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Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)

DigiTrad:
HANGIN' JOHNNY


Related threads:
Tune Req: Hanging Johnny (chantey) (6)
Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Leighton Robinson) (1)


radriano 25 Aug 04 - 12:32 PM
GUEST,Lighter 25 Aug 04 - 01:32 PM
GUEST,MMario 25 Aug 04 - 01:43 PM
radriano 25 Aug 04 - 04:06 PM
radriano 25 Aug 04 - 04:08 PM
Cluin 25 Aug 04 - 04:22 PM
Nerd 25 Aug 04 - 04:36 PM
Dave Ruch 25 Aug 04 - 04:39 PM
GUEST,Art Thieme 25 Aug 04 - 09:51 PM
Joe Offer 25 Aug 04 - 11:37 PM
Q (Frank Staplin) 26 Aug 04 - 12:31 AM
Q (Frank Staplin) 26 Aug 04 - 12:46 AM
Charley Noble 26 Aug 04 - 09:27 AM
radriano 26 Aug 04 - 05:59 PM
GUEST,Satchel 27 Aug 04 - 08:13 AM
Nerd 27 Aug 04 - 11:11 AM
radriano 27 Aug 04 - 11:39 AM
Nerd 27 Aug 04 - 11:58 AM
radriano 27 Aug 04 - 12:10 PM
GUEST,MMario 27 Aug 04 - 12:14 PM
Nerd 27 Aug 04 - 12:42 PM
Dead Horse 27 Aug 04 - 01:29 PM
GUEST 27 Aug 04 - 03:26 PM
GUEST,Melani 27 Aug 04 - 03:27 PM
Nerd 27 Aug 04 - 04:04 PM
Q (Frank Staplin) 18 Jul 11 - 10:26 PM
it'smagic 19 Apr 13 - 01:05 PM
GUEST,Allan Dennehy 24 Sep 16 - 06:28 AM
GUEST,Gerry 25 Sep 16 - 02:48 AM
Lighter 25 Sep 16 - 10:59 AM
GUEST,Bloke in groucho Mask 25 Sep 16 - 01:58 PM
GUEST,Gerry 25 Sep 16 - 08:14 PM
Lighter 26 Sep 16 - 09:24 AM
Lighter 06 Jun 18 - 09:08 PM
radriano 07 Jun 18 - 04:30 PM
GUEST,Phil d'Conch 07 Jun 18 - 08:10 PM
GUEST,Phil d'Conch 07 Jun 18 - 10:02 PM
Lighter 08 Jun 18 - 08:38 AM
GUEST,Phil d'Conch 24 Jul 23 - 09:31 PM
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Subject: Lyr Add: HANGING JOHNNY
From: radriano
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 12:32 PM

Wayne State University Press has recently published "Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors" by Ivan H. Walton and Joe Grimm, 2002. The collection contains an interesting version of the halyard shanty "Hanging Johnny" along with comments about the song that I had not heard before.

HANGING JOHNNY
Compilation as recalled by Carl Joys of Milwaukee (first four stanzas), Captain Timothy Kelly of Manitowoc, Wisconsin (fifth stanza), and Captain W.A. Ashley of Milwaukee (last six stanzas and his version of the melody). When [Robert] Collen was shown these stanzas, his remark was, "Yep, yep, but dere's lots more."

They call me "Hanging Johnny"
Chorus: Hooray, boys, hooray!
Oh, they call me "Hanging Johnny"
Chorus: Hooray, boys, hooray!

Oh, hang and haul together
Oh, hang for better weather

We'll sway and hang together
Like seabirds of a feather

They call me "Hanging Johnny"
They say I hang for money

They say I hung my mother
An' then I hung my brother

I'd hang all boarding' bosses
Who nicked us for their losses

I'd hang all scrimpin' owners
The same as any Jon-er

I'd hang a careless rigger
Who couldn't plan or figger

I'd hang all buck-o-mates
All on the Devil's gates

I'd hang a lazy soger
The same as any other

I'd hang 'em all together
I'd hang 'em all together

NOTES FROM THE BOOK:

The halyard chantey "Hanging Johnny," like many others sung on Great Lakes vessels, was an import from salt water, where it was widely used. Ocean sailor Frederick Pease Harlow described it this way: "Next morning had all the earmarks of a pleasant day, and the men, while setting the main topsail, were so elated over the prospects of finer weather that … no one could help putting his entire strength into the pull of this chantey, for not only were the men's voices unusually good, but the chantey was sung with a jerk and a swing … It was a great favorite with us and sung nearly every time the topsails were hoisted."

