Pay Me My Money Down: A Song History
"Pay Me My Money Down" was a sailors' work song before it was a dockside one: Library of Congress folklorist Stephen Winick notes that the earliest record of it comes from an English vessel in 1858, and that the shantyman and collector Stan Hugill later documented two versions, both from Black West Indian seamen.[1] Ashore on the Georgia coast, roustabouts used it as they loaded timber onto schooners, and Winick suggests that its insistence on wages may echo the years just after emancipation, when Black laborers faced white employers seeking to withhold their pay.[1] On St. Simons Island, Joe Armstrong, who led crews of stevedores, used the call and response of shanties such as this one to keep his men pulling timber in unison, and after their singing won a local following the men organized themselves as the St. Simons Island Shanty Singers.[2]
Winslow Homer, Taking on Wet Provisions (Schooner Marked Newport, K. W.), watercolor and graphite on paper, 1903. A working schooner taking on provisions, shown for the dockside labor the song went with; it has no connection to the song.
Lydia Parrish, who spent more than 25 winters collecting music on St. Simons, printed the song in her 1942 book Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, and it was also part of the Georgia Sea Island Singers' repertoire.[1][2] Alan Lomax recorded it from a group of longshoremen in Tampa, Florida, for the Library of Congress, and on 12 October 1959 he recorded the Georgia Sea Island Singers, with Ben Ramsey and Willis Proctor, singing it.[3][4] Pete Seeger learned it and sang it with the Weavers, the Kingston Trio carried it through the folk revival, and Bruce Springsteen arranged his own version in the 2000s.[1]
Lorinda Jones arranges it in DAA tuning in Traditional Playing Of The Mountain Dulcimer, a Fingers Of Steel instruction book of 22 traditional songs, each presented with tablature, chords, strum patterns and fingering suggestions.[5]
Sources
- Library of Congress, Folklife Today: "A Deep Dive Into Sea Shanties".
- Smithsonian Folkways: "The Complete Friends of Old Time Music Concert" (liner notes).
- Library of Congress: "Pay me my money down" (American Folklife Center catalog card, AFS 07092 A02).
- Association for Cultural Equity: "Georgia Sea Islands".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Lorinda Jones, Traditional Playing Of The Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: Winslow Homer, Taking on Wet Provisions (Schooner Marked Newport, K. W.), watercolor and graphite on paper, 1903. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.