk comes down. chorus I'll work all night in the wind and storn I'll work all day in the rain. till I find myself on the Levee Dock In New Orleans again. They make me work in the hayfield here And knock my head with the flail. I'm goin' where they work with the sugar and the cane And they roll on the cotton bale. chorus My lady love is pretty as a pink. I'll meet here on the way. I'll take her back to the sunny old south And there I'll make her stay. So don't you fret, my honey dear, Oh don't you fret, Miss Brown. I'll take you back 'fore the middle of the week When the Glendy Burk comes down. chorus X:1 T:THE GLENDY BURK C:Stephen Foster I:abc2nwc M:2/4 L:1/16 K:G z6G G|G2 B2 A2 c c|B c d2 G2 A A|B B B2 d2 d2| A6A2|G2 B2 A2 c c|B B d2 G2 A A|B2 B2 A2 A A| G6G2|G2 B2 A2 c c|(B c) d2 G3 A|B2 B2 d2 d2| A6A2|G2 B2 A2 c2|B c d B G2 G A|B2 B2 A2 A2| G6z2|d3 d e3 d|B2 d3 zd2|G2 G2 A2 A2| B4z2d2|G2 B2 A2 c2|B c d B G2 G A|B2 B2 A2 A2|G6z2 w:Oh, the Glen-dy Burk is a mi-ghty fast boat With a mi-ghty fast cap-tain w: too He sits up there on the hur-ri-cane roof And he keeps an eye on the w:crew. I can't stay here, 'cause they work_ too hard. I'm bound to leave this w:town, I'll pack my duds and tote 'em on my back When the Glen-dy Burk comes w:down. Ho, for Lou'-si-an-a! I'm bound to leave this w:town. I'll pack my duds and tote 'em on my back When the Glen-dy Burk comes down. |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 05 Jul 02 - 01:31 PM The Levy Collection has this edition (Click here), which is also HERE:
Title: Foster's Melodies. No.48. The Glendy Burk. A Plantation Melody. ~Masato |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 05 Jul 02 - 01:39 PM It's in the DT, as GLENDY BURKE with midi. ~Masato
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: MMario Date: 05 Jul 02 - 02:00 PM My apologies - I usually don't miss when I search. and I DID search - several times. Joe - ignore the e-mail you got on this. |
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Subject: ZDTStudy: THE GLENDY BURK From: Joe Offer Date: 05 Jul 02 - 02:06 PM Well, can we make this into a DTStudy? Any further information on the song, or any corrections to the lyrics? What is the correct spelling of the boat's name? Was the Glendy Burk a real ship, or a product of Foster's imagination? -Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 05 Jul 02 - 02:09 PM "The Glendy Burk was first published by Firth and Pond for Stephen Foster in 1860 (Foster's Melodies No. 48). There are a few differences in the sheet music (Levy Coll.) from the version posted by MMario. The original was written with common pronunciations of the time. "The" is "de" throughout, etc. 1. line 3: He sits up dah on de hurricane roof. 1. line 5: I can't stay here, for dey work too hard; 2. line 1: De Glendy Burk has a funny old crew 2. line 5: De smoke goes up and de ingine roars 2. line 7: So fair you well! for I'll take a little ride 3. line 3: Till I find myself on de levy-dock 3. line 8: And roll on the cotton bale (Spellings in the sheet music- ingine, fair you well- preserved) |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: MMario Date: 05 Jul 02 - 02:10 PM According to what I can find on the web (no sources listed) the Glendy Burk was a steamboat built in 1851 - Foster wrote the song in 1860. |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 05 Jul 02 - 02:25 PM "The Glendy Burke (Foster omitted the e in his song) was an actual steamboat, built in 1851, that worked the Mississippi out of New Orleans" (Richard Jackson, Stephen Foster Song Book, Dover, 1974, pp. 174-175); "an actual steamboat which plied the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers from Pittsburgh to New Orleans" (A Treasury of Stepen Foster, Random House, 1946, p. 131). ~Masato |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 05 Jul 02 - 02:42 PM It's very interesting to find that the title is "The Glendy Burke" (the e is restored) in Biography, Songs and Musical Compositions of Stephen C. Foster, compiled and edited by his brother Morrison Foster (Pittsburgh: Percy F. Smith Printing and Lithography Co., 1896, pp. 74-75). This book is "Notable as the first attempt to provide the public with a substantial collection of Foster's music in a reliable edition" (underline added) (Calvin Elliker, Stephen Collins Foster: A Guide to Research, Garland, 1988, p. 46). ~Masato |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 05 Jul 02 - 02:52 PM Masato, in Morrison Foster's book, did "de" become "the," etc.? In other words, did he polish the language? |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 05 Jul 02 - 03:08 PM Dicho, it's not polished; the change seems to be "Burke" only. Here it is (one stanza may be enough).
