Sea Control - Sea Control 236 - SEA SHANTIES!!! YARGGGGH!

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

Links (In this instance, simply a list of Sea Shanties I enjoy):1. Bully in the Alley2. Santiana3. The Wellerman (featuring Promise & Frank Uzuwolu)4. Go to Sea No More5. Row Me Bully Boys6. Barrett's Privateers7. The Longest Johns Play Sea of Thieves8. FiddleCraig.com

Hey folks, Jared here. One note on the podcast feed, we're still working through the issue of having two existing Sea Control feeds out there. So the legacy feed is labeled Sea Control dash SimSec. It's run through something called FeedBurner. We have no control over what's populated in that feed. The current feed is labeled simply Sea Control and it includes in the description SimSec's flagship podcast. So I'd encourage you to follow the current Sea Control feed. If you follow the legacy feed, you may have already noticed episodes 233, 234, and 235 haven't populated in that feed. Go back and give those a listen. As you transition over, I'd encourage you to rate and review the new feed as well. So this week we're talking and singing

sea shanties. If your immediate concern is that I'll be singing, you needn't trouble yourself. We brought in actual professionals, Craig Edwards and John Bromley. We also have Promise and Frank Uzawolu, who you would likely recognize from Shanty Talks. We'll be talking with them about how they've come to discover and appreciate the medium of the sea shanty. And one more note, for jenny bromley uh your dad mentioned your voice and how lovely it was and unfortunately as we're going through the editing process uh we which is to say that i had an issue with the sound just at the moment where he was complimenting you and he was emphatic that we include the note on your voice how much he likes it how wonderful it is uh since a comment on your brother's voice did

make it in uh but this episode was produced and edited by jonathan selling who cleaned up multiple demanding pieces of audio here to put this together. Project Trident is still ongoing. Our current topic, Maritime Infrastructure and Trade, is having a bit of a moment with all the discussions surrounding Ever Given and the Suez Canal. So if you're interested in contributing, check out our website, simsec.org. You can see all the details for submission as well as the deadline there. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drach, and a pile of iron brew rebuttals, wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men.

Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. We have a packed house today because we have a hot topic, sea shanties. Joining me on the podcast today are Craig Edwards, a musical historian, John Bromley, the booming baritone that you just heard at the beginning of every Sea Control episode singing Bully in the Alley. And then finally, we have the brothers Uzawulu, Promise, and Franklin, who are probably best known as some of the faces of the shanty talk movement after the video of them singing the sea shanty Wellerman went viral. So first, let me say welcome to everyone and thank you for joining us. We're going to go around the metaphorical room here and learn a little bit more about each of you. And Craig, I'd like to start

with you so would you mind sharing a bit about your background with the listeners? Sure I started playing music when I was about nine years old and growing up in Virginia and went on to get a BA in ethnomusicology at West Lincoln University in Connecticut and at the end of that my undergraduate experience I was playing in a band with some people who were still in school they were a year behind me. And we were getting gigs and playing around. And I took a job to kind of make ends meet. And about a year and a half later, I saw an advertisement in the music studios at Wesleyan for someone who was interested in history, played fiddle or banjo or concertina, was not afraid of heights, in pretty good physical condition. And there was a job at Mystic Seaport for a staff

musician so I took the poster down so nobody else would see it and two weeks later I was working so it since then I've worked there as a staff musician which involves demonstrating the use of shanties on board the museum's collection of historic ships especially the 1841 whale ship the Charles W Morgan so climbing up in the rig setting sails using shanties to haul yards doing anchor raising demonstrations, all kinds of other demonstrations that sailors in the 19th century would coordinate. The opponent of that job is an annual sea music festival that celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019. I was first assistant director and then director of that event for many years. And when I stepped down from being director, I took up the role of moderator

for the scholarly symposium that has always been a component of the festival, which has enabled me to stay right on the cutting edge of research about Salem music. Thanks. So were sea shanties a first love for you, or what kind of music did you listen to when you were growing up? Well, like most people of my generation, when I first started listening to music, it was the rock and folk rock music that was on the radio. But my parents were interested in folk music, and my dad had played the fiddle a little bit. I picked up that instrument and guitar and just gradually became more and more interested in various styles of traditional music. And at this point, I play Appalachian blues, bluegrass, Irish music, all kinds of music.

But sea shanties weren't really on my radar much until I was in college, which was in Connecticut. But one of the members of the band I was in liked shanties, so we had a few shanties in our repertoire. So I had a general idea of what they were, and I sort of learned about them, I learned, since I started that job. Can I ask, which were the shanties that were in the repertoire there? General Taylor, which is related to Santiana, is the first one I remember that band singing. And yeah, that's actually, that's the one we sang. I don't think we had a big repertoire of shanties. There may have been a couple others, but that was many, many years ago.

Yeah, no problem. Many shanties under the bridge. Yeah. What is the shanty talk phenomenon been like for you? I am guessing that you started getting either a lot of requests like this one or you just had texts and phone calls from friends reaching out. Hey, are you seeing this? Yes, all of that. People started sending me videos of people singing shanties on TikTok.

