"Burl Ives Presents
America's Musical Heritage"
114 Best Loved Songs & Ballads for Listening, Singing and Reading
A Treasury of American Folk Songs & Ballads
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Traveling Songs:
Sailing Free & Adventuring West
Introduction
The early American was often a sailor, and by the end of the 18th Century American seamen were rounding the Horn and trading in the Pacific. If a boat was not driving in bad weather, men would gather round the hatches for dancing, singing and the exchange of stories. They also used songs of strongly marked rhythm to work to. The crews that manned the 19th Century sailing vessels had to do much of their work as a team. This meant working in rhythm, and this was done best when the tempo was set by a song. These are the work songs known as Chanties. Almost any song, from almost any source, might be sung aboard ship, most often badly remembered and consequently changed, improvised upon or parodied. Many reflect life on the Sea itself.
The chanty was used in this way: the song was called out by a lead singer, the chantyman. He sant out the verses and set the tempo, the men joined in on the chorus. The emphasized words in the chorus were coordinated with a pull or heave which was to accomplish the work, and each chantyman made up verses according to his ingenuity. He sang about anything and everything - sailing, war, love - but primarily about the abuses and pleasure of shipboard, carousing ashore, being shanghaied, getting into debt to the boardinghouse master and so on.
Traveling by sea was not the way of the Pioneer until the Gold Rush made California and the far West attainable by going around the Horn. Crossing the plains to homestead, they went by land. Beginning in 1821, great wagon trains were organized at Franklin or Independence on the Missouri River. These went down the Santa Fe Trail. The waggoners who drove the oxen were a special group of men with their own professional ethics.
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Side One:
Home Boys Home
Boston, of course, was the main maritime port in the early years of the United States. The life of the sailor was never an easy one, but in colonial days his lot was better than that of any other colonial who did not own land. Fishermen and seamen were exempt from military duty, the ordinary seaman's pay was comparatively good and it was not unusual for the crew of a fishing or whaling vessel to own one-fifth of the cargo. However, it was a hard life, and the trips were long and arduous. It was often three to five years before a man saw his home again.
Shenandoah
There are several texts of this song with the subject being variously the rivers, Missouri or Shenandoah, or a young man's love for an Indian maiden. These differences mattered little to the sailor as he raised sail to this song.
The word Shenandoah is supposed to be derived from the name of an Iroquois chief, Shenando. It was much sung on the Baltimore Clippers, beautiful boats, whose qualities Captain George Little describes as follows: "Once more, then, I am in command of one of the most beautiful models of a vessel that ever floated on the ocean - I mean a Baltimore Clipper schooner, of one hundred and forty tons burden, with proportions as scrupulously exact as if turned out of a mold. The workmanship was in all respects as neatly executed as if intended as a beautiful specimen of cabinet excellence; her spars were in perfect symmetry of proportions with the hull, and she sat upon the water like the seabird that sleeps at east on the mountain billow. She was well armed and well manned, and, like some aerial being, as report had it, would at my call outstrip the wind."
Song of the Fishes
Boston, the man American port in the days of sailing ships was also the center of the fishing trade. This song, also known as "The Boston Come All Ye" gives us the sailor's imagination working overtime on the subject of New England fishing. The early American sailor was an English sailor with a new flag. English or American, he sang the same songs as he made his living from the sea.
Blow Ye Winds
Whalemen were not know as singers, but since whalemen often sailed in the merchant vessels fo'c'sle songs and chanties reflect whaling experience at first hand.
Whaling was long an important New England industry. The whaling ships took long, slow voyages and were sometimes away as long as three years. It took strong arguments to persuade the men to ship on them.
This forecastle song tells about New England whaling ships and their crews in the early 19th Century. At first it was not necessary to go for whales out of sight of land. However, as is always the case when a whale area is actively hunted, the whales were soon either killed off or driven away; by 1705 whales could only be found far out to sea or off Greenland and by 1805 they were being pursued off the coast of South America and in the South Pacific.
Greenland Fisheries
We read a great deal in our history books about the competition among the European countries for gold, slaves and spices that led to the discovery and colonization of the New World. Actually, the competition for new whaling and fishing grounds was just as keen. Advertisements to attract settlers to the New World announced in London in 1622 that "...whales are another merchantable means to raise profits for the industrious inhabitant or diligent trader." Whaling was quickly an important colonial activity pursued from the shores of Long Island as far north as Newfoundland.
Whales were plentiful. Puritan diaries from the Mayflower and Arabella tell of playful whales sporting around the ships. Captain John Smith changed his second voyage of exploration off New England coast to a whale-hunt, so irresistably plentiful were the animals.
Rollin' Home
The dangerous chance, the many reasons which sent men out on a sea voyage were most thought of at the moments of departure and arrival. To go was always a danger, and coming back always carried the relief of safe return. These were the moments which brought men to the question of why they went to sea - and the songs that were sung as ships were outward bound and homeward bound often reflect this.