THE GLENDY BURKE (Morrison version)
De Glendy Burke is a mighty fast boat,
CHORUS: Ho! for Lou'siana! ~Masato
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 05 Jul 02 - 03:18 PM "I can't stay here, for de work's too hard" is different, too. |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: Charley Noble Date: 05 Jul 02 - 09:38 PM Nice work! Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 06 Jul 02 - 12:22 AM The 1860 Firth, Pond & Co. edition (linked to above) is "The earliest known copy" (Saunders and Root, The Music of Stephen C. Foster, vol. 2, Smithsonian, 1990, p. 427). Morrison changed the spelling perhaps because he must have known Burke himself. See the following, with additional info on the ship:
"The song is retrospective in other ways, too. The steamboat Glendy Burke (never a sure speller, Foster dropped the "e") had been built in Jefferson, Indiana, in 1851, and named for a New Orleans banker, merchant, and legislator, Glenn D. Burke, with whom Morrison Foster had done business back in 1843. Times had changed since "Oh! Susanna," however, and railroads had overtaken steamboats as the swiftest means of transport. Unlike the Telegraph No. 1 and No. 2, which had been going strong when Foster immortalized them, the Glendy Burke was no longer even afloat. In 1855, the 425-ton side-wheel packer hit a snag and broke up near Cairo. Its wreckage damaged other vessels for decades. Foster's "mighty fast boat" was nothing but a navagational hazard." (Ken Emmerson, Doo-Dah!: Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture, Da Capo, 1998, p. 255)
Other info is in William W. Austin, "Susanna," "Jeanie," and "The Old Folks at Home": The Songs of Stephen C. Foster from His Times to Ours, 2nd. ed. (University of Illinois Press, 1987, pp. 240-42). ~Masato |
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Subject: Lyr Add: THE GLENDY BURK (1860) From: masato sakurai Date: 06 Jul 02 - 10:49 PM I think the 1860 version should be posted (asterisked parts in square brackets are those in Morrison Foster's edition).
THE GLENDY BURK* [*BURKE, throughout]
De Glendy Burk is a mighty fast boat,
CHORUS:
De Glendy Burk has a funny old crew
CHORUS
I'll work all night in de wind and storm,
CHORUS
My lady love is as pretty as a pink,
CHORUS ~Masato
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 07 Jul 02 - 04:30 AM "Even in 1860 Foster's imagination of Black people was flagrantly unreal. The text of 'The Glendy Burk,' if the singer is Black, includes some of Foster's most fatuous lines: [song text quoted] "Foster's singer, discontented with the climate and the monotonous work in Pittsburgh or some similar town, forgets that he is supposed to be Black, or else he forgets all that Uncle Tom has taught the world about New Orleans and the 'sunny old south.' That this song was accepted for publication in 1860 by Firth and Pond is surprising; that it was seldom sung before the 1930s is less so. Without the words, however, it makes a good polka for fiddle or banjo, with a range like that of 'Away Down South.' Is it possible that Foster wrote 'The Glendy Burk' around 1850, discarded it, and retrieved it only when he was becoming desperate about money? The boat named in the title was launched for a New Orleans banker, Glenn D. Burke (1804-79), with whom Morrison had some business. After 1853, when the railroad offered a faster and slightly more reliable connection between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati than the river, Foster probably did not see the boat. But Foster's sketchbook shows that he worked on the song about 1860, he changed the fifth line, for example, 'I get no work' to 'dey work too hard.' Both phrases can be read as applying to Foster himself--his hard work failed to create a demand for most of his songs." -- William W. Austin, "Susanna," "Jeanie," and "The Old Folks at Home": The Songs of Stephen C. Foster from His Times to Ours, 2nd ed. (University of Illinois Press, 1987, pp. 240-241). |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: EBarnacle1 Date: 08 Jul 02 - 02:29 PM Maybe his hard work failed to keep him as rich as he wanted but from what I have heard, much of his hard work consisted of taking other people's songs and putting his name on them. There is an ongoing discussion of this in regard to "Camptown Races." |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: Dicho (Frank Staplin) Date: 08 Jul 02 - 02:57 PM Many of the best composers, classical and popular, took ideas from others and made them into something important and immortal. Foster's tunes are among those. |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: GUEST,Genie Date: 08 Jul 02 - 07:14 PM Didn't Foster get ripped off in return by Christie of The Christie Minstrels Show fame? Or was it someone else who took Foster's songs and passed them off as his own and made money on them while Foster fell on hard times? |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 20 Jul 02 - 02:04 AM Two quotations from Evelyn Foster Morneweck, Chronicles of Stephen Foster's Family, 2 vols. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1944). The author was Morrison's daughter.
