^B00:00:16 >> I'm Jennifer Cutting, folklife specialist at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. It's September 20, 2018 and we're here interviewing some of our artists from tonight's Homegrown Series Archive Challenge Sampler Concert that's taking place tonight at 7:30 in the Coolidge Auditorium. And we have with us the group that's going to be first up in the concert, the Ship's Company Chanteymen. And we only have two of the Chanteymen, we'll talk about the others later but with us right now is the business manager of Ship's Company Chanteymen, Myron Peterson. We also have folklife specialist and writer/editor from the American Folklife Center, Steve Winick, who's going to guest tonight with Ship's Company. So welcome. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> And I guess the first question I had for you Myron, is I understand that Ship's Company Chanteymen is part of a larger organization called Ship's Company, and I was wondering if you could tell us what the relationship is between Ship's Company Chanteymen and Ship's Company, the larger organization. And how Ship's Company Chanteymen came to be. >> Ship's Company Incorporated is a non-profit organization, incorporate in the state of Maryland, and we do historic presentations and, centered around the life of the sailor from the early wars period, the American Revolution, predominantly now the War of 1812, and also for the American Civil War. And this started about 35 years ago on, doing programs on the Constellation in Baltimore, and at that time, the ship was considered the original 1797 frigate. We know now that that is not the case, it's a rebuild from the 1850's, and so the ship did see service during the American Civil War so the group decided to expand out into Civil War. And for a while that almost become the primary focus but there were a number of us who really enjoyed the early wars period, and as the bicentennial of the War of 1812 approached, we got a much better research and understanding of the navy of the War of 1812, building on what it was during the American Revolution, during the Quasi-War with France during the first Tripolitan War. >> Mm hmm. >> In between shows on Constellation and in the early days when we were still doing Quasi-War, some of us would you know, spend the time between our doing gun drill, which was the predominant show, just singing to entertain ourselves and it was to say hey, we actually don't sound too bad and so a small group of that got together. We shanghaied a few other people from the folk community, notably K.C. King who had been a member of the Boarding Party. >> Oh yes. >> And formed the Ship's Company Chanteymen in 1996. So, and we started you know, the usual, we'll do this for fun and exposure, and now you know, we do this for money, we're mercenaries. >> Okay, and what kind of repertoire do you focus on? >> We focus on nautical songs, we like songs with a relationship to sailing, the sea, and they can be modern so we can go into steam and diesel as well, we don't mind. But that, we like that relationship between the sailors and the song. Now some of it is, a tavern song from the early periods, you'll see that occasionally where we're singing. What was popular because sea chanteys as we understand it, mostly evolved in the later part of the 19th century. There are very few chanteys from the very early periods. A chantey is used to coordinate work onboard ship, navy ships especially; they didn't like them, because the first command in the navy is silence. So you've got to be able to hear commands and they had man power. The merchant ships on the other hand, didn't have the man power you know, a lot of people, so they had to coordinate the work more and that's the chanteyman and -- >> Oh, I see. Now I understand that you were in the navy for over 20 years yourself. >> That's correct. >> As, what was your position? >> I was a Russian interpreter for the navy, I was trained by the navy, and attend the rank of chief petty officer. I retired in 1996 so just before the Chanteymen started so, a little more free with my time. Before that I was deploying at the will of the navy, on board various ships, a lot of submarines. >> I was wondering was music part of your daily life in any way while you were in the nav? >> Not particularly although on one or two trips there would be people who would get together and you know, somebody would have a guitar, and they'd sing and you know, it was a way to pass the time, especially when you're working, in my case, working twelve hours with twelve hours off every day, but there's nothing to do. >> Yeah. >> So singing, like I said, but it was very rare. Most everybody, the music involved, later especially, of a set of headsets and a tape. >> Yeah. Gotcha. Well, moving over the Steve now, I know that you did most of the research for tonight's performance, which is convenient because you work in the American Folklife Center. Tell me a little about the collections you used and why you chose the songs that you did. >> Alright I'll say, first off, that I am the writer and editor in the American Folklife Center here at the Library of Congress, but I'm also a long-time member of Ship's Company Chanteymen. I've been kind of on the inactive list for a while so I haven't been doing a lot of gigs with the group, but I have been a member of the group for over 10 years now I guess. And because of that, when this idea came up to have the Chanteymen in the Archive Challenge, it sort of made sense because I was kind of the inside guy, right? I already worked here and I knew the collections so the question was, what would be the best songs for us to do. Two of them come from the James Madison Carpenter collection and that's partly because that collection has been getting more attention lately because it's been digitized by The American Folklife Center, and placed online at the Ralph Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in England, which is part of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and so during that process of them putting it online and us getting them the digital files, we were all kind of working with the collection somewhat. And so I became familiar with some of the pieces in there and they were really interesting pieces. Carpenter was an American who collected both in the US and in Britain in the late '20s and early '30s, which is kind of an underrepresented time in folklore collecting. And the two songs that I chose, one is a very interesting version of Blow the Man Down, which is a well-known sea chantey that everyone does in the sea chantey scene but it's a completely different version than anyone else ever does. Because