DTStudy: Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor

Subject: RE: DTStudy: Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor
From: Metchosin
Date: 16 Nov 05 - 03:11 PM

According to Edith Fowke, the words "seem to have been borrowed from a song known in New York music halls around 1880, but the tune is different" and also "Indian Harbour is on the Labrador coast and was an important codfisshing centre around the turn of the century"

Subject: RE: DTStudy: Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor
From: Metchosin
Date: 16 Nov 05 - 02:53 PM

Bacalhao is an island with a lighthouse on it, about 15 miles east of Twillingate, Newfoundland.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 16 Nov 05 - 02:02 PM

Bacalhao is salted codfish. Can't find it as a location.
You've been at the jar- Ditital? Third verse- Baffin mis-spelled.

Hear a clip of Eddie Primroy singing the sons at the MacEdward Leach site: Jack Was

"Composed in the U. S. in the 1880s as part of a theatrical parody of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. Popularized in a recording by Frank Crumit in 1928." From MacEdward Leach and the Songs of Atlantic Canada, website linked above.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Nov 05 - 01:46 PM

The DT version of this song is almost an exact transcription of the version found in Fowke-Johnston's Folk Songs of Canada (1954), which in turn comes from Gerald S. Doyle's pamphlet titled Old-Time Songs and Poetry of Newfoundland. Here are the background notes from Fowke-Johnston:

This song has been popular in Newfoundland for over fifty years. The Jonah theme appels to the fishermen for they have another song called "Paddy and the Whale" that tells much the same story. The words for "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor" seem to have been borrowed from a song known in the New York music halls around 1880, but the tune is different.
Bacalhao (pronounced back-a-loo) is a rocky island off the east coast of Newfoundland where an important lighthouse stands. Indian Harbour is on the Labrador coast and was an important codfishing centre around the turn of the century.

The version on page 84 of Silber & Silber's Folksinger's Wordbook is identical (except that Silber/Silber has "deep blue sea." Note that in both Silber/Silber and Fowke/Johnston, the fifth line of the first verse is shorter:

He was born on board his father's ship
As she was lying to

Seems like that might scan better.

Subject: DTStudy: Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Nov 05 - 01:15 PM

This is an edited DTStudy thread, and all messages posted here are subject to editing and deletion.
This thread is intended to serve as a forum for corrections and annotations for the Digital Tradition song named in the title of this thread.

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I've always enjoyed this song, so I think it's time for me to learn it. I'm wondering what background information and what other versions we can dig up.

Here's the version in the Digital Tradition:

JACK WAS EVERY INCH A SAILOR

Now, 'twas twenty-five or thirty years
Since Jack first saw the light;
He came into this world of woe
One dark and stormy night.
He was born on board his father's ship one day
As she was lying to,
'Bout twenty-five or thirty miles
Southeast of Bacalhao.

cho: Jack was every inch a sailor,
Five and twenty years a whaler,
Jack was every inch a sailor,
He was born upon the deep bright blue sea.

When Jack grew up to be a man,
He went to Labrador,
He fished in Indian Harbor
Where his father fished before.
On his returning in the fog,
He met a heavy gale,
And Jack was swept into the sea
And swallowed by a whale.

The whale went straight for Baffln's Baffin's Bay
'Bout ninety knots an hour,
And ev'ry time he'd blow a spray,
He'd send it in a shower.
"Oh, now," says Jack unto himself,
"I must see what he's about."
He caught the whale all by the tail
And turned him inside out.

@sailor @animal @fish
filename[ EVRYINCH
TUNE FILE: EVRYINCH
CLICK TO PLAY
RG
(Note suggested corrections in strikeout/italics)

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Here's the entry on this song in the Traditional Ballad Index:

Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor

DESCRIPTION: "Jack was every inch a sailor... He was born upon the bright blue sea." Having been brought up as a whaler, one day Jack is swept overboard and swallowed by a whale. He escapes by pulling the whale inside out
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1929 (Greenleaf/Mansfield)
KEYWORDS: talltale sea humorous whaler
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Greenleaf/Mansfield 125, "Jack was Ev'ry Inch a Sailor" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fowke/Johnston, pp. 40-41, "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor" (1 text, 1 tune)
Doyle2, p. 13, "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor" (1 text, 1 tune)
Doyle3, p. 33, "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor" (1 text, 1 tune)
Blondahl, p. 56, "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 84, "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor" (1 text)
DT, EVRYINCH
Roud #4541
RECORDINGS:
Omar Blondahl, "Jack Was Every Inch a Sailor" (on NFOBlondahl01,NFOBlondahl05)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Ambletown" (occasional floating lyrics)
cf. "Paddy and the Whale" (theme)
cf. "The Catfish" (Banjo Sam) (fish story)
Notes: This is almost certainly a cleaned-up bawdy song. - PJS
The versions I know all seem more in the Paul Bunyan vein -- extraordinary exaggerations. (But maybe I don't have imagination enough.) I suspect Paul is referring to "Jack Is Every Inch a Sailor," which is similar only in its first line and metrical form, and which IS sexual in theme. - RBW
File: FJ040

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