The song was evidently brought to the Lakes shortly after the Civil War. Captain Timothy Kelly of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, reported hearing sailors sing it while making sail in Buffalo harbor in the late 1860s when he was a boy and first "went to sea." Carl Joys and Captain W.A. Ashley, both of Milwaukee, recalled stanzas they had learned aboard big Milwaukee grain schooners in the early 1870s when each began more than a half century on Great Lakes vessels.

Joys explained that "hanging Johnny" did not refer to a sheriff's hangman, but instead to nimble young sailors who, when a topsail was to be hoisted, would climb to the masthead and "swing out" on the proper halyard. They would then ride to the deck as the men at the foot of the mast brought them down by their successive pulls. Joys recalled one chanteyman who would always tell the boys when to swing out by shouting up to them, "Hang, you bastards, hang!" Then, while the boys were hanging on the halyard fifty feet or more above the deck, he'd start his song and the crew would make two pulls on each chorus. When the boys hit the deck, they would tail on behind the other men and pull with them until the work was finished. Joys added that the word "hang" was "the best goddamn pullin' word in the language, especially on a down haul."

Ashley said the tune was "a bit mournful, but a good one for hoisting light canvas," noting that the words enabled the sailors to find fault, good-naturedly, with all their real and fancied enemies, "if the work lasted long enough." He said that the line about Johnny hanging for money was supposed to be humorous because Johnny, as an apprentice seaman, didn't make more than ten dollars a month.

A "boarding boss" was manager of a waterfront rooming and boarding house. A "Jon-er" was a namesake for the biblical Jonah who was credited with most of the bad luck aboard ship. A "rigger" was a man who equipped a vessel with its standing and running rigging (shrouds, braces, sheets, halyards, blocks, etc.). Should they fail under the stress of bad weather, sailors had to make their own repairs, so they had no love for a careless rigger who caused them this extra work. A "buck-o-mate" was an old-time ship's officer who enforced his orders by brute strength. A "soger" (soldier) was a malingering sailor who in various ways got out of doing his share of the work.


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 01:32 PM

Radriano, I for one appreciate the post.


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 01:43 PM

wow! Do they give notes like this on all the songs?


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: radriano
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 04:06 PM

Thank you, Lighter.

MMario, some songs have more detailed comments than others but it's a very nice collection, separated into a section of shanties and a section of sea songs. The book also includes a CD of field recordings although none of the songs on the disc are shanties.

I ordered my copy of the book directly from Wayne State University Press.

The collection includes a version of the well known shanty "Rolling Home" with a chorus of:

Rolling home, rolling home
Rolling home across the sea
Rolling home to old Chicago
Rolling home, old town to thee


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: radriano
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 04:08 PM

Darn, that link in my last post doesn't work. The web address for Wayne State University Press is:

http://wsupress.wayne.edu/

link fixed - joeclone


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: Cluin
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 04:22 PM

..."hanging Johnny" did not refer to a sheriff's hangman, but instead to nimble young sailors ...

Well, to part of them (anatomically speaking) anyway.


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: Nerd
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 04:36 PM

Yes, there is a lot of interesting information on each song, often taken from firsthand accounts of sailors. It's a very nice collection! I think Radriano picked out one of the most interesting entries for his post.


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: Dave Ruch
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 04:39 PM

I second the plug for the book - it's very well done. I've been able to marry the text to one of the two canal songs presented in the book (from a Port Colbourne, ON sailor) to a fragment of a tune collected in rural western NY to revive a great old Erie Canal ditty I haent heard anywhere else.


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 09:51 PM

This book looks like it will be used in many ways to enhance lessons for students on many levels and also to enhance many topics and areas of the various curriculum components. Friend, folksinger and Great Lakes balladeer, LEE MURDOCK and his wife JOANN are the ones who put this together. Eighteen songs of the lakes are used as the central documents of this volume---and a fine CD of all 18 songs is included with Lee singing lead for the most part with help from many fine musicians and singers like Mark Dvorak, Don Stiernberg, John Williams, Russ Hurst, Rob Williams, Jacqui Manning & Rich Prezioso, Howard Levy, Marianne Mohrhusen, Dave Humphries, Phil Cooper & Margaret Nelson and more. The is a lovely package and study guide.

I'm glad I saw this thread.

