Sloop John B: A Song History

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“Sloop John B,” also known as “The John B. Sails” and “The Wreck of the John B.,” is a folk song from the West Indies about a voyage gone wrong, with a drunken crewman and a troublesome cook among the complaints.[1] One early appearance in print came in Richard Le Gallienne’s Bahamas treasure-hunting novel Pieces of Eight (1918), where the narrator calls for it as his crew sail out of Nassau.[2] Carl Sandburg printed it in The American Songbag (1927), crediting John T. McCutcheon and his wife, Evelyn Shaw McCutcheon, who had learned it in the West Indies, and remarking that around Nassau it was nearly a national anthem.[3] Sandburg’s note goes on to claim that the boat’s weathered ribs lay in the sand at Governor’s Harbor and that an expedition recovered relics from them in 1926.[3] Such stories of the “real” John B. are best treated as legend: the Traditional Ballad Index reports the wreck’s resting place only as something people say, and observes that no version it has seen actually describes the boat going down.[1]

Watercolor of a sailing sloop with loose white sails on blue water, a small red boat beside it, under a cloudy sky

Winslow Homer, Sloop, Nassau, watercolor and graphite on off-white wove paper, 1899. A sloop at Nassau, shown for its setting; it has no connection to the song.

In 1935 Alan Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle made field recordings in the Bahamas for the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song, on a trip that took Lomax to Nassau, Cat Island and Andros.[4][5] Among them was the Cleveland Simmons Group singing “Histe Up the John B. Sail,”[1] later reissued by Rounder, as “Hustle Up the John B. Sail,” on Deep River of Song: Bahamas 1935.[4] The Weavers recorded “(The Wreck of the) John B” for Decca in New York on November 3, 1950.[6] The Beach Boys’ version appeared on Pet Sounds, released in May 1966, and became one of the group’s concert staples;[7] as a single it climbed to No. 2 on the British chart.[8]

Lorinda Jones includes it, as “(Sloop) John B.,” in Traditional Playing Of The Mountain Dulcimer, a collection of 22 traditional songs arranged in DAA tuning, published by Fingers Of Steel.[9]

Our books that contain the song "Sloop John B"

Sources

  1. Traditional Ballad Index: "John B. Sails, The".
  2. Project Gutenberg: "Pieces of Eight, by Richard Le Gallienne".
  3. Internet Archive: "The American Songbag, Carl Sandburg (1927)".
  4. Mainly Norfolk: "Deep River of Song: Bahamas 1935".
  5. Association for Cultural Equity: "Caribbean Repatriation".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Decca matrix 80127. (The wreck of the) John B / The Weavers".
  7. Library of Congress, National Recording Registry: "Pet Sounds—The Beach Boys (1966)".
  8. Official Charts Company: "Sloop John B, The Beach Boys".
  9. Fingers Of Steel: "Lorinda Jones, Traditional Playing Of The Mountain Dulcimer".
  10. Image: Winslow Homer, Sloop, Nassau, watercolor and graphite on off-white wove paper, 1899. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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