Blow The Man Down: A Song History
"Blow the Man Down" is a sea shanty of unknown authorship, numbered 2624 in the Roud Folk Song Index, and collectors have found it in many parts of the United States, in the Canadian Maritimes and in the West Indies.[1] It was a halyard shanty, used for the slow work of hoisting the heavy yards, with the shantyman's solo lines alternating with the crew's chorus.[2] The Ballad Index's earliest date for it is 1867, from the July 25 edition of the Syracuse Daily Courier, as reported by Jonathan Lighter.[1] Laura Alexandrine Smith printed it with music in The Music of the Waters (1888), calling it "a genuine chanty" and linking it to hoisting the topsail yards.[3]
Frances Flora Bond Palmer, Clipper Ship “Hurricane” of New York, hand-colored lithograph, 1852. A clipper rather than a packet ship, shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.
Some versions are set on a ship of the Black Ball Line.[1] The Dictionary of American History calls the Black Ball the first packet company, starting in 1818 with four ships on a monthly schedule between New York and Liverpool.[4] Notes to the Library of Congress album American Sea Songs and Shanties, edited by Duncan Emrich, suggest the shanty may date from about the time the line was founded, although the earliest dated reference in the sources consulted here is from 1867.[5][1] Some texts name the Black Ball's commander as Jack Williams; the Ballad Index notes that a hard-driving Captain John Williams set a New York to San Francisco record in the clipper Andrew Jackson on a voyage of 1859-60, but its sources disagree on whether he is the captain of the song.[1] W. B. Whall, a master mariner, traced the song to the old Atlantic packet ships in the 1913 third edition of his collection Ships, Sea Songs and Shanties, explaining that "blow" then meant "knock."[6] The Library of Congress notes give the same reading, citing William Main Doerflinger's report that packet sailors called their rough second and third mates by a nickname built on the same verbs.[5][7]
Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas (1961), a British collection of about 430 songs, gives the shanty several texts and sorts its versions into six types, among them one about sailing in a Black Baller and another in which a sailor is mistaken for one.[7][1] On record, the Minster Singers sang it in London on February 20, 1905, on a side that also carried "Rio Grande" as part of a series of sea chanties, issued as Gramophone 4368 and Victor 61148.[8] Alan Lomax recorded Richard Maitland singing it at Sailors' Snug Harbor on Staten Island in 1939, and Noble B. Brown was recorded in Woodman, Wisconsin, in 1946; the Library of Congress album includes both.[5] Harry H. Corbett led it on A. L. Lloyd and Ewan MacColl's mid-1950s LP The Singing Sailor, and Hugill himself sang it aboard the Cutty Sark at the 1979 Greenwich Festival.[2] Judy House includes it in Jam Across America, her 178-page jam book for mountain dulcimer clubs, with every arrangement in DAD tuning.[9]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Blow the Man Down".
- Mainly Norfolk: "Blow the Man Down (Roud 2624)".
- Internet Archive: "Laura Alexandrine Smith, The Music of the Waters (1888)".
- Encyclopedia.com (Dictionary of American History): "Packets, Sailing".
- Library of Congress, Archive of Folk Song: "American Sea Songs and Shanties" (AFS L26-L27 booklet, archived).
- Internet Archive: "W. B. Whall, Ships, Sea Songs and Shanties (3rd ed., 1913)".
- Mystic Seaport Museum: "A Bibliography of Sea Chanteys & Sailors' Songs".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Gramophone matrix 1808e. Sea chanties no. 6: Rio Grande / Minster Singers".
- Judy House: "Jam Across America".
- Image: Frances Flora Bond Palmer, Clipper Ship “Hurricane” of New York, hand-colored lithograph, 1852. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.