Art Thieme
Click for Windjammer thread


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 04 - 11:37 PM

There's now a fairly extensive article on this song in the Traditional Ballad Index:

Hanging Johnny

DESCRIPTION: Shanty. Characteristic line: "Away, away... Hang, boys, hang!" The singer reports, "They call me Hanging Johnny... Oh they say I hang for money. They say I hung my daddy... We'll... hang together... And we'll hang for better weather."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1917 (Great Lakes sailor Carl Joys says he learned it before 1870)
KEYWORDS: shanty ship sailor
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW,SE) Canada(Mar) Britain(England)
REFERENCES (17 citations):
Doerflinger-SongsOfTheSailorAndLumberman, p. 31, "Hanging Johnny" (1 text, 1 tune)
Walton/Grimm-Windjammers-SongsOfTheGreatLakesSailors, pp. 65-67, "Hanging Johnny" (1 composite text, 1 tune)
Colcord-SongsOfAmericanSailormen, pp. 72-73,"Hanging Johnny" (1 text, 1 tune)
Harlow-ChantyingAboardAmericanShips, pp. 47-48,"Hanging Johnny" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hugill-ShantiesFromTheSevenSeas, pp. 284-285,"Hanging Johnny" (1 text, 1 tune) [AbEd, pp. 208-209]
Sharp-EnglishFolkChanteys, LI, p. 56, "Hanging Johnny" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kinsey-SongsOfTheSea, pp. 92-93, "Hanging Johnny" (1 text, 1 tune)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 779, "Hanging Johnnie" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Shay-AmericanSeaSongsAndChanteys, p. 54, "Hanging Johnny" (1 text, 1 tune)
Smith/Hatt/Fowke-SeaSongsBalladFromNineteenthCenturyNovaScotia, p. 26, "Hangman Johnnie" (1 text)
Terry-TheShantyBook-Part1, #19, "Hanging Johnny" (1 text. 1 tune)
Parrish-SlaveSongsOfTheGeorgiaSeaIslands 47, pp. 203-204, "Call Me Hangin' Johnny" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 87, "Hanging Johnny" (1 text)
DT, HANGJOHN
ADDITIONAL: Captain John Robinson, "Songs of the Chantey Man," a series published July-August 1917 in the periodical _The Bellman_ (Minneapolis, MN, 1906-1919). Hanging Johnny" is in Part 2, 7/21/1917.
Frederick Pease Harlow, _The Making of a Sailor, or Sea Life Aboard a Yankee Square-Rigger_, 1928; republished by Dover, 1988, pp. 253-254, "Hanging Johnny" (1 text, 1 tune)
Harold Nestler, "Songs from the Hudson Valley" (article in _New York Folklore Quarterly_, Volume V, #2, Summer 1949), p. 94, "They Call Me Hanging Johnny" (1 text)

Roud #2625
RECORDINGS:
Bob Roberts, "Hanging Johnny" (on LastDays)
Leighton Robinson w. Alex Barr, Arthur Brodeur & Leighton McKenzie, "Hanging Johnny" (AFS 4231 A1, 1939; in AMMEM/Cowell)
W[illiam] H. Smith, "Hangman Johnny" (on NovaScotia1)

NOTES [65 words]: According to most sources, the "hanging" in this song does not refer to execution. Great Lakes sailor Carl Joys said it referred to the young sailors who went aloft to swing out the halyards when a sail was hoisted. Another account says it referred to a sailor who held a rope lashed to other sailors. If this "hanger" let them go in a bad sea, they would be washed overboard and lost. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.1
File: Doe031

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2023 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Aug 04 - 12:31 AM

Stan Hugill, in "Shanties From the Seven Seas," pp. 208-210, speaks of a letter he received from a Mr. Wexler:
"In a book entitled "Army Life in a Black Regiment" by Thomas W. Higginson, the author, who commanded a black regiment of Federal troops raised among the ex-slaves of the Sea Islands of the Georgia coast, devotes a full chapter to the songs sung by the men of the regiment. As one of the two songs he remembered which were not in the religious or spiritual class, he quotes two verses of hanging Johnny, and speaks of a third verse whose words apparently had some relation to men's enlistment in the army during the Civil War. The quotation is on pp. 220-221 of the edition of the book printed in Boston in 1870 by Fields, Osgood & Co.

Higginson also published this "remarkable ditty" in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1867, under the title, "Negro Spirituals."

HANGMAN JOHNNY

"O, dey call me Hangman Johnny!
O, ho! O, ho!
But I never hang nobody,
O, hang, boys, hang!