So I joined TikTok, which I knew about but hadn't joined before. and just was floored by all the really cool videos that people were making and the fun people were having with this music that I knew from a very, as well as performing it. But once that initial flurry ended, the next thing that happened was indeed that I started to get called by various people to,

for, so I've, I don't know how many newspaper interviews i've given and and uh talks for uh magazines and and uh podcasts and on and on it's been i've done i did two programs for mystic seaport it's been it's been pretty busy but uh a lot of fun thanks uh john i'm going to come to you next first welcome and i want to thank you again publicly for allowing us to use the kimber's men version of bully in the alley as our theme song could you tell us a bit about yourself right um music wise we've had music in in the house my dad was actually a bass baritone and he used to sing oratorio and opera and in fact is is singing to liandra who's had when she lived in leeds during the war because she was she was

evacuated to leeds because she was lived in london so that that side music's always been And singing's always been something that I've been aware of. The musical influences were, like everybody else in the 60s and 70s, it was The Beatles, The Stones, Jethro Tull, all sorts of different things. And when I was about probably 15, actually, I wasn't old enough to go into pubs really, but I was about 15 and went to a folk club nearby that some friends had talked about. and i just thought i found my niche now i found what i want to do this is great and so that's i joined it with another lad who played guitar and we started singing

and then so with a band then so in a by about 1973 i think i was i started performing in folk clubs and that that went that's gone on ever since uh the band that i joined originally we split up well no I didn't split up I left in 1977 to pursue my career as a chef just over five years ago that band actually reformed a band called Hebrick which so we're all still alive which is something and we're all I mean having a lot of fun playing together so I'm in that band obviously I'm in Kimber's Men and I also sing with my son and my daughter and my son's got a voice very similar to mine fantastic singing voice really powerful obviously i've not been able to do any of that for the last for the last year which is quite a blow yeah i can imagine um i want

to come back a little bit to kimber's men uh how did you start getting into sea shanties and then how did you join up with them in particular yeah we used to sing sea shanties when i was at junior school so i've always been aware of them and then when i started focusing in they all shanties and sea songs all became part of the repertoire but not not the predominant part but but we did we also did some sea songs and sea shanties and then 2001 a guy called joe stead he decided that he wanted to do a an album of sea shanties but also explaining the history behind them and what the songs we used for so he did an album called Valparaiso around the horn which was a trip from Liverpool to Valparaiso and he needed some people to sing chorus on on his album so um I sort of

vaguely knew him uh and he asked me if I'd uh if I'd join in on his chorus which I you know I always like sea shanty so i said yeah i would and after we'd done the recording he then had the idea of forming a shanty band in 2001 so myself roger hepworth and neil kimber and joe did started this band and we used to we decided that we wanted to make an album and we used to meet every week and put five pounds in in the kitty so we'd enough to go down to some recording studios to do it and And we've been doing it ever since. George, unfortunately, died three years ago. And Roger died quite early on, 2005, I think he died.

So we've had a few different lineups. But myself and Neil Kimber are still original members. Yeah, and I think you just released a new one. Is that correct? Fairly recently, yeah. We've just put everything on Bandcamp as we speak. It's all just gone on. So if anybody wants to have a listen, they can do.

Thanks. So I wanted to ask you about your voice because it is really distinctive. And one of my favorite things to do, and I'm off script here a little bit because I wanted to get the reaction to this. One of my favorite things to do is recommend that people go to the YouTube video for Bully in the Alley and then to read the comments, which you're not supposed to do on the internet. But the comments I always enjoy because they're all about the powerfulness

of your voice. so some of them are this guy's father was an amplifier his mother a foghorn his uncle a microphone uh and then you scroll down a little bit years ago john was standing behind me in a pub sing around i thought there'd been an earthquake what did you uh at what point in your life did you kind of realize like oh i i have a gift here this is the lights this is not the normal person who goes down and sings karaoke i um well i was in i was in choirs at school i always involved in in music i think every lunch time i was in something where we had a madrigal group we had senior choir with i was in the junior choir before my voice broke singing soprano would

you believe and um and then i don't believe graduated down from i could i don't know if if you know Zadok the Priest, the coronation soprano bit of that, which goes up to like a top D or something like that. It's quite high. And then, so I graduated, I went from soprano to alto and then alto to tenor and then tenor to bass. And we were doing a piece by Vaughan Williams and I was in third basses in the school choir and we had to sing a bottom D and I was the only person in the whole school who could sing a bottom D. So that was something and I can remember it being in the choir and a lad stood in front of me as we were singing and he said it was like being hit in the chest from behind when I was stood behind him singing.

So I suppose that's when I thought it might be a bit, I might have something a bit different, you know. But then my dad had a great voice. He was a smashing singer. Well, thank you again for being here. Can I ask, has the Shantytalk thing affected you in any way? Has, like, people started reaching out to you because of this? It's, yeah, I think we'll get some opportunity from it, hopefully.

And also we've put some stuff up on TikTok as well. I think we might have missed the boat a bit, really. Thanks. So finally, Promise and Frank Uzawolu. If their names aren't familiar, their faces are probably familiar. We were talking about this as we prep for this. My daughter would recognize these two instantly from watching that TikTok video over and over and just the unbridled joy on their faces.

