{"id":77,"date":"2010-06-09T23:55:13","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T04:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bobwalser.com\/?page_id=77"},"modified":"2018-11-30T13:52:32","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T19:52:32","slug":"when-our-ship-comes-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bobwalser.com\/when-our-ship-comes-home\/","title":{"rendered":"When Our Ship Comes Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t<\/h1>\n

Fresh Songs from Salty Traditions<\/h3>\n

Bob Walser and friends<\/h5>\n

\"WhenShanties, the worksongs of square-rig sailors, have been for me a passport to friendship with singers, sailors and scholars around the world. My interest in maritime traditions, kindled by Doerflinger\u2019s Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman. (New York: Macmillan, 1972, originally published as Shantymen and Shantyboys. New York: Macmillan, 1951), recordings of Louis Killen, John Roberts & Tony Barrand, Gordon Bok and others and nurtured during my years at Mystic Seaport, has carried me far from my native Minnesota to France, the Netherlands, Poland and my current home, Great Britain. Thanks to Stuart Frank and Sandy Oliver for first giving me the chance to sing these songs aboard the vessels at Mystic Seaport Museum, the only place in this day and age you can (almost) earn a living singing shanties.<\/p>\n

Many of the songs on this recording have been culled from the collections at the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., USA. The Archive is a treasure-trove of tradition, always of service to singers and scholars and always in need of financial support. If you value the preservation and study of musical traditions, why not send a contribution to the Parsons fund (established in 1994 by Gerald E. Parsons Jr., a long-time Center reference librarian who helped me among thousands of others) at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington DC 20540-4610, USA..<\/p>\n

Songs from the Archive of Folk Culture<\/h4>\n

James Madison Carpenter was an American scholar who wrote his doctoral thesis on sailors\u2019 music (\u2018Forecastle Songs and Shanties,\u2019 Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1929.) Both in preparation for his degree and subsequent to it he travelled Great Britain meeting and recording old sailors. His recordings and papers are now held at the Archive of Folk Culture. In 1928, Carpenter visited Cardiff where Richard Warner sang the powerful Down Trinidad<\/strong><\/a>. Carpenter\u2019s notes say that it was \u2018sung in Barbados, Negroes in sugarlog station on S.S. Bananzo.\u2019 \u2018Burton\u2019 is a term used for a block and tackle used in hoisting, particularly among longshoremen.<\/p>\n

In Barry Docks, near Cardiff, Carpenter met William Fender who recorded his unusual version of Fire Down Below<\/strong><\/a> and the comic Here We Come Home in a Leaky Ship<\/strong><\/a>. Also in Barry Docks, Rees Baldwyn sang the curious You\u2019re Nothin\u2019 but a Humbug<\/strong><\/a>. In his notes Carpenter wrote, \u2018Mr. Baldwyn learned this from the Negro singers in Savannah and New Orleans\u2026. It is sung with much emphasis and force.\u2019 For more information about these songs and other shanties in the Carpenter collection, see \u201c\u2018Here We Come Home in a Leaky Ship!\u2019: The Shanty Collection of James Madison Carpenter\u201d Folk Music Journal 7\/4 (1998): 471-495.<\/p>\n

Two songs here come from a 1935 recording trip to the Bahamas made by Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle. Long Summer Day<\/strong><\/a> is a boat-launching song which was sung by \u2018a group of Andros Island Men\u2019. Ho, The Last One<\/strong><\/a> may also be a boat launching song. It was sung by \u2018Pappie\u2019 and a group of Andros Island men.<\/p>\n

My singing of Drinkin\u2019 The Wine<\/strong><\/a> is a conflation of several versions including one sung by black longshoremen of the Ball Steamship line, recorded in Tampa, Florida by John Becker and Alan Lomax in 1944; a menhaden fishing version sung by Shedrick Cain in Weems, Virginia in April, 1957 and recorded by James Wharton; and one sung by the Bright Lights Quartet, a gospel group made up of menhaden fishermen: Robert Beane, James Campbell, Lawrence Hodge, Shedrick Cain and Dorsey Norris\u00a0 and recorded by Robert Witte in 1967 (Note: Norris was not formally part of the quartet but sang along that day according to Robert Witte who spoke to Catherine Hiebert Kerst at the Archive of Folk Culture who passed the information along to me via e-mail Sept 2010); as well as the version printed in Lydia Parrish\u2019s Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands<\/em> (n.p.: Creative Age Press, 1942; reprinted with a new Foreword by Art Rosenbaum, Athens, Georgia and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1992).<\/p>\n

Here are two songs from the rivers of America. Farewell, Dear Friends<\/strong><\/a> was collected from the singing of Sam Hazel who sang roustabout and Mississippi River songs for Herbert Halpert in 1939. Uncle Bud<\/strong><\/a> is taken from Mary Wheeler\u2019s fine Steamboatin\u2019 Days: Folk Songs of the River Packet Era (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,1944.) the only print collection to include a number of riverboatmen\u2019s worksongs.<\/p>\n

The amusing The Nautical Life<\/strong><\/a> appears in Winifred I. Knox\u2019s thesis, \u2018Folksongs from the Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound\u2019 (unpublished Masters thesis, New York: Julliard School of Music, July 1945, p.35). She credits Ivar Haglund as the collector.<\/p>\n

Down the River of Gambia<\/strong><\/a> was sung by Captain Leighton Robinson whose songs and stories were recorded in California by Sam Eskin in January, 1951. Captain Robinson learned the song from black sailors who sailed with him in \u2018checkerboard crews\u2019 (one watch black, the other white).<\/p>\n