O dey call me Hangman Johnny!
O, ho! O, ho!
But we'll all hang togedder,
O, hang, boys, hang!"

"My presence apparently checked the performance of another verse, beginning "De buckra 'list for money," apparently in reference to the controversy about the pay-question....and to the more mercenary aims they attributed to the white soldiers."
Negro Spirituals


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Aug 04 - 12:46 AM

Higginson quoted another song in the same Atlantic Monthly article, which possibly was derived from a chantey. It was applied to mule drivers by the contrabands, but the rhythm suggests chantey. Slaves in the Sea Islands area at times worked on ships both as crew and as dock workers, and thus would be familiar with some of the sailors' songs.

Lyr. Add: THE DRIVER

O, de ole nigger-driver!
O, gwine away!
Fust ting my mammy tell me,
O. gwine away!

Tell me 'bout de nigger-driver,
O, gwine away!
Nigger-driver second devil,
O, gwine away!
Best ting for do he driver,'O, gwine away!
Knock he down and spoil he labor,
O, gwine away!

Same link as above.


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: Charley Noble
Date: 26 Aug 04 - 09:27 AM

Great notes and discussion.

Charley Noble


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: radriano
Date: 26 Aug 04 - 05:59 PM

Hey Charley, how are ya?


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: GUEST,Satchel
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 08:13 AM

This is a great thread, but I'm not buying that the "hanging" was refering to

"nimble young sailors...would climb to the masthead and "swing out" on the proper halyard. They would then ride to the deck as the men at the foot of the mast brought them down by their successive pulls"

Which halyard? the gaff? the peak? did they ride down one section of a triple-reeved halyard block, miraculously jumping off before losing their fingers in the sheave as the sailors on deck hauled? What about the fact that sailors usually didn't take too kindly to younger sailors skylarking when there was work to be done? This just doesn't add up.

This sounds too much like a sea story to believe from a single source. I'm not going to say that it's impossible, but from the standpoint of schooner rigging--it's pretty darn near impossible.

I need more proof before I start interpreting this song this way.


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: Nerd
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 11:11 AM

It does sound a bit fishy, especially when "hang" can really just mean "put all your weight on the rope and pull."

But I don't think the young sailors would be seen as skylarking in this case; they'd be acting as counterweights and thus helping the men pull.    And I don't think it's as complicated as you are making it sound. The boys would be higher up on the same part of the halyard the sailors were hauling on. They would not have to encounter the blocks and sheaves. I am not that familiar with big schooners, though, so I don't know if it would be possible for them to GET where I imagine they would have to be, given the description above.


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Subject: RE: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: radriano
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 11:39 AM

Guest Satchel, if you read my initial post you'll see that I state that some of the comments made were ones I'd never heard of before. The reason for this thread is to get imput on new information from a single source. Your comments are exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I wouldn't be at all surprised if "boys swinging out on the halyard" was a story concocted for the benefit of the collector. I just don't know enough about the technical side of a ship's rigging to claim to be an expert. One of my initial thoughts when I first read the comment was, just as Nerd pointed out, that the hanging boy(s) would act as a counterweight and thus help the work along.

At the end of Joe Offer's post there is another comment that I had never heard: "The "hanging" in this song does not refer to execution, but to a sailor who held a rope lashed to other sailors. If this "hanger" let them go in a bad sea, they would be washed overboard and lost. - RBW"


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailo
From: Nerd
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 11:58 AM

Another reason to take these explanations with a grain of salt is that, in some versions of the words, "hanging" obviously DOES refer to forcibly hanging people.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: radriano
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 12:10 PM

That's true, Nerd, but there's almost always a verse with the line "But I never hanged nobody" that gives a hint that something else is going on.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 12:14 PM

that could be folk process though - as with the many blatently sexual variations and verses for "Drunken Sailor"


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailo
From: Nerd
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 12:42 PM

Good points, guys. Clearly, there IS usually something else going on, but as i said it could just be "put all your weight on the rope."


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailo
From: Dead Horse
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 01:29 PM

Nearly all the verses actually DO refer to hanging as a means of execution, but that doesn't mean that is what the song is about.
Hanging and hauling together IS.
Like radriano, I wish I knew more about sailing a large vessel, but in my case I get sea-sick if I dawdle while crossing a bridge;-0


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 03:26 PM

The version I know finishes with, "I hangs topsails for me money." I had always assumed it referred to bending on new sails. I'm sure all the references to hanging Mom and Grandma are plays on the word "hang" for the amusement of the crew.