If you've read anything about the Shantytalk movement going on over on TikTok, and we'll include some links in the show notes, too, so you can find these. but you probably saw their video singing Wellerman embedded in the article. So, Promise, I'm going to start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? I was a student at the recording of the video. I was a nursing student at Stephen F. Austin State University. I recently just graduated and will be starting my career in Medical City, Arlington. Thank you. And then, Frank, how about you? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? So currently I go to Texas A&M University. I'm a computer engineering major and I also stream on Twitch sometimes on my free time as a hobby. I also have TikTok now, which, you know, is how it all started. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Well, thank you, gentlemen. So the reason that I wanted to bring you on, we just talked about this. It wasn't just the video, but it's really about your reaction to the music. And if you haven't seen the video, one, go watch it. Two, the way it goes is like Promises sitting on the left hand side of the car. He's kind of looking skeptically at his phone. And Frank is in the right hand seat and he's just belting out Wellerman. And we're on this miniature journey with the two of you that ends with you, Promise, singing as loud as you can towards the end. And I thought that made you a very good audience avatar, because while many of our listeners may be vaguely familiar with Sea Shanties, which is kind of my own experience, we're not necessarily personally invested in them the way that Craig or John are and have been for their entire lives. So I want to hear a little bit about your story. Frank, it looks like you picked up on Wellerman first. How did you discover it? i believe i was on ifunny when i saw it and uh i heard i heard the song and i was like oh this this kind of slaps and so i went into the comments to see if anyone was talking about what the name of the song was and they said it was the welderman so i went on youtube and i looked it up and after listening to it on there i was like yeah this this song is something that i'll be you know blasting the car and on my way to heb uh like the first time when i was looking up the song i started

blasting it and I was pretending like I was a pirate on Seven Seas. Did you then immediately start like looking for additional sea shanties or you just pretty much stuck with Wellerman? I did look for more sea shanties but at the time the other ones that I looked at didn't really pique my interest. I you know since the longest John's made the Wellerman I decided to look at some of their music and I think I looked at some of the newer ones and it didn't resonate with me as much as uh some of the older ones like uh santiana things like that but eventually when people started recommending me songs that's when i started listening to them and now i'm like oh yeah this one's a good one you know thanks so uh promise how did your brother bring this up with

you or did he just throw it on in the car one day and wait for your reaction okay i'm glad you asked so this this is the whole story about how it happened so i was in the car i was going to accompany frank on a on a two-hour drive to his college town because he needed to just pick something up right and so we're in the car and then frank frank looks at me says hey promise does the song actually want you to hear and it was well i mean he played it and at first i was like why is he putting putting this song on like why would you put this song out of all why did you want me to hear it you know like i understand if you liked it but why why did you think i would like this and so then i was going to expose him on my snapchat i was going to i started recording

him, like, who gave him the aux cord to play this music in the car, but later on, like, the chorus, I don't know, but Wellerman's chorus is pretty, yeah, the Wellerman come to bring us a green tea and rum, like, it was really great, so over time, like, as the video, you can see, like, I just kept on recording different clips, you can see that I started, like, kind of feeling for the music, like, at first, I started seeing Frank's energy, I was like, oh, his energy is really good, I really They're like, you know, he may have got something for this song. Then I was like, play the song again. I want to see if I can get the chorus.

It's just the sugar and tea and rum part. You know, I just wanted to get the chorus. So you can see in the third clip, you can see me kind of like my eyes are moving away because I'm actually trying to read the lyrics on the phone. But then at the last clip, I got the chorus memorized. I was like, even got the little harmonizing at the end. And that's how the video came to be. now i know i know like multiple verses i think i just don't know that last verse it's a little

bit hard for me but other than that i i know the whole song i think it's pretty cool when i was moving to arlington the whole drive here i was listening to well and man i was just making sure i sung it i was like yeah this song goes hard and then since that video has um seen so much recognition um recommend other songs such as got no beard um by the longest john which is more like a comedy uh she shanty that i find very funny there's um drunken sailor which i listened to drunken sailor not that long ago maybe like a few weeks ago and i'm like man this song is this song is uh like really good i went to college station every now and then when me and frank both have time we'll uh we'll connect we'll meet up and then we'll sing some more uh she shanty so we've

actually recorded some other ones since that came to be um one thing that not a lot of people know We recorded that video two weeks, around two to three weeks before we even posted it. It was just a Snapchat video for me. And then, you know, I've been studying for my board exams. I don't have enough time to record new TikToks for, I do nursing school TikTok, you know, for nursing students and stuff like that. And I didn't have much time to create new content for them. So I was like, let me go through my video, see if I can repost any of my other videos.

And I saw this video, I was like, oh, I don't post it. I was going to take you down within an hour because it was doing really bad for like 21 hours. I went to the gym. I said, I'm going to take you down once I come back from the gym. Once I went to the gym, came back the next day, like it got up to 1,000 views, got home. It got to 2,000 views. I called Frank because I didn't let Frank know I was going to post the video. I didn't tell him.

I just posted it because I just needed some content. Once it got to 2,000 views, I was like, okay, it's cool. I'm cool with it. But then it went up to, like, I think it was approaching, like, 10,000 views. So we both looked rough during that video. You know, we weren't prepared. That wasn't supposed to be post-worthy. So I called Frank.