"Morrison was traveling regularly on the river now. His next trip in 1843 was to New Orleans in November, and straght back again; he arrived home on the steamboat Allegheny on December 10. This winter journey resulted in a $14,400 order placed with Burke, Watt and Company, commission merchants of Carondelet Street, whose chief officer was the notable Gleny Burke. The famous steamboat, later immortalized in song by Stephen, named for Glendy Burke, was not launched, however, until 1851. Her first captain was J.M. White. Morrison's impression was that Mr. Burke's name orginally was Glen D. Burke, not Glendy; as he personally knew Glendy Burke, it would seem that he had some authority for this belief." (Vol. I, pp. 273-274; the spelling here is "Glen", not "Glenn")
"Before leaving for New York, he [i.e., Stephen] sent to Firth, Pond in 1860,'Poor Drooping Maiden,' 'None Shall Weep a Tear for Me,' 'The Wife; or He'll Come Home,' 'Under the Willow She's Sleeping,' probably 'Cora Dean,' and one good song, 'The Glendy Burk,' composed in his best old-time manner. Glendy Burke, for whom the famous steamboat was named, was a well-known merchant and influential citizen of New Orleans. Morrison had many dealings in the '40's with Mr. Burke who was associated with the firm of Burke, Watt & Co. of Carondelet Street, New Orleans. As an acknowledgment of the compliment of having the steamboat named for himself, it is said that Mr. Burke presented the boat with a grand piano. Stephen's song is a spirited, rollicking steamboat ballad that has become a river clasic. It is written in simple negro dialect, but inoffensive as it was, this dialect was considered quite too vulgar to be sung by a certain genteel young lady of the '60's whose bound volume of music I recently inspected. Her fastidious singing teacher in the young ladies' seminary at which he taught, had crossed out all the 'de's' and 'wid's' and 'dah's' and substituted the proper 'the's' and 'with's' and 'there's' which the elegance of the young pupil's social position demanded--her father was a senator." (Vol. II, pp. 520-521; there's a photo of "Original manuscript" of it, facing p. 520) ~Masato
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 20 Jul 02 - 10:03 PM "It is important to note that 'The Glendy Burk' is written in Negro dialect, and that Stephen's songs in recent years had numbered very few of this variety. It is true that the dialect of 'The Glendy Burk' is less extreme than it was in Foster's earlier 'Ethiopian' songs, yet it makes us feel as though Stephen had gone down to the wharves for another glimpse of the Negro deckhands and stevedores, and had written a song for them as of yore. And he chose for his theme a steamboat, the 'Glendy Burk,' which plied the waters of the Ohio River. "It is interesting to know that about a year before this an article had appeared in the New York Evening Post, 'Who Writes Our Songs?', in which the author wrote in part:
Ethiopian minstrelsy, as it is called, has ... culminated, and is now in its decline. Appreciating this fact, Mr. Foster has lately somewhat changed his style, and abandoning the use of negro jargon, he now writes songs better adapted for general use.
"The last of the six songs published in the first half of 1860 was 'Cora Dean.' There is no copyright entry in the Library of Congress to establish the day and month this song was copyrighted, yet it was surely published before August as it appears on a list of songs that were issued prior to that time. Its words appear in Foster's manuscript book before and after the pages devoted to 'The Glendy Burk.'"
-- John Tasker Howard, Stephen Foster: America's Troubadour (Tudor Publishing Company, 1934, 1939, pp. 300-301) ~Masato |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: masato sakurai Date: 23 Aug 02 - 02:50 PM Original manuscript of "The Glendy Burk" (from: Evelyn Foster Morneweck, Chronicles of Stephen Foster's Family, Vol.2 (1944, facing p. 520), which is digitalized and on line. ~Masato |
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Subject: RE: Tune Add: THE GLENDY BURK From: GUEST,jsland Date: 13 Nov 10 - 05:25 PM Glendy Burke was a real character who just happens to be my grandmother's grandfather. He lived in Louisiana, was a millionaire twice, lost his second fortune in the Civil War, and was a temporary Mayor of New Orleans. He had vast plantations and all the good and bad that went with that. |
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Subject: Origins: The Glendy Burke From: Joe Offer Date: 13 Nov 10 - 05:47 PM This page (click) has some interesting information on the mayoral administration of Glendy Burke:
-Joe- |
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Subject: RE: Origins: The Glendy Burk From: Mark Ross Date: 13 Nov 10 - 07:04 PM There is a great version of this recorded by Larry Hanks & Mike Marker on their CD THE TRUTH FOR CERTAIN. It's on Dandelion Records 2740 Prince St. Berkeley CA 94705 Mark Ross |
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Subject: RE: Origins: The Glendy Burk From: LadyJean Date: 13 Nov 10 - 11:33 PM Pittsburgh is the world's largest inland port. In Foster's day it was the starting point for people heading west. There was a lot of traffic on the rivers. (We have 3 of them here.) Foster, living in Lawrenceville wasn't far from the Allegheny. So he knew the river. The whole Minstrel thing began in Pittsburgh when a performer watched an African American deckahnd dancing on a dock and mimicked him that night on the stage. When I was in college we sang Foster songs as part of a bicentennial choir concert. The girls had to sing "Gentle Annie", while the boys got to sing "Glendy Burk" to Dr. Ihara's banjo. We felt the injustice pretty strongly, I can tell you. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: The Glendy Burk From: Charley Noble Date: 20 May 19 - 11:05 AM Still good work! Charlie Ipcar |
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