Youtor
London Julie chantey
YOUR LINK HERE:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=60tg_aanYHI
Robert W. Gordon, the first director of the Lib. of Congress' Archive of American Folk Culture, began his career studying sailor songs in Frisco and Oakland, early 1920s. Perhaps because he was an American, unlike most of the other folklorists who had taken an interest in sailors' chanties in the early 20th century, Gordon sought to emphasize the relationship between chanties and Af-American worksongs. • A few years after his chanty-collecting work in Frisco Bay, he shifted to coastal Georgia, where he collected local African-American songs. They included the boat-rowing songs, once common on Southern plantations, that he believed to be the most ancient of Af-American songs. My own historical research supports his suspicions. In any case, Gordon was the earliest of the folklorists to take these songs seriously. • In 1927, Gordon wrote a series of articles for the New York Times on Folk Songs of America, among which he included pieces on deepwater chanties + the Black songs from Georgia (the above illustration is from one of these). • Gordon collected 2 renditions of Julie from West Coast sailors. They are not commercially available, but rather kept at the Lib. of Congress. One of these was the initial inspiration for what might be called the Revival form of London Julie. Seems that British folk singer Roy Harris was the one to first develop a rendition (late 70s/early 80s) from the archive fragment. I've heard neither the Gordon Collection recording nor Harris' original rendition. But that rendition, with verses added by Harris (and who knows what else?) spread as the version now pop. with singers like Peter Souza, here: • • Three Sheets to the Wind with Justine... • When Barry Finn learned the Harris version, he adapted the verses to suit his own taste, and that branched off into this version sung by the likes of the Johnson Girls: • • 2009 Chicago Maritime Festival - The ... • So though this chanty was not widely documented in history, it has become quite popular in the Revival. • This is all by way of background to the present rendition of mine, which is based neither in Gordon nor the Revival, but in the collection of JM Carpenter. Carpenter collected three (?) renditions of a London Julie chantey, from seamen in Britain in the late 1920s. These appear to be from Edward Robinson, John McPherson, and Alexander Blue. Blue's is the most substantial. My rendition is based mainly on his recording. • The singing of Blue is hardly as curvy melodically as the modern Revival version, however, I see the potentially in that as a chanted line that the singer could (and would) vary, instead of an engraved tune. And the rhythm is less syncopated but, then again, so were most chanties—not very syncopated, that is. They were for coordinating work, not dancing! What I have attempted to do sounds, to me, more like a halyard or even a rowing song. • The lyrics are basically those of Blue, noted by Carpenter or heard on (deciphered from) recording. The lyrics about the n---er not only betray a probable Af-American origin for the song but also connect it to other songs like the plantation corn songs that used Never seen the like since I been born in couplets. This was typically rhymed with corn . A line similar to the 2nd and 3rd verse here occurred in chantyman Bullen's collection (1914) in the context of the song Ten Stone : • I nebber seen de like sence I ben bawn!... • Nigger on de ice an a hoe-in up corn... • Ten stone! Ten stone, ten stone de win' am ober! • Jenny git along Jenny blow de horn, • As we go marchin' ober! • • Ten Stone [268] (198) • Funny thing, Blue also sang Ten Stone for Carpenter—the only other chantyman besides Bullen to mention it. Blue's rendition of Ten Stone has crack corn, like the odd phrase in his Julie (verse 2). • Compare the shape of London Julie to the work-song Sheep Shell Corn : • http://books.google.com/books?id=sKlO... • The relatively flat (around the tonic) melody line of the solo parts correspond to Blue's Julie. And the shape of the choral refrains (ending first on the third, then on the tonic) match the a-ha London Julie. The phrase O! blow your horn, blow horn blow! would seem to map on London Julie's O row, o row, we're bound to go! Moreover, blow the horn was in Bullen's Ten Stone. Indeed, the tropes of blow the/your/my horn and X the corn appear in many 19th c African-American songs. • There is of course the minstrel song intersection with it all. Take this excerpt from a minstrel style piece, The Raccoon Hunt [ca1830] in an 1847 publication: • Sitting on a rail (repeat) • Wid his bottle in his hand. • Jo shell de corn, Sam blow de horn, • Neber seed the like since I was born; • 'Twas sent to de mill by tick-lip Bill, • Oh, do, Johnny Boker, do...
#############################