I told him, Frank, just so you know, the video is doing pretty all right. Like, it's getting some views. I don't know. I don't think it's going to go up so far. Frank said, okay, yeah, it's fine. It's whatever. Then I take a shower after the gym. I come out.

I'm like, whoa, it's at 22,000 views. I'm like, call Frank again. I said, Frank, you know that video I told you that was almost at 10? It's at 20 something now. Like you should just do it the whole day. I don't keep on studying. It was like at 100 K. Once I was finished studying for my boards that day, it was at like a half a mil. Then I went to I went to my brother, my older brother's house, and he was having some friends over to talk and like catch up. And I was there. And then by that time, it was I believe it was already 2 million by that day. it to me it was so surprising i didn't expect this i didn't expect this at all so frank mentioned the longest john's version is that your guys favorite version or do you have other ones that you listen to i know that like there's a different version my daughter and i watch on uh youtube i could go first i've only really listened to the longest john's um version of well i'm in but i've also

listened to a few people actually remixed the song and sent me their little like clips of remixes of wellerman and i've listened to those but i don't listen to those on the regular but the longest john's version is just the only one that i listen that i listen to on the radio how about you frank yeah it's pretty much i'm in the same band as him where uh i haven't really heard any other wellermans but i've heard remixes and such but uh the longest john's i guess would have to be my favorite because it's the only one i've listened to so far yeah you two are uh i think you're purists with the longest John's version. The one that always makes my two-year-old go crazy dancing around is there's

like an electronic version that's been remixed. I forget what it's called, but I want to say it's by like a French EDM artist or something. I'm probably, I'm way, way over my head talking about musical genres. So we'll keep going here. Craig, I'm going to ask you to lead off. could you give us a sort of the brief history of the sea shanty like where they come from how they develop uh what were they used for you can pretend that you're up in now up in the rigging of a sailing ship if that helps you get in the mood all right good uh so right around 1500 when

european maritime powers started to develop understanding navigation to where they could start sailing all over the world there were traditions of some commands um call some call and response often you'll see this one piece called the complaint of scotland that was published in 1549 that has some leader of a work group says versa and everybody else says versa and it's all in scots language but that for the next 250 or so years as the the militarization of the merchant marine is a fallout from that empire building so that even most merchant vessels went armed and carried cannon and had large crews so there was plenty of muscle around to do the work And another factor in that is that on naval vessels, the practice was to work silently,

especially when you have cannon on board, because you've got to be listening for orders in a battle. So you have to be used to working silently. In 15, with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, one of the effects of that is that merchant ships don't carry cannon anymore, resulting in big slashing in the numbers of men in the crew of a ship. About 70% of the men in a crew would just no longer be on board. So if you'd had 100 men, now you had 30 to run the ship, and you've got two watches. So instead of having 50 men in a watch, you had 15 men in a watch. It means that sailors had to start using some different work techniques in order to get the same kinds of jobs done. They had to be able to concentrate force and apply it precisely with good timing. The music

that had been used in naval traditions was instrumental music, but what starts to happen in these smaller crews is that people casting about for better ways to get these jobs done include, especially on America, from various African backgrounds. And the call and response work songs that are common in many African cultures and in New World descendants of Africans in that period start to be sung on board ships. This is a period when about 20 to 30 percent of the workforce for instance in the american merchant marine is african-american and when cotton is the single biggest cargo when cotton is loaded onto ships it press it in and the mechanism for that called a cotton screw is worked by a group of five men and that is something

that was well documented at the time of people using these call and response work songs you first start to see them mentioned in any kind of documentation, but people writing about it only in the 1830s or early 1840s. And the word shanty doesn't even appear in print until the 1860s. So it starts out somewhere in this period where sailors are developing these new work techniques that have to be coordinated, starts to flourish in the 1850s and 60s. It reaches its zenith in the 1870s and 1880s, and then as other technological changes and changes in things like the Suez Canal, for instance, which allows steamships to take the profitable cargos between Europe and Asia out of the holds of sailing ships, all kinds

things like that lead to it the decline of shantying until by the 1900 the early 1900s it's well even when it's done on board ship but the essential part of it is that you had people who were used to using call and response work songs on board and so you can picture a crew and it's kind of the reverse of what uh frank and promise we're just talking about where where these sailors have hear people working cotton screws and maybe a few of the people in the crew start to do a job and it's hard so somebody starts singing and the the other people sing the chorus and the next thing you know everybody's doing it and by the time you get into the 1850s it's spread all over the world so i i do think it's really cool that the group of people you

assembled here include an American who lives in New England, a guy from Great Britain, and two people from an African background, because that really tells the story of how shanties came together. Thanks. So we're going to go with some singing now. So Craig, you're actually going to be up first for us, and you're going to sing Round the Corner Sally. Can you tell us a little bit about the background of this song? Sure. One of the reasons I wanted to sing Round the Corner Sally is that one of the very earliest descriptions of sailors using songs like this on board is Richard Henry Dana's book, Two Years Before the Mask, that was published in the 1830s. And he doesn't give the music or lyrics of songs, but he mentions this title, which is collected

later. So what I'll do is I'll sing a song that comes from one of the Americans singing, which uses a song called round the corn sally so i'll sing you one verse of that and then go into the shanty it's the best example i know of that clear line from african-american work song to shipboard work song so round the corn sally just a verse of it and then i'll sing a few verses around the corner sally yeah please go ahead thank you okay hooray hooray all around the corn sally hooray for all the lovely ladies round the corn sally hooray hooray oh round the corn sally hooray for all the lovely ladies round the corn sally love's a thing that's bound to grab you round the corn sally she'll hold you tight when once she have you round the corn sally

old and ugly young and pretty round the corn sally you need not try when once love gets you round the corner sally round the corner we will go round the corner sally around cape horn in the frost and snow round the corner sally oh haul away now make your pay round the corner sally let's get this yard hauled up today round the corner sally here comes the cook with a whiskey can round the corner sally he's bringing a glass for every man round the corner sally You bring that glass to near my nose Round the corner Sally It's up she comes and down she goes