Blow the Man Down
This is the classic topsail halyard chanty. The Black Ball Line of which it speaks was founded by a group of Quakers in 1818, and was the first line to take passengers on regular scheduled sailings. These ships soon became famous for quick passages, fighting mates, and the way in which both ship and crew were driven. The use of fists, belaying pins, and flogging was common, and the packets got the name of "Red Hot Blood Ships." "Kicking Jack" Williams was an actual captain of the day. He drove on in all weathers and pushed his crew without thought of danger or exhaustion. "Blow down" was current slang for "knock down."
Side Two:
Sacramento
Sacramento was in the center of the area where gold was discovered and so it was the sailors on the California bound boats who originated the captain chanty "Sacramento." The melody is Stephen Foster's minstrel song, "Camp Town Races." They sang "There's plenty of stones and dead men's bones on the banks of Sacramento." For every man who reached the Promised Land, there was one or more claimed by the desert, the Indians, or by cholera, typhus, or the poisoned beef served aboard ship.
A Ripping Trip
The description of a voyage to San Francisco was sung to the tune of popular "Pop Goes The Weasel," the old English country dance that was used by the colonists for the Cornwallis Country Dance.*
With the development of the clipper ship a separation of passengers and sailors took place, the sailors living in the fo'c'sle. In time, two classes of passengers were made, first-class passengers who lived in cabins aft, and steerage passengers who lived between decks. For the first-class passengers food was carried alive. Fresh milk came from a cow kept in a cow shed, eggs from the hens roosting in the long boats, while pigs and ducks were penned near the galley. Steerage passengers had meal and water boiled into mush until laws were passed that supplemented their diet with molasses and salt beef. Even so, they did their own cooking in pots slung from the hooks on a rail. It was a difficult, uncomfortable voyage.
*Cornwallis Country Dance - Volume II
Ox-Drivers Song
It was more usual to go overland than by sea. Early travelers westward went on foot, by horse or by stage coach. After a time there was the steamboat and eventually the railroad. However, many a homesteader or Gold Rusher went behind the oxen teams. No matter how they went they faced many odds, not the least of which were the muddy, almost impassable roads.
Those who were going beyond the Mississippi would go to some point such as St. Louis by river or rail, or by horse or on foot. From the Mississippi on they would join together and form a wagon train led by scouts and a protective escort. Oxen proved the best animals for the big wagons because of their stamina. The waggoners themselves were a specialized group of men, and this song by melody and content is a portrayal of the difficulties under which they labored.
The Hand Cart Song
Religious persecution was the cause of the settling of Utah. The Mormons went from New York State to Kirkland, Ohio, thence to Missouri and finally to Nauvoo, Illinois. Driven from Illinois, they traveled across country to Utah in 1847. Insufficiently supplied with basic necessities, they struggled across the country, though heat and snow, until they came to the Salt Lake Valley. This valley, a desolate, treeless plain was chosen by the Mormon leaders as the Promised Land. Here they laid out their famous city.
This Mormon song comes from a record in the Library of Congress collection, a collection that has grown over the years so that it is now a permanent source for those interested in folk songs and their variants. For example, the Mormon song is sung by an 87 year old man, Mr. Hilton, who learned it from his grandfather.
Sweet Betsy From Pike
Television and romantic literature about the West and its life glosses over the difficulties and hardships of the women pioneers. There were two types of women; the homemakers who created cleanliness and order out of the means at hand, and the slatterns who gave way before the difficulties. "Sweet Betsy" is a humorous parody of a variety hall hit of the 1840's, "Villikins and His Dinah." For all its fun it shows the difficulties and privations the pioneers faced every day. It is interesting to contrast this with the description of American women by James Silk Buckingham as he observed them travelling in the United States from 1837 to 1841:
"The women, moreover, are much handsomer than the men. They are almost uniformly good-looking; the great number are what would be called in England "Prettywoman," which is something between good-looking and handsome, in the nice distinctions of beauty. This uniformity extends also to their figures, which are almost universally slender and of good symmetry. Very few large or stout women are seen, and none that should be called masculine. A more than usual degree of feminine slightness of figure, is particularly characteristic of American females; and the extreme respect and deference shown to them everywhere by men has a tendency to increase that delicacy, by making them more dependent on the attention and assistance of others than English ladies of the same class usually are."
Come Yourselves and See
The two famous pocket songbooks of the "Forty-Niners" were "Put's Original California Songster" and "Put's Golden Songster." Whether Put collected these songs or composed them, they contained descriptive verses about the life of the Gold Rush, to e sung to well-known tunes. The tune this time is "Blue Tail Fly."*
*"Blue Tail Fly" - Volume V.
The Shady Old Camp
This description of a ghost town is another from "Put's Golden Songster," sung to the melody of "Ben Bolt."*
*"Ben Bolt" - Volume V.
Joe Bowers
The story of the Gold Rush is too well known to bear repetition here, but one of the anxieties of men who left dear ones behind was based on length of time it took communications to go back and forth. What is more, there was always the worry that things back home might have changed.
