Customer Reviews

Blow Boys Blow

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I grew up with the record version of this CD and wore out the grooves. It's gutsy, real and sometimes very odd. No wonder Frank Zappa owned a copy (he lent it to Captain Beefhart who never returned it). This what folk music used to be all about --the thoughts and feelings of working people, rarely pretty but always beautiful.

One of my favorite of MacColl's records. Only the fact that about half the songs are by A.L. Lloyd, who I don't like as much, makes this a four-star review, instead of five. A lot of sea-shanty cds are pretty sappy stuff; they sound like they're some guy's idea of what sea shanties should sound like. This record sounds like someone singing excellent songs. Is this an authentic version of sea shanties? Beats me, since I never was on a 19th-Century sailing ship; but it sure is a good cd.

This is one of my favorite albums, ever. It's stood the test of time, rising in my estimation as the years have passed. These are authentic sea chanties, and you can almost feel the lonliness and danger shared by those who put to sea and sang about it. Musically, the ballads are sung solo, with a chorus of several voices, backed by simple instruments. The songs and the delivery by Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd are haunting. My own ecletic musical tastes run from the blues of Lonni Johnson to Janice Joplin, John Coletrane, the New Lost City Ramblers, and Bach. Blow Boys Blow belongs in that company! If you are new to this type music, give it a few listens, and imagine the lives of those who manned whalers and merchant ships in the days before steam power.

--John Blackford

Sea chanties may be the purist and richest form of work song extant today and there are a large number of CDs of performances of this very traditional kind of song. Four of the very best are:

`Blow the Man Down' by eleven different voices, one of which is a group, The Watersons.

`Blow Boys Blow' sung by Ewan MacColl & A. L. Lloyd

`Sailors, Ships, and Chanteys' by Louis Killen

`Blow the Winds in the Morning' choral interpretations directed by John Langstaff

The best thing about this selection is that in spite of the great similarity in the names of the albums, there is practically no overlap in selections. There is some difference in style among the four, as chanteys may be performed with a solo voice, a chorus, or alternating between a solo voice and chorus.

The last of these three styles is probably the most traditional, as it is closest in realization to how chanties were actually used, as a means of coordinating the efforts of a large number of men contributing their muscle power to a single task such as raising an anchor or raising or lowering a large sail boom.

The first of these four CDs is a mix of all styles. The second is primarily solos by the two principle artists. The third is a combination of solos and responsive singing, the chorus being supplied by a group playfully named `The Out-of-Shape Chanteymen' The fourth is largely choral interpretations.

As appropriate to what one would find on a wind powered ship, the instrumental accompanyment is typically no more than a banjo, guitar, mandoline, or concertina. It's interesting that the harmonica does not play a larger part in chanty accompaniments, but it strikes me that this would detract from the overriding importance of the voice in joining in with the chorus. Similarly, there is no hornpipe, let alone bagpipes heard on any of these recordings.

If I were to recommend any one of these albums, it would be the third, since Master Killen has the finest tenor voice among all the performers. It also strikes me that his selection of songs is just a bit more fun than the others. The CD with the most rustic performances is `Blow the Man Down' with a lot of really crusty solos by Killen, Ewan Maccoll, Cyril Tawney, The Waterssons, Sam Larner, Ian Campbell, Bob Davenport, Bob Roberts, Harry H. Corbett, Bob Hart, and A. L. Lloyd.

All these albums are satisfying to anyone with a yen for sea songs.

This review is a little off the beaten path for this writer. Oh no, not on the subject matter of the sea. There are a thousand primordial links between me and that great swirl of ocean which I will mention below. No, what is unusual is that I would discuss sea shanties, a form of musical expression that is not normally in my world view. I have explored the roots of rock & roll and engaged in the polemics about whether rhythm & blues, rockabilly or country formed the basis of that music revolution. I have gone on and on about the various manifestations of the blues, country and urban, acoustic and electric. I have endlessly discussed the urban folk revival of the early 1960s, ad nauseaum.

I have, moreover, tipped my hat to the precursors of that folk revival by reviewing the work of the likes of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly in the course of which I have discussed work songs, prison labor songs, cowboy songs, songs of the Spanish Civil War and so on. I have gladly thrown a bouquet or two to jazz singers, and to an occasional scat artist like Louis Armstrong. I have even gone down and dirty in bayou country to praise Cajun music. But nowhere have I previously been inclined to give mention to the work songs of the old tars, the sailor/workers of the age of the wooden ship which was the early means of "globalization" of international commerce in the early days of capitalist development. I make amends here to the boyos who sailed, slaved and survived on the wide oceans.

As mentioned above, this is a rather strange previous musical omission. I have many serious links to the sea. I grew up in a town so close to the ocean that I probably smelled sea air from an open hospital window the day I was born. From one house I grew up in I could tumble down a hill to the beach. In another I didn't need to even tumble. I have walked more beach miles than I care to recount. I have stood as hurricane winds came up and drove the waves over two double sea walls in an off-hand demonstration of her power. I have, from land and sea, seen cays, bays, narrows, wide empty expanses, and every other form of ocean creation. I have seen oceans as blues as the heavens, and as dark as the darkest night.

All of this is by way of saying, as I have on other occasions in discussing the old hobo skills of `riding the rails' in the days when trains were the common form of fast transportation, the old sailors, as least in their youths (if they had not been shanghai-ed, a common form of impressment), were trying to go THERE in order not to be HERE. And that, my friends, is the link that binds me to the work and off-time songs of the old salts and to their miseries and, few, joys.

So here in these CD selections we get a second-hand chance to listen to what Jack Tar was singing about in the days when men were made of steel, and ships of wood. Or so the lads would have us believe. One can appreciate, as an almost universal proposition, that music makes the hard task of work easier. But behind the singsong nature of the music lies some kind of undefined longing that has haunted humankind since it first walked on two legs. Here, that return to our homeland, the sea. In the meantime though the talk was of getting the sails up; getting a few hours of sleep or sneaking some; worrying over an impeding storm and its effects; dreaming, always dreaming of port and the girls left behind (or to be avoided); and that eternal thirst for that ration of rum, the `nectar of the gods' to benighted seaman (check to "All For Me Grog" for the inside dope on that subject). Listen up, mates.

Note: Probably the most interesting song here is "Handsome Cabin Boy" about the twisted fate of a beautiful young girl who shipped out as cabin boy, whose looks caught the attention of both the captain and his wife aboard ship (to speak nothing of the sex-hungry sailors), and who became pregnant (mysteriously?). I would think that it would take some serious psychological study to get to the "inner" meaning of that little ditty in the psyche of the closed-in sailor. Also give a close listen to "Paddy West", "Blow Boys Blow", and "South Australia".

These are probably very true, accurate, and terribly tuneless versions that were actually sung by sailors ... difficult to listen to and enjoy.