I wouldn't know much about riding the halyard down, but it would probably be possible on a squarerigger, though probably not very advisable.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailors
From: GUEST,Melani
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 03:27 PM

Sorry, I should have signed that last--I forgot I'm not at home.

Melani


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny from Great Lakes sailo
From: Nerd
Date: 27 Aug 04 - 04:04 PM

Yeah, melani, that was my thought too...on a square-rigger you COULD do it, though I've never seen anyone claim it was done. According to Satchel, on a schooner you can't do it, but I can't figure out exactly why.


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Subject: Lyr Add: HANGING JOHNNY
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 10:26 PM

Lyr. Add: HANGING JOHNNY

They call me "Hanging Johnny,"
Away I oh!
They say I hang for money.
So hang, boys, hang!

Why did you hang your daddy,
And then your mother, laddie!

They say I hung my mother,
And then I hung my brother.

I hung my sister Nancy,
Because I took a fancy.

A rope, a beam, a ladder,
I hung them all together.

They call me "Hanging Johnny,"
But I never hung nobody.

I'd hang a brutal mother,
The same as any other.

I'd hang a noted liar,
I'd hang a bloated Friar.

I'd hang a highway robber,
I'd hang a burglar jobber.

I'd hang all wrong and folly,
And hang to make things jolly.

A rope, a beam, a ladder,
I'd hang them all together.

Come hang and sway together,
And hang for finer weather.

They call me "Hanging Johnny,
But I never hung nobody.

"The words "Hang, boys, hang," are used in a topsail-halliard hoist, when sweating up the yard "two blocks" where,
in swaying off, the whole weight of the body is used. The sing-out, from some old shellback, usually being words such as "Hang, heavy! Hang, buttocks! Hang you sons of -------, Hang."
After setting the topsails, we gave her the main-topgallant sail, which was all she could carry in a heavy head-sea. The decks were awash all day.
".... the chantey was sung with a jerk and a swing as only chanteys in 6/8 time can be sung. While the words were of Negro extraction, yet it was a great favorite with us and sung nearly every time the topsails were hoisted."

With musical score.
Frederick Pease Harlow, 1928, The Making of a Sailor, Dover reprint of Publication Number 17 of the Marine Research Society, Salem, MA.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: it'smagic
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 01:05 PM

Wonderful thread. I was listening to this by Corrie Folk Trio, who didn't use all the lyrics and wondering how it qualified as a sea shanty. I thought it must be about a criminal!


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: GUEST,Allan Dennehy
Date: 24 Sep 16 - 06:28 AM

Michel Tonnere sing a fantastic version of this song. Check youtube.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 25 Sep 16 - 02:48 AM

There's a good version of this by Milt Okum and the Seafarer's Chorus, Elektra EKS 7182. More readily accessible on the compilation CD, Constant Sorrow, Gems From the Elektra Vaults. The lyrics are a subset of the ones posted by Frank Staplin, three posts up, 18 July 2011.

The CD also has a fine recording of Whiskey-O, Johnny-O, by the same group.

When I first saw this, I thought Milt Okum had to be a typo for Milt Okun, producer for Peter Paul and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, John Denver and many others, but I'm now convinced Okun and Okum were/are two different people.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: Lighter
Date: 25 Sep 16 - 10:59 AM

"Milt Okun" is the guy, according to the 1970 Library of Congress Catalog - and the LP itself!

It's a great album if (but only if) you can enjoy "art-music" settings and performances. Another good one like, but even artsier, it is "Sea Shanties" (1959), by the Roger Wagner Chorale.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: GUEST,Bloke in groucho Mask
Date: 25 Sep 16 - 01:58 PM

Meanwhile, the version I associate with most, as spilled out from the dulcet tones of Johnny Booker of Barnsley back in the day occasionally included;

They say I hanged a copper
I gave him the long dropper

Depending on the beer quality and quantity, it could also include;

They say I hanged 'me granny
I hanged her by the elbow

etc etc

You can tell its a British version by "hanged" as opposed to "hung" when it morphed into execution rather than sailor lashing on deck.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 25 Sep 16 - 08:14 PM

Lighter, I'm sure you're right about Okun/Okum, but I'm not sure how to explain this: http://teamrock.com/artist-directory/m/milt-okum-%2526-the-seafarer%2527s-chorus?id=5Hedm2NvGQ6wSrit4dEfEM seems to show an album cover for Milt Okum and the Seafarer's Chorus, Salty Seafaring Shanties.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: Lighter
Date: 26 Sep 16 - 09:24 AM

Am embarrassed to say that having double-checked the actual LP for the first time in years, the name given there is "Okum."

