To Thread - Forum Home

The Mudcat Café TM
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=8747
16 messages

Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert^^^(L Kaplan)

19 Jan 99 - 06:34 PM (#54789)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE LOSS OF THE BAY RUPERT^^(L Kaplan)
From: Barbara

THE LOSS OF THE BAY RUPERT
by Larry Kaplan copyright 1977 BMI, Winter Harbor Music

Now the Hudson Bay Company
Runs its ships in the summertime
And they stock the stores of the Labrador
And they stock them full for the wintertime.,
The Bay Rupert ran in ‘28,
Bound down for Baffinland
But to get to Hopedale, don't ‘cha know?
You'd be better off by land.

CHORUS:
Oh, they got no charts for the Labrador
All you hear is "Stay away!"
There's rocks and ice, Dark as hell at night,
From Old Jack Plains Way to Bromfield Bay,
There's wooden ships; steaming ships,
They got frozen men below;
There's mountains right beneath your keel,
So for God's sake don't you go!

She had shoes and coffee, boots and tea,
She had butter, pipes and bridles;
Sleeping bags and saddle soap,
And a dozen score of Bibles;
She was open wide, pushing thru the tide,
When she hit that granite rock --
With a mighty sound both ends went down,
And her middle opened up.

Chorus.

It was Sunday when that ship went down
And the town was all at prayer;
But no missionary minister or
The word of God could have kept them there.
"All's lost, all's lost," the captain cried,
"And I'll never sail no more".
"All's found, all's found!" cried the Eskimos,
As they waited by the shore.

Chorus.

Well the tide come in and the goods did too,
And they saved them from the sea.
And they said. "It's great doing business
With the Hudson Bay Company --
We've got shoes and coffee, boots and tea;
We got butter, pipes and bridles,
Sleeping bags and saddle soap,
But to hell with all them Bibles!"
^^

20 Jan 99 - 07:17 AM (#54866)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: Joe Offer

I get a kick out of this song. It's on the Folk-Legacy CD And So Will We Yet, by Bok, Muir, & Trickett. The CD notes say Larry Kaplan found this story in the log of the Arctic schooner Bowdoin, the subject of another song by pediatrician/songwriter Larry Kaplan. "Bay Rupert" is supposedly a true story of a Hudson's Bay supply ship trying to make in to the Morvian Missionary settlement at Hopedale, which consisted of a couple of Christian missionaries and about a score of Innuit.
-Joe Offer-

18 Aug 01 - 09:07 PM (#530916)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: GUEST,Big Time Woman

What's up with Larry Kaplan?

18 Aug 01 - 09:51 PM (#530937)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: Melani

He's an outasight songwriter, responible for a lot of good stuff that has been recorded by Gordon Bok, which is how I know of him. He apparently spends most of his time being a pediatrician.

18 Aug 01 - 10:37 PM (#530952)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: Sandy Paton

Larry recently shifted his pediatric activities down from the Hartford area to Yale-New Haven. Haven't heard from him in a while, so he must be busy in the new location. A wonderful way with kids, that fellow. Couldn't ask for a better, more gentle and comforting doctor to work with youngsters. Last I heard, he was still living over toward Essex, CT.

Sandy

19 Aug 01 - 03:22 AM (#531048)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: Mark Cohen

Gordon and friends sang this song on one of the "February Tapes", which is how I heard it. One of these days I hope to meet up with Larry. Thanks for posting the song, Barbara...it's a treasure!

Aloha,
Mark

19 Aug 01 - 11:38 AM (#531151)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: Charley Noble

Kaplan also wrote at least two other fine songs, his song about the schooner Bowdoin, "Song for the Bowdoin," and his song about Zeb Tilton and his schooner Alice Wentworth,"Old Zeb" to be found on WORTH ALL THE TELLING, Folk-Legacy, C-122.

31 Aug 01 - 11:37 PM (#539457)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: Mark Cohen

Larry Kaplan has made an intra-Ivy-League move, from Yale to Dartmouth. I just heard from him by email. If anyone's interested in contacting him, send me a personal message and I'll give you his email address.

Aloha,
Mark

01 Sep 01 - 01:13 AM (#539481)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: Joe Offer

Gee, Mark, do all pediatricians write songs? Larry's done some good ones, and you'll find his Worth All the Telling CD at Folk-Legacy Records. Note that a number of songs by Mark Cohen made the Digital Tradition long ago.

-Joe Offer-

01 Sep 01 - 06:51 PM (#539868)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: Mark Cohen

Joe, thanks for telling me about Larry's CD. I just ordered it from Folk-Legacy, and can't wait to hear it. Gordon Bok has recorded a couple of his more recent songs, and they're wonderful. Larry is an academic pediatrician, specializing in the care of children with disabilities and special health needs. (I did a fellowship in that field and still have an interest in it, but my practice is in general "primary care" pediatrics.)

When I first got online in 1998, I received an email from an old Seattle friend, saying "Your songs are on the Internet!" That was how I first discovered the Mudcat, and I've enjoyed it ever since. Still wondering, though, who sent in all those songs...including one or two that I never finished and a couple I'd forgotten! My initials are on them, but it wasnt' me.

Aloha,
Mark

01 Sep 01 - 08:56 PM (#539949)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: Naemanson

Last time I talked to Larry he was working with kids with terminal cancer. This was a few years ago at Mystc. Ya gotta love someone who can do that and stay sane, and gentle, and do so much good work, and keep his head screwed on right.

29 Apr 03 - 10:50 AM (#942748)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: MMario

So - anyone who knows him willing to ask Larry if the tune can be posted?

11 Feb 05 - 05:27 AM (#1405573)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert
From: GUEST,Diana Ludwig

Hi -- just heard this song on WPSU's folk show (State College, PA)- came to see all the lyrics-- we camped high above Hopedale on a bare rock hilltop in 2000 -- we had the coastal freight ferry drop us off --it still is all Innuit & a few white miners-- so many of the songs Gordan Bok performs paint great pictures of the NE.

31 Aug 09 - 05:15 PM (#2713233)
Subject: Video: The Wreck of the Bay Rupert (Larry Kaplan)
From: Genie

Here's "Shanghaied On The Willamette" doing "... Bay Rupert" at Singtime Frolics last March.

They do a great job!

30 Sep 10 - 04:58 PM (#2997100)
Subject: RE: Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert^^^(Larry Kaplan)
From: GUEST,Matt

Anybody know the chords for the Loss of the Bay Rupert? I can't figure them out.

06 Mar 18 - 12:47 PM (#3909814)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Loss of the Bay Rupert^^^(L Kaplan)
From: Jim Dixon

Note: Gordon Bok, Ann Mayo Muir, and Ed Trickett recorded this song under the title THE LOSS OF THE BAY RUPERT on their album "And So Will We Yet" (1990).

However, Larry Kaplan, the songwriter, called it THE WRECK OF THE BAY RUPERT when he recorded it on "Worth All the Telling" (1993), and so did Dick and Ian Lewis on "Legacy of Music" (2011).

Neither word, loss nor wreck, appears in the lyrics.

I attempted to verify the place-names mentioned in the song, but beyond Hopedale, Labrador, I found nothing.