Carpenter was very interested in sea chanteys and in fact wrote his doctoral dissertation on nautical songs, but his professor that he was writing this doctoral dissertation for, was George Lyman Kittredge who was the student of Francis James Child, who was the preeminent ballad scholar of the 19th century after whom we even have a category of ballads names, so we all talk about the Child ballads in folklore circles. And so what Carpenter discovered was that one of these versions of Blow the Man Down, has lyrics of the verses that are a Child ballad, a Child ballad was actually adapted into a version of Blow the Man Down. And this interested him so much, he collected it three times actually; twice in New York and once in Wales. And so that was one that I thought stood out from the collection for all those reasons. Partly because everyone would be somewhat familiar with it, but not familiar at all with this version. >> And you have blended verses from different field recordings to create the version that you're going to perform tonight. >> Yes, in fact, this was early in Carpenter's career and he mostly collected this one in writing as opposed to on cylinders and so we have written text and transcriptions of it. But yeah-- >> And it looks like they were all collected in 1928. >> Yes, interestingly enough. And that kind of shows you that it might have been a sort of micro-era in that chantey's life when this version existed and then kind of faded quickly. These three men, certainly two of them knew each other, because they were both retired. >> Because they were both at Sailor's Snug Harbor. >> Exactly, which is a sailors' rest home in Staten Island in New York, and it's quite possible that they knew the third guy as well because these crews were often international. >> And the other guy was Richard Warner from Cardiff, in South Wales. >> Cardiff in South Wales, right. So yeah, I combined some verses from all of them, primarily I'm doing a version that he recorded from Dennis O'Connor's in Sailor's Snug Harbor but I put in a couple of verses from others. >> Okay, we've got three more songs to cover in 5 minutes, so yeah, let's go ahead and talk about On Board the [inaudible], the other song from the Carpenter collection. >> Yeah, that's an interesting one too, which Carpenter, as I said, he wrote his dissertation on sea music and so when we were going through his collection, there were some items that we have notebooks with tunes written down, but we don't have the words for those tunes. And it turns out that this is one of those, so I found the tune in his collection, but then when looking at his doctoral dissertation, I found that the words are in there. So we were able to match those up together. And I was actually alerted to this by our friend Bob Walser, who's been working with the collection quite a bit, and it appealed to me because it's a song that tells the story of a fishing trip from Massachusetts up to Atlantic Canada and I've heard the tune up in Atlantic Canada. It's still an oral tradition but not with these words. So I thought that was an interesting piece as well and we put that one together. >> So this is a great reunion. >> Yeah, exactly. >> The reunion of the tune and the words. Now let's jump to William Derflinger's [phonetic] collection of Patrick Taylor. From that collection, you chose Reuben Ranzo. >> Yeah and that's only because I mean, Taylor was an incredible singer and chantey man but also a great story teller. And he gave these incredible introductions for some of his songs including Reuben Ranzo, so we decided we'd play a piece of his introduction-- >> Using that tonight. >> Using so we'll hear Taylor's voice introducing the song and then Myron's actually going to sing that one. But it's another very well-known sea chantey which is about a tailor who goes to sea. Sailors often made fun of tailors and a lot of people did in those days. Tailors had the kind of stereotypical repetition of being wimps. That's sort of the joke that is always being told about tailors in that era. >> And over to Jolly Roving Tar from the Anne and Frank Warner collection. >> So that is a song again, that all nautical groups know. It's very well-known in this community but what nobody knows, or very few people know, is that everybody knows that song because of a single field recording that's in our archive. And that was a recording made by Anne and Frank Warner of Lena Born Fish [phonetic], in East Jaffrey New Hampshire in 1940. >> Nineteen-forty, mm hmm. >> So when I learned that that was the case and I learned that actually from Jeff and Garrett Warner who were here just a few weeks ago, I thought wow, that would be a great fourth song to do in our set and we put that one together as well. >> And did Ship's Company already sing a version of Jolly Roving Tar? >> Yes, that's one that's in our general repertoire. >> In your repertoire. >> Yeah. >> And the interesting thing being that you probably learned it from someone who learned it from someone else, who learned it from the Lena Born Fish the field recording. >> Yes, so the way that worked was that the Warner's were good friends with the Lomax's and they played this field recording for the Lomax's who put it in one of their books and so a transcription of this was released in a book and so it was then learned by a lot of people in the folk revival. But another thing that none of those people knew, the Lomax's didn't know it, the Warner's didn't know it, and Lena Born Fish didn't know it, she had learned it from a retired whaling sailor. But none of these people knew that it was actually a stage song that was written by Ned Harrigan of Harrigan and Hart fame. But it wasn't written with Hart, it was written with his father-in-law, a man named Dave Brahm. And they wrote it for a play called Old Lavender which was on Broadway, and it was you know, it became popular not only with you know, everyday popular culture, but it became popular with sailors. And so it went to sea and was then collected from sailors by Lena Born Fish, among other people. And so it's a great story of one of those kind of dramatic songs about sailing life that actually caught on with sailors. And that wasn't uncommon. >> And made its way into the oral tradition. >> Right. That wasn't uncommon, that did happen quite a bit in the tradition so. >> Well, we're looking forward to hearing all of these four songs tonight in the Archive Challenge Sampler Concert from the Homegrown Concert Series in the American Folklife Center in the Coolidge Auditorium tonight at 7:30. Thank you gentlemen for being with us for this interview. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.