Round the corner Sally Oh whiskey is the life of man Round the corner Sally And it has been since the world began Round the corner Sally Oh if we drown when we are young Round the corner Sally It's better to be drowned than hung

Round the corner Sally Oh, haul away and up she goes Round the corner, Sally Way up aloft in the frost and snow Round the corner, Sally Oh, whiskey murdered my old dad Round the corner, Sally And whiskey drove my mother mad

Round the corner, Sally If the ocean was whiskey and I could swim Round the corner, Sally It's over the rail, I'd dive right in Round the corner, Sally So one more pull and that will do round the corner high enough which is what you'd hear at the end of that job as the sail got stretched out in the yard is high enough yeah thank you um let me ask you though

about a little bit about like the nature of some of these songs because like you could hear as you got into i don't know which verse it was but like it gets into some dark material right like whiskey ruined my dad whiskey ruined my mom etc etc and then somebody else i had seen posted on twitter as all this was occurring is like, hey, there's basically four types of sea shanty. One is like, okay, well, you're pregnant, but now I'm sailing away forever. Good luck with all that. Or I'm going to die and I resign myself to this fact. Was this just kind of like the dark humor of sailors

or does it seem to be a common feature of sea shanties? One of the functions of sea shanties was to allow sailors to blow off steam while they were working. And the whiskey verses, you find similar things in just shoreside drinking songs. So it's one of the ways that songs feed into the shanty tradition. Shanties don't have necessarily a fixed set of verses, right? So you notice there wasn't really a storyline in what I sang. But once I got on the whiskey theme, I kept on thinking of whiskey verses.

but you'll also find sailors complaining about officers generally without a name from an officer from another ship but you could actually get pretty specific in your complaints about officers while you were singing a shanty at a job and everybody would pretend that you were singing about some other ship but it let the crew release some of their frustration with the way that the was being run without getting into a confrontation. But they also just used it to express all kinds of things that were on their minds. So that would certainly include women, the fact that they weren't getting any drink while they were at sea. They did start drinking on shore, warning younger sailors about the pitfalls of going on shore and what they'd encountered there

and how it could lead them right back onto another ship with no money in their pocket. So all those kinds of things pop up pretty frequently in shanties. Thanks. As a naval officer, I'm kind of glad now that we don't have sea shanties, because I can only imagine what some of my crew members would have said or incorporated into a song. Well, then, John, we're going to go to you next, and we'll start with the obvious one, which is a bully in the alley. So can you tell us a little bit about the background of this song and where it comes from, what it signifies? what's known as a halyard shanty and it's on a ship the sticks that go across the mast they have the sails on some of them are fixed and some of them move and the reason that they move is because the higher up they are the the higher the center of gravity is of the ship

and so you only use those sails when the when the ship's in lighter winds so they have to haul the yard up up the mast and then the sail drops down below it so we've actually sailed on on a ship called the Stavros Niarchos two or three times doing doing shanty trips and we've actually got the crew working there's only there's only really halyards that warrant a shanty because things like capstans and they're all electronic now or diesel power or whatever and and so and the pumping's done automatically rather than having to go up and down on a seesaw so we used that really successfully and people could believe how how efficiently the the yards went up you know no sooner had they started than they finished you know and it's made it made the job more enjoyable and i think

that's one of the reasons for for doing shanties is to keep keep people happier so yeah bullying in the alley it's um it tells a story about a bloke finding a prostitute in the in a pub and taking it to bed and then disappearing bad happens to him in quite a lot of the shanties and sea songs the sailor comes off worse at the end of the by the end of the song but in this one he just he just uh does what he wants to do and then goes away you know so that's uh anyway i Shall I ask George to help me to sing the song? Go ahead. Oh, help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley.

Hey, hey, bully in the alley. Help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley. Bully down in Shinbon Alley. I found myself out on the spree. Oh, hey, hey, bully in the alley. I found myself with time so free. Oh, bully down in Shinbon Alley. So help me, Bob, I'm bullyin' the alley, way, hey, bullyin' the alley. Help me, Bob, I'm bullyin' the alley, bully down in Shinbone Isle.