From other sources<\/h4>\n

Two songs come from a typescript collection made by Joseph McGinnis in New York in the 1920s. This may be the same McGinnis cited by Johanna Colcord as her source for The Jamestown Homeward Bound and four other songs (Colcord, Johanna, Songs of American Sailormen. New York: W.W. Norton, 1938. Enlarged and revised version of Roll and Go: Songs of American Sailormen. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril, 1924; p. 132-4). I\u2019ve not seen The Deepwaterman<\/strong><\/a> elsewhere, perhaps it is McGinnis\u2019 composition? When Our Ship Comes Home<\/strong><\/a> had no melody in the typescript so I supplied one. The reel in the break is La Belle Chasse<\/em> which I learned from the incredible accord\u00e9oniste Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois, St\u00e9phane Landry. Julie Young complements the tune with French-Canadian step dancing.<\/p>\n

Gale Huntington, well known in shanty circles for his Songs the Whalemen Sang (Barre, Massachusetts: Barre Press, 1964) discovered a wonderful manuscript created by a ship\u2019s fiddler, William Litten, who sailed on at least two different vessels in the British East India fleet from 1800 to 1802. Gale transcribed the tunes and published them (William Litten\u2019s Fiddle Tunes, 1800-1802. Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts: Hines Point Publishers, 1977). I play two sets of tunes from this collection, The Gooses Minuet \/ The Nyph<\/strong>, which is graced by Jackie Rawlinson\u2019s wooden-shoe clogging, and Litten Hornpipe \/ Hun Hayden<\/strong>. Of these, I assume the one carrying Litten\u2019s name is his own composition. I wonder, just what is a \u2018 nyph\u2019?<\/p>\n

New Songs<\/h4>\n

The enigmatic Ms. C. Fox Smith captured not only a sailors\u2019 legend but the tang of sailors\u2019 talk in Shanghai Passage<\/strong><\/a>, here with a tune by Newcastle\u2019s Alan Fitzsimmons. Check out Fitzie\u2019s settings of Smith\u2019s poetry on Pinch o\u2019 Salt\u2019s cassette, \u2018Seaboot Duff & Handspike Gruel\u2019 (available from Danny McLeod, Elm Lodge, Main Road, Ryton, Tyne & Wear, NE40 3AJ).<\/p>\n

Dick Swain, singer, squeezer and librarian, found Phil and June Colclough\u2019s Blood on the Sails<\/a> <\/strong>in a collection of poetry from the British Isles and gave it this haunting tune.<\/p>\n

The spirited H\u00e9 Ho, Down Below<\/strong><\/a> was written by Marian Woestenburg and Ger Lamerus of the group Drijfhout [Driftwood] from the island of Vlieland in the Netherlands. The group specialises in maritime traditions and you can hear them on their 1997 CD, Gestrand op Vlieland (Syncoop records, 5757 CD 216, available from Windrose Music, postbus 414, 9200AK Drachten, The Netherlands, http:\/\/www.xs4all.nl\/~windrose\/).<\/p>\n

Round a campfire after a fine day of music at the Penetanguishene \u2018Songs of Sail\u2019 festival on the shores of Lake Huron, I heard John Archbold of Toronto, Canada sing The Old Red Duster<\/strong><\/a> (\u00a9 1990, John Archbold, used by permission) which he wrote based primarily on his father\u2019s stories of service in the English merchant service. The \u2018red duster\u2019 refers to the red ensign flown by vessels in the British merchant service.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/form>\n

Tracks<\/h4>\n
    \n
  1. Nothin\u2019 But A Humbug (Trad.) – 2:35<\/li>\n
  2. Uncle Bud (Trad.) – 2:32<\/li>\n
  3. The Deepwaterman (Trad.) – 3:49<\/li>\n
  4. Fire Down Below (Trad.) – 3:12<\/li>\n
  5. Shanghai Passage (Smith\/Fitzsimmons) – 3:39<\/li>\n
  6. Long Summer Day (Trad.) – 3:38<\/li>\n
  7. The Old Red Duster (Archbold) – 3:45<\/li>\n
  8. Drinkin’ That Wine (Trad.) – 3:58<\/li>\n
  9. Litten\u2019s Hornpipe\/Hun Hayden (Litten\/Trad.) – 4:13<\/li>\n
  10. Down Trinidad (Trad.) – 3:50<\/li>\n
  11. Farewell Dear Friends (Trad.) – 3:10<\/li>\n
  12. Ho the Last One (Trad.) – 2:18<\/li>\n
  13. The Nautical Life (Trad.) – 1:41<\/li>\n
  14. The Gooses Minuet\/The Nyph (Trad.) – 3:13<\/li>\n
  15. H\u00e9 Ho, Down Below (Woestenburg\/Lamerus) – 1:59<\/li>\n
  16. Blood on the Sails (P. & J. Colclough\/Swain) – 3:20<\/li>\n
  17. Down the River of Gambia (Trad.) – 3:24<\/li>\n
  18. When Our Ship Comes Home (Trad.\/Walser) – 2:42<\/li>\n
  19. Here We Come Home in a Leaky Ship (Trad.) – :33<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Musicians<\/h4>\n

    Bob Walser,<\/strong> vocals, concertina, button-accordion, banjo and guitar with (in beta-alphical order!):<\/p>\n