Erie Canal: A Song History

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"Low Bridge, Everybody Down (or Fifteen Years on the Erie Canal)" began as a composed popular song, not a work song from the towpath. The Digital Public Library of America's Erie Canal exhibition credits Thomas S. Allen, a hired songwriter, with writing it at some point between 1905 and 1912, and says the F. B. Haviland Publishing Company copyrighted it in manuscript in 1912 and as sheet music in 1913[1]. Sources differ on the date: the Traditional Ballad Index and a New York State Archives teaching page both give 1905, and the Ballad Index adds a question mark to Allen's name[2][3]. The shouted warning was real, because passengers riding on the cabin roofs had to duck or climb down when the boat reached one of the canal's low bridges[4]. The DPLA links the song's appeal to its arrival near the close of the "towpath era"[1], and the State Archives page notes that many canal workers resented the motorized barges that in time put the mules out of work[3]. According to the Erie Canal Museum, Allen's words counted years spent with the mule, while the version usually sung today counts miles instead[4].

Transfer-printed plate with a view of the canal at Little Falls on the Mohawk River framed by a flowered border

Job & John Jackson, plate with View of the Canal, Little Falls, Mohawk River, transfer-printed earthenware made in Britain for the American market, ca. 1831–35. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). An early canal view, decades older than the song; it has no connection to it.

Recordings followed quickly. Billy Murray sang it for Victor in Camden, New Jersey, on 18 November 1912, and the disc (Victor 17250) was released in March 1913[5][6]. The Peerless Quartet recorded it for Columbia in New York on 6 December 1912[7], and the Ballad Index also lists a 1913 Edison cylinder by Edward Meeker and 1929 recordings by Vernon Dalhart[2]. The song later entered folk song collections, including Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag and John and Alan Lomax's American Ballads and Folk Songs[2]. Pete Seeger recorded it as "Erie Canal" on American Favorite Ballads, Volume Four (Folkways FA 2323, 1961), in the form that counts miles[8].

Allen's song should not be confused with other canal songs, some printed under similar titles. Samuel Woodworth's "The Meeting of the Waters of Hudson & Erie" was sung at the canal's opening celebration in 1825[1]. Comic canal songs of unknown authorship include "The Raging Canal," which the Ballad Index dates to at least 1851, with a possible ancestor in 1844 sheet music[9], and "The E-ri-e," first found in Sandburg's 1927 collection[10]. The Ballad Index warns that the Lomaxes mixed texts from several Erie Canal songs, and it points to a stage song by Edward Harrigan and David Braham on a similar low-bridge theme, though how the two songs influenced each other is unknown[2].

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Sources

  1. Digital Public Library of America: "Canal Culture" (Erie Canal exhibition).
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Erie Canal, The".
  3. New York State Archives Partnership Trust, Consider the Source: "Erie Canal Sheet Music, 'Low Bridge, Everybody Down,' 1913".
  4. Erie Canal Museum: "Low Bridge, Everybody Down (The Erie Canal Song)".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Victor matrix B-12626. Low bridge! Everybody down! / Billy Murray".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Victor 17250 (Black label (popular) 10-in. double-faced)".
  7. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Columbia matrix 38484. Low bridge, everybody down / Peerless Quartet".
  8. Smithsonian Folkways: "American Favorite Ballads, Volume Four" (FA 2323 liner notes).
  9. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Raging Canal (I), The".
  10. The Traditional Ballad Index: "E-ri-e, The".