The Storms Are On The Ocean: A Song History

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“The Storms Are on the Ocean” belongs to a large, loosely bounded family of farewell songs that the Traditional Ballad Index groups under the heading “Fare You Well, My Own True Love” (Roud 49), with “The True Lover’s Farewell” and “Turtle Dove” among its other titles.[1] The Index reports the family from southern England and Aberdeenshire as well as from Appalachia and other parts of the United States, gives 1867 as its earliest date, and lists nine Appalachian texts that Cecil Sharp printed as “The True Lover’s Farewell.”[1] It also lists a 1939 archive recording by Aunt Molly Jackson under the title “Ten Thousand Miles.”[1] Notes from Smithsonian Folkways link the song’s verses to “The Lass of Roch Royal,” number 76 in Francis James Child’s ballad collection.[2]

Mezzotint of a storm, with heavy surf breaking along a pier and people on the shore

Frank Short, Vessel in Distress of Yarmouth, mezzotint, c. 1908. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

The Carter Family recorded the song for Victor at Bristol, Tennessee, on August 1, 1927, in a session supervised by Ralph Peer, with Sara Carter singing alto and playing autoharp, Maybelle Carter singing soprano and playing guitar, and A. P. Carter singing bass.[3] It came out on Victor 20937, with Bluebird and Montgomery Ward reissues in the mid-1930s, and it was one of six songs the Carters recorded at those first Bristol sessions.[1] The disc label named A. P. Carter as composer,[3] and the Folkways notes say he claimed the song as his own,[2] but the Ballad Index calls the Carter text “almost certainly a version remade by A. P. Carter.”[1] The Index also relays writer Barry Mazor’s suggestion that the Carter version took shape after Peer told the Carters that a chorus helped a song succeed; the Index finds the idea plausible but says it cannot now be proved.[1] The family recorded it again for ARC on May 9, 1935, in a take issued on Vocalion,[4] and the Ballad Index also lists issues of that recording on Conqueror and, later, Columbia.[1]

The Delmore Brothers recorded it in Atlanta on February 6, 1940, for a Bluebird release whose label also credited A. P. Carter.[5] Maybelle Carter returned to it on February 12, 1965, singing with her autoharp while Mike Seeger played guitar, in a performance issued on Smithsonian Folkways’ Friends of Old Time Music.[2] A Smithsonian Folkways album by Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson opens with the song.[6] Jim Miller arranges it in DGD tuning in 15 Tunes In The Public Domain Recorded By The Carter Family, Volume 1, a collection of fifteen solo mountain dulcimer arrangements of songs the Carter Family recorded, with tablature, lyrics and chord symbols, published by Fingers Of Steel.[7]

Our book that contains the song "The Storms Are On The Ocean"

Sources

  1. Traditional Ballad Index: "Fare You Well, My Own True Love (The Storms Are on the Ocean, The False True Lover, The True Lover's Farewell, Red Rosy Bush, Turtle Dove)".
  2. Smithsonian Folkways: "Friends of Old Time Music" (liner notes).
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-39753. The storms are on the ocean / Carter Family".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Vocalion 03160 (3000 10-in. series)".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BS-047559. The storms are on the ocean / Delmore Brothers".
  6. Smithsonian Folkways: "Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City".
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Jim Miller, 15 Tunes In The Public Domain Recorded By The Carter Family, Volume 1".
  8. Image: Frank Short, Vessel in Distress of Yarmouth, mezzotint, c. 1908. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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