I waltzed up to the angel, then, oh, way, hey, bullyin' the alley. I kicked on the door and walked right in, oh, bully down in Shinbone Isle. So help me Bob, I'm bully in the alley, way, hey, bully in the alley. Help me Bob, I'm bully in the alley, bully down in Shinbone Isle. I walked up to the barroom counter Way, hey, bully in the alley And there I met with Greasy Annie Bully down in Shinbon All So help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley Way, hey, bully in the alley

Help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley Bully down in Shinbon All I bought a gin and I bought a rum Oh, way, hey, bully in the alley, I bought a wine, both white and red, Oh, bully down in Shinbon Alley, So, help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley, Way, hey, bully in the alley, Help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley, Bully down in Shinbon Alley, When I'd spend to fall me tin, Oh, way, hey, bully in the alley Up to bed we both did creep

Oh, bully down in Shinbone Isle So help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley Way, hey, bully in the alley Help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley Bully down in Shinbone Isle We're up and tumbled all night long Way, hey, bully in the alley, don't it break, the cock did crow, bully down in Shinbone Isle, so help me Bob, I'm bully in the alley, way, hey, bully in the alley, help me Bob, I'm bully in the alley, bully down in Shinbone Isle. I left my girl to go a-sailing, way, hey, bully in the alley. I left my Sal to go a-whaling, bully down in Chinbone Alley. So help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley, way, hey, bully in the alley. Help me, Bob, I'm bully in the alley, bully down in Chinbone Alley.

so help me bob i'm bullying the alley way hey bully in the alley help me bob i'm bullying the alley bully down in shin bone oh thank you that was like i can tell it was good because i was having to restrain myself from singing along i was humming the whole time getting a little zoom notification it's like your microphone's muted i was like yes it's muted for a reason so otherwise i would ruin this uh that was tremendous uh i will add to that that is one of my two-year-olds favorites like we used to use that when we would dance around uh attempting to put her to sleep didn't always work with uh bully in the alley though okay frank so we're gonna pause right here because we had discussed

you guys singing it here we're not gonna have you sing this but you had selected one song that I was not familiar with, I'd like you to at least talk a little bit about the background of this song. The song's name is Santiana. You'll find a link to it in our show notes, to at least the YouTube video. And I think it's by the Longest Johns. But you can follow that link, listen to the song. Frank, what was it about Santiana that you like so much? Well, first of all, how did you find Santiana specifically? And then what was it about this song that you really liked and led you suggest it so uh after the initial wellerman uh video i actually went live on tiktok and was just talking to some of the people that were fans and some of them were uh you know suggesting things

to listen to they were suggesting games for me to play that had shanties uh one of them being assassin's creed black flag and uh i started actually playing that uh and i streamed it for them it was actually really fun but uh back to santiana the the way i found out about it is one of the people uh recommended you know me to listen to it and so i listened to it on stream or on the tiktok live and the thing the reason i like it so much is that it it's more of a song that you sing from the heart in like a respect type of way because they're singing about you know a general and you know at the end of it it's like uh general or not general failure uh Santiana is kind of dead, and so you have to, like, pay respects type of thing.

And so the way that I sing it, number one, it's an easy song to sing since it's a slower one. You can't really mess it up that much. But also the way they sing it and the heart that they have behind it is something that I really enjoy. Thanks. And, again, that will be dropped down in the links in the show notes. So you brought up playing Assassin's Creed and the game,

And I found that as well as I started diving into this myself. It's like one, it appears in Assassin's Creed, but two, there's some massive multiplayer role playing game that you can play online with sea shanties in it. And then there's a video of the Longest Johns like diving in there as a character and just popping up in different scenes and singing sea shanties. And then the other players are like, who the hell are these guys? This is incredible. Have you watched that video? You familiar with what I'm talking about? I haven't watched the video, but I assume the game we're talking about is Sea of Thieves. I believe that's correct. I mean, I have a two-year-old, and I got another one on the way, so I do not have a lot of time.

This is my hobby that I use my limited free time for, so I don't get to play a lot. I think Sea of Thieves is correct, though, yeah. Yeah, that was something a lot of people recommended me play, but I keep telling them I'm probably going to wait for it to go on sale or something because it's a $40 game. on top of that i don't know if my pc will be able to run it because i'm still i'm on a laptop so i wouldn't be able to run it and stream at the same time so i'm waiting until i get more funds or something but it's definitely something i want to try because even i believe like two days ago people were talking telling me about it and saying yeah you should play thieves it's really

fun and you know you can sing sing shanties so it's something that i definitely want to look into awesome uh john the next uh one that you're going to do for us though is shenandoah so can you tell us a little bit about why did you choose that song and uh what is the the background of that song right well this is there's quite a few versions of this this is this is one that that our friend just had discovered or used from the sevens and it's just got some some nice verses in it which you don't often hear that version it's actually a capstan shanty

and it would have been sung when they start off with a quick shanty when you're pulling the boat towards where the anchor is embedded in the seabed so you start off with something like paddy lay back

taking the slack and you'd be going around the capstan quite quickly and then it gets a bit harder and then you'd do a slow shanty and then when you're right over the top of the anchor and pulling the anchor out of the seabed you'd do something like Shenandoah which is quite a slow paced song

so that's it so this is Shenandoah Oh Shenandoah I'm bound to leave you away you rolling river But in my dreams I'm bound to hear ya Away, I'm bound to go

Across the wide Missouri Ocean and door, I took an ocean Away, you rolling river To sail across that stormy ocean Away, I'm bound to go Across the wide Missouri For seven long years I caught it, Nancy, away a rolling river. For seven long years she took me fancy, away.