However, the L of C Catalog (1968-1972, vol. 3) does indeed list the conductor as "Milt Okun."

Okun's autobiography, _"Along the Cherry Lane," as told to Richard Sparks, lists Okum as "arranger and conductor" of the Seafarers Chorus (p. 286). Contemporary reviews, partly visible at Google Books, vary in the spelling. But no reference to a "Milt Okum" apart from the album seems findable.

My guess is that either "Okum" on the LP was simply an error, or else that Okun felt like punning mischievously on the nautical "oakum,"
defined as "loosely twisted hemp or jute fiber impregnated with tar or a tar derivative and used in caulking seams and packing joints."

It also seems that the album's initial release was in *1960* on the Elektra label. It was re-released (in 1970?) on Legacy.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: Lighter
Date: 06 Jun 18 - 09:08 PM

John Hay, (Lincoln’s secretary),"Lincoln and the Civil War," p. 63 [from notes taken on a visit to Ft. Clinch, Fla., 1863] :

“The sea. The songs of the [Negro] boatmen.

                The bully boats a-coming
                Oh ho, Oh ho
                Don’t you hear the oars a humming
                Hang, boys, hang.
                We’ll all hang together,
                We will hang one another, &c. &c.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: radriano
Date: 07 Jun 18 - 04:30 PM

Good grief! I was going through this post with interest before I realized that it was me that started it back in 2004.

Haven't been on Mudcat in quite a while.

For those of you who know me I should announce that chanteyranger and I have a fourth album of sea shanties. For the time being it is being offered digitally from my new website:

www.walkashore.com

Hope all of you mudcatters are doing well!


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 07 Jun 18 - 08:10 PM

All that salty “hanging” business up at the top of the thread would get one is a positively biblical case of rope burn or ded. Meanwhile:

Lighter-on-Hay: “...from notes taken on a visit to Ft. Clinch, Fla., 1863.”

Note: T.W. Higginson was station at Ft. Clinch, 1863, same-same source as Q's below:

Q - 26 Aug 04: “...In a book entitled "Army Life in a Black Regiment" by Thomas W. Higginson, the author, who commanded a black regiment of Federal troops raised among the ex-slaves of the Sea Islands of the Georgia coast, devotes a full chapter to the songs sung by the men of the regiment.”


“A proclamation by Confederate President Jefferson Davis had indicated that members of the regiment would not be treated as prisoners of war if taken in battle: The enlisted men were to be delivered to state authorities to be auctioned off or otherwise treated as runaway slaves, while the white officers were to be hanged.” [1st SC wiki](Ref: CSA, General Orders, No. 111, 24 December 1862 & Benjamin Butler.)

Note: Plenty of atrocity to go around on boths sides but nobody mentioned here got hung for it… afaik.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 07 Jun 18 - 10:02 PM

**Okun/Okum

We Sing Of The Sea, Elektra, LP, Mono, EKL-182 - “Okun” on the jacket and vinyl, 1st press & reisssue.

We Sing Of The Sea, Elektra, LP, Stereo, EKS-7182 - Same-same, one pressing that I'm aware of.

Note: All three pressings use one graphic artwork. The front slick just shifts up or down to fold the “Panoramic Stereo” badge over the top lip.

Salty Seafaring Shanties, Elektra, Legacy Series, LP, Stereo, LEG-117 - “Okum” jacket & vinyl. Minor shifts in titles & tracks but mostly a reissue of the above with different artwork.


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Jun 18 - 08:38 AM

"We Sing of the Sea" was issued in 1960:

http://www.atsf.co.uk/elektra/discography.php?from=860&to=1350

Despite a couple of unexplained title changes, "Salty Seafaring Shanties" is the same. (E.g., 1960's "Bottle-O" gets renamed "Early in the Morning" on the reissue.)


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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Hanging Johnny (from Great Lakes sailors)
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 24 Jul 23 - 09:31 PM

"Up bound the sails amidst the dangers of a storm, in the bitterest cold, in midnight gales––up they cheerily fly, to the tune of

        “Hang boys, hang!” or,
        “Haul the bowling, the bowling haul;”

the pull and the tug being unanimously given with the utterance of the last word."
[At Sea in a Clipper*, The Leisure Hour, vol.IV, 1855]
* James Baines (clipper)(1854)

Full post here: /mudcat.org/detail.cfm?messages__Message_ID=4177598


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