"Hurrah for the Blackball Line" - halyard chantey w/ Peter Kasin
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- Опубліковано 15 жов 2024
- Peter Kasin, a guest performer at Mystic Seaport's Sea Music Festival 2010, leads the chantey, "Hurrah for the Blackball Line," at the main topsail halyards on the small ship Joseph Conrad.
The entries for this chanty in my "Shanties of the Seven Seas Project" are here:
• Hooraw for the Blackba...
• Hooraw for the Blackba...
• "Hooraw for the Blackb...
great to see this shanty with the rope work. I grew up with a slightly different version but this is a great one, like the later Lou Killen recording.
I used to insist on that as well, that "to me" was only the chanteyman's command and nver part of the chorus, but Stan Hugill often had "to me" as part of the chorus, so I defer to him. No hard and fast rule as far as I can see.
As I understand it, it is not "To me way-hey-hey-hoo-rio" as the 'To me' bit is a plea made by the shantyman for the chorus to be sung back to him, as in (To me) "Way-hey-hey-hoo-rio".
Hi,
Why would a chantyman have to plea that the chorus is sung? Rather, that "space" in the song belongs to the chorus-it's their "pick up" beat, so that they can all come together on the pull. It's like saying "and-a-PULL!" The chorus singers dovetail their part into the song in that way. Other documented renditions of this song fill that space with "Haul a- [WAY]", "Hur - [RAH]", "A-a-and [WAY]". "To me" is not a fixed phrase. A version of this with "To my" appeared in Capt. Robinson's 1917 article, but earlier documents don't include the "Rio" chorus.
Then why do they not need a 'pick up' beat for the last line of the chorus? I am certainly NOT saying that they need one, just that it is not needed on the first line either. I still hold that in the great majority of shanties 'To me' is not part of the chorus but has become accepted as such by folk singers misinterpreting it that way.
They do have a pick up on the second chorus: "Hur-".
If what you're saying is accurate, we would expect to find documentation of these songs either 1) indicating that the chantyman sings "to me" or 2) omitting "to me," on the presumption that the chantyman adds it as needed. Moreover, according to your idea, it would probably be #1, because, I suppose, the idea would be that folk singer read *printed* documents and mistook the printed "to me" as part of a chorus. Do you have examples of such documents? I've not seen them. And, I'll add, very few chanties have been documented with "to me" one way or the other.
I think it's quite the opposite. In the cases of "to me" being included in documentation of a few chanties, a few times the revival singers have misinterpreted that as part of the solo.
Now, the soloist may sing the "to me" (just as he *may* sing the chorus), as long as it is a rhythmic pick-up. If it is just shouted off-rhythm by the chantyman -- as it was on some tracks I seem to remember in the 1950s British folk revival -- then that seems to me something contrived. The historical accounts say nothing about that.
As to this song specifically, I gave, in my last comment, the various pick-up phrases of the choruses in documentation. If those choruses were being sung, than a chantyman saying "to me" would be talking over the crew... who'd have already started giving the chorus "to him." The chantyman would be intruding on the chorus's space.
Actually, the idea that "to me" always comes before the chorus as a plea is a modern construct. Stan Hugill asserted that often "to me' was part of the chorus.@@Shantyman47
Peter is AWESOME!!!!!!
I came here from Wikipedia
The Maserati commercials seem tasteless with our economy destroyed
Was that a Karen aboard screaming ?
No, that's the mate of the watch shouting the command to stop hauling.