I'm bound to go Across the wide Missouri And then she went to Kansas City Away rolling river So far away to Kansas City Away I'm bound to go Across the wide Missouri And there she had a shush-shush baby

Away you rolling river Oh, there she has that shush-shush baby away. I'm bound to go across the wide Missouri. I heard she's lodging with a soldier Away, you rolling river I guess she's got another lover Away, I'm bound to go Across the wide Missouri

Farewell me dear I'm bound to leave ya Away you rolling river I'm bound away And I won't deceive ya Away, I'm bound to go Across the wide Missouri Thank you, John.

We're going to have you, Craig, do Waystorm Along John next. So what is kind of the backstory of Waystorm Along John? storm along john was sort of the paul bunyan figure of sailor lore he was the the ultimate sailor uh and and sailors spun yarns about him they'd often start out the stories about him for green hands who hadn't heard about him as though they were talking about a real person and only gradually build in unbelievable elements until there'd be some big hook, line, and sinker that you'd bite, and then you'd realize

when everybody starts laughing at you that you've been taken in. But the songs about him are all about his death and about missing him. And there are a number of them that take different forms, but this one has always been my favorite, Waystorm Along John. Stormy's gone, that good old man

Way, Stormalong John Oh, Stormy's gone, that good old man Way, Mr. Stormalong John He slipped his cable off Cape Horn Way, Stormalong John Close by the place where he was born Way, Mr. Stormalong John Old Stormy heard the angels call

Way, Stormalong John Sing his dirge now one and all Way, Mr. Stormalong John A good old boasting to his crew Way, Stormalong John And Abel's seeming bold and true Way, Mr. Stormalong John Old Stormy's gone, what shall we do?

Way, Stormalong John Old Stormy's gone, now we'll go too Way, Mr. Stormalong John I wish I was old Stormy's son Way, Stormalong John I'd build a ship of a thousand ton Way, Mr. Stormalong John I'd fill it full of Barbados rum

Way, Stormalong John And all your shellbacks would get some Way, Mr. Stormalong John Oh, a bottle full for every man Way, Stormalong John And a great big barrel for the shanty man Way, Mr. Stormalong John That's a version of that shanty you would have heard sung at the pumps or the break windlass.

rock her arms like the old railroad hand cars we're coming back to you now john with uh sunny door so uh what is sunny door about uh it's about a young lady who works in uh in trinidad and she's very popular with the sailors apparently it's also mentioned as stevedore and one of the verses also talks about uh burtoned in the archway it took his age actually a means of by ropes and pulleys a means of transferring something horizontally as opposed to where you normally use ropes and pulleys to pull things up and down and i got this song from a um a guy called called roy palmer who was a folk historian and he's edited loads of loads of books and we did a concert with him and He sent us this and asked us to learn it, so we really liked it.

All right, then let's hear Sunnydore. It's quite nice for this one. Yeah. Sunnydore, yeah. Oh, tell me, Mr. Stevedore, and how do you store your cargo? Way, sing, Sunnydore. Oh, tell me, Mr. Stevedore, and how do you store your cargo? Bound down Trinidad to look for Sunnydore.

So, booch, free me, boldy, boys, and Burton in the archway Way, sing, sunny door So, booch, free me, boldy, boys, and Burton in the archway Bound down Trinidad to look for sunny door Oh, Trinidad, oh, Trinidad, you pretty little harbour Way, sing, sunny door Oh, Trinidad, oh, Trinidad, you pretty little harbour Bound down Trinidad to look for Sunnydore

And if you see old Sunnydore If ever you should find her Way, sing Sunnydore Roll her in the grass, me lad, and down among the clover Bound down Trinidad to look for Sunnydore And tell me, Mr. Barber, and how do you shave your customers? Way, sing Sunnydore I take some by the noses and scrape them neath the chinio

Bound down Trinidad to look for Sonny Dore The mate's all right, the crew is tight, the old man, he's in clover Way, sing Sonny Dore The mate's all right, the crew is tight, the old man, he's in clover Bound down Trinidad to look for Sonny Dore We'll stretch a luff, she's high enough, the end is now in sight Boys, way, sing Sonny Dore Stretch her look, she's high enough

The end is now inside Boys, bound down Trinidad To look for Sonny Dore And tell me, Mr. Stevedore And how do you store your cargo? Way, sing Sonny Dore And tell me, Mr. Stevedore And how do you store your cargo?

Bound down Trinidad To look for Sonny Dore So boot, scream, you bully boys And Burton in the archway Sing sunny door So boot, scream, you bully boys And Burton in the archway Bound down to the dad

To look for sunny Bound down to the dad To look for sunny door Thanks, John. That was great. So then, Craig, the last song that you're going to do for us is entitled Riley. What is Riley about? Riley is actually a song that comes from the cargo loading along the coast of the Carolinas. The singer who was recorded doing this with a group of fellow

workers was named, I believe, John Williams. And he was recorded by Alan Lomax, the great folklorist. So this was a song that they used stowing timber on board ships, but it has exactly the same form as Halyard Shanties. And there are a variety of versions of songs using that name Riley. It was pretty common. So a good example of that combination of African-American and Irish traditions that really flourished in the world of shanties riley riley where are you oh riley oh man riley riley where are you bye-bye my riley oh man oh riley's gone to liverpool Oh, Riley, oh, man Oh, Liverpool, that packet school

Bye-bye, my Riley, oh Oh, Riley's gone to Baltimore Oh, Riley, oh, man To dance upon that sandy floor Bye-bye, my Riley, old man Oh, Riley's gone around Cape Horn Oh, Riley, old man Where you'll wish to God you'd never been born

Bye-bye, my Riley, old man Now around Cape Horn we all must go Oh, Riley, oh, man A round cape stiffed through the frost and snow Bye-bye, my Riley, oh, man Oh, dig his grave with a silver spade Oh, Riley, oh, man And lower him down with a golden chain

Bye-bye, bye, Riley. Oh, man. The Democrat Riley. Oh, Riley. Oh, man. Thanks, Craig. So, John, we're going to give you the last word here, and you've chosen Go to See No More. So what can you tell us about that one? This is really what's called a four-bitter, in other words a song that was sung at leisure, not particularly for work, although there is thought that it might have been used as a capstan shanty or even a pumping shanty, but four-bitters were sung at the front of the ship on the four-bits that had the rope wound round them, and the sailors used to sit on these at leisure time and sing songs to each other. for entertainment rather than for work. When first I landed in Liverpool I went upon the spree Me money at last I spent It fast I got drunk

As drunk could be And when me money was all gone It was then that I wanted more A man must be blind to make up his mind to go to sea once more Once more, once more, go to sea once more A man must be blind to make up his mind to go to sea once more Last night I lay with Angeline too drunk to roll in bed Me boat was new and me money too in the morning with them she'd fled

And as I roamed the streets all round the whores all at me roared There goes Jack Ratcliffe for sale, the lad, he must go to sea once more. Once more, once more, go to sea once more. There goes Jack Ratcliffe for sale, the lad, he must go to sea once more. As I was a-rollin' down the street, I met old Rapper Brown. Says I to him, would you take me in? And he looked at me with a frown. He said, last time you were paid off with me, you chocked no score, but I'll take your advance and I'll give you the chance, and I'll send you to sea once more, once more, once more, go to sea once more. Well, I'll take you in advance and I'll give you the chance And I'll tend you to sea once more

Well, he put me on board of a whaling ship Bound out to the Arctic seas Where the cold wind blows and there's ice and snow And Jamaica here, I'm due to freeze Well, I can't stay here for I have no gear And I spent all me money on shore And it was then that I said that I wished I was dead, would go to sea no more, no more, no more, go to sea no more. It was then that I said that I wished I was dead

And would go to sea no more Some days we caught a sperm whale, boys And some days we did get none With a twenty-foot oar all in your paw You'd roll the whole day long And when the night it came around You'd nod upon your oar Oh, a man must be blind to make up his mind to go to sea once more

Once more, once more, go to sea once more Oh, a man must be blind to make up his mind to go to sea once more Come all ye bold seafaring men and listen to my song When you come home from them damned long trips, well, I'll tell you what goes wrong. Take my advice, don't drink strong, drink no go, sleeping with no whores. But get married, lads, and spend all night in, and go to sea no more. No more, no more, go to sea no more. But get by, little lads, and spend all night in Angola to see no more.

Thanks so much, Sean. So, unfortunately, that's all the time that we have for today. I'd like to thank my guests, Promise and Frank Uzawulu, John Bromley, and Craig Edwards. Promise, I'm going to start with you. Where can we find you online, and what's next for you? Well, you can find me on all social medias at strong underscore promises. There you can see all of my nursing journey. And I do a lot of other content related to like nursing students, health, or soon my new nursing career.

Thanks. And also congratulations from us on your new job. I know that you're pretty excited about that. Frank, how about you? Where can we find you and what are you working on? So you can find me at FrankXLion on Instagram and Twitch. You can also add me on Snapchat at Z-E-X-E-R-X. And I believe my TikTok is also FrankXLion. That's Frank X and then Lion. When you say Lion, I assume you're talking like the animal, right?

Frank X-L-I-O-N? Yes. Frank X-L-I-O-N. Got it. Thanks. And I think this is kind of like we have a cross-generational piece here, too, as far as ages. So you've named some platforms that I've heard of but never used myself. It's going to be interesting to see what new technology our audience is getting introduced to as part of this conversation.

John, where can we find you and what's next for you and for Kimber's Men? You can find us on our website, kimbersmen.com. uh we've got a twitter account at kimber's men facebook kimber's men youtube and we're on tiktok as well i think that's under kimber's men or it might be under shanties but i'm not sure i'm old yeah i i assume uh folks will be able to find kimber's men there and i've seen uh them cross posting um i think it's neil doing it cross posting tiktok onto twitter so uh If you need assistance getting there, that's one way to do it. Craig, what are you working on now and where can we find you online?

Right now I'm working on recording a couple of different recording projects and anticipating getting back to live performance at some point. You can find me at my website, fiddlecraig.com. That's fiddle like the instrument, fiddlecraig.com. I've got a music page on Facebook under just Craig Edwards. Got it. Thank you so much. Well, thank you all again for coming on today. To our listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. © transcript Emily Beynon