Brian Miller - evergreentrad

01 Apr

To Work Upon the Railroad

In eighteen hundred and sixty one
The Yankee war had just begun,
I put my corduroy breeches on
To work upon the railroad.

In eighteen hundred and sixty two
My corduroy breeches they were new,
I took my pick with a navvy’s crew
To work upon the railroad.

In eighteen hundred and sixty three
I sailed away beyond the sea,
I sailed away to Americay
To work upon the railroad.

In eighteen hundred and sixty four
We landed on Columbia’s Shore,
Bad luck to the ship that brought me o’er
To work upon the railroad.

It’s “Pat do this” and “Pat do that”
Without a stocking or cravat,
Nothing more than an old straw hat
When Pat works on the railroad.

We left Ireland to come here
And spend our latter days in cheer,
Our bosses they did drink strong beer
And Pat worked on the railroad.

____

Minnesota singer Michael C. Dean sang one verse (“In eighteen hundred and sixty four…”) of the above song for Robert W. Gordon’s wax cylinder recording machine in 1924. Of the more than 30 song fragments Gordon recorded from Dean, “To Work Upon the Railroad” is the only one that does not correspond to a more complete text in Dean’s self-published 1922 songster The Flying Cloud. For that reason, we do not know what other verses Dean knew, if any. My guess is that they resembled the first three verses I chose to include here which come from a version printed in Joanna Colcord’s Songs of American Sailormen. The verses collected by Colcord line up well with Dean’s in the years they use and the fact that they are not split up by a chorus. Versions of this song are plentiful and I decided to throw in two additional verses at the end which I adapted from Alan Lomax’s Folksong U.S.A. Dean’s melody does seem to be unique and it gives the song a more mournful tone than other versions (to me at least).

If Dean knew this song in 1924, why didn’t he print it in his 1922 songster? We can’t know for sure, but my suspicion is that he actually learned the song in the interim. My research, using the Robert W. Gordon collection at the American Folklife Center, turned up ample evidence that Dean, then in his late 60s, was actively seeking out old folk songs to add to his repertoire in those years. The printing of The Flying Cloud helped connect Dean to a network of academic song collectors and other old traditional singers who swapped songs with Dean—sometimes by mail. He was likely seeking out old songs from his co-workers at the Virginia Rainy Lake Lumber Company mill in Virginia, MN where he worked as well. In my research, I have found multiple instances of singers who built up a large repertoire before the age of 25, did not learn many songs during the middle of their lives and then resumed adding to their repertoire when, late in life, they realized the value of their old songs. Based on other cases I know of, my guess is that Dean’s later years were enriched by the realization, supported by feedback from Gordon and others, that his songs were worth preserving. Along with that realization came energy to learn new songs and to build friendships with other singers.

For this month’s video of The Lost Forty’s arrangement of “To Work Upon the Railroad,” we performed the song aboard Northern Pacific Caboose 1631 at the Minnesota Transportation Museum in St. Paul. Thanks to Danielle Enblom at the the museum!

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

01 Feb

The Clipper Ship Dreadnaught (revisited)

We have a flash packet, she’s a packet of fame,
She belongs to New York and the Dreadnaught’s her name;
She is bound for the ocean where the stormy winds blow,
Bound away on the “Dreadnaught” to the Westward we’ll go.

The “Dreadnaught” is lying at Liverpool dock.
Where the boys and the girls on the pier-heads do flock,
And they give us three cheers as their tears down do flow,
Bound away on the “Dreadnaught” to the Westward we’ll go.

And now we are howling on the wild Irish sea,
Where the sailors and passengers together agree,
For the sailors are perched on the yard arms, you know,
Bound away on the “Dreadnaught” to the Westward we’ll go.

Now we are sailing on the ocean so wide,
Where the great open billows dash against her black side,
And the sailors off watch are sleeping below,
Bound away on the “Dreadnaught” to the Westward we’ll go.

And now we are howling off the banks of New Foundland,
Where the waters are deep and the bottom is sand,
Where the fish of the ocean they swim to and fro,
Bound away on the “Dreadnaught” to the Westward we’ll go.

And now we are safe in New York Harbor once more,
I will go and see Nancy, she’s the girl I adore,
To the parson’s I’ll take her, my bride for to be,
And bid adieu to the “Dreadnaught” and the deep stormy sea.

___________________

This is the first song I am featuring as part of The Lost Forty Project I announced last month. The video is of The Lost Forty (Randy Gosa and I) performing our brand new arrangement of the above song. For the next eleven songs printed in Northwoods Songs, Randy and I will arrange the song and post a video on the first of the month. We are excited to be working with Cliff Dahlberg of Twelve Plus Media who is shooting the videos. You can access these videos and an archive of all previous Northwoods Songs columns and videos here or via my Youtube Channel.

“The Clipper Ship Dreadnaught” was already the focus of a Northwoods Songs post in November 2014. I return to it this month because it was the first song Randy and I chose to arrange for The Lost Forty Project. We based our arrangement on the 1924 field recording of Minnesota singer Michael Dean. The Dean recording will be part of the Minnesota Folksong Collection website I am building.

A central goal of The Lost Forty Project is to inspire others to learn and sing these songs themselves. This could mean singing the song unaccompanied, the way Dean and other woods singers of his generation would have done, or it could also mean creating an accompanied arrangement as Randy and I have done for “The Dreadnaught.” It is my opinion that both are musically satisfying and valuable approaches.

I learned and sang this song unaccompanied first. From that, I found my voice likes pitching it in B (it’s transcribed in D above). For our arrangement, I started by making up a guitar part using an unusual tuning associated with English guitarist/singer Nic Jones: BF#BF#BC#. Randy then created a harmonizing mandola part in CGDG tuning capoed at the 4th fret. I often use a combination of sheet music and the handy voice memo app on my phone to remember bits of my part as I make them up. Randy tends to work more by ear and memory. It is often a labor-intensive (but fun) process to come up with two complementary parts that we both like. Along the way, I decided to drop two verses from Dean’s version and change a few words here and there. I have transcribed it above more or less how I now sing it.

Next month, I will return to giving historical notes in my discussion of another song from the project: “The Crafty Miss.” For those interested in learning how to arrange songs in a style similar to Randy and me, when I launch my Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign this month one incentive I will be offering is a set of guitar and bouzouki/mandola part transcriptions for all twelve songs in the project.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

09 Dec

Kettle River

On the banks of Kettle River, among swamps and bogs,
We’ve been busy all winter getting out logs,
To stay through to springtime it is our design,
And the firm that we work for is called the O’Brien.

Refrain: Fol the diddle eye doh right fol the dol day

There’s Billy and George, they are well known to all,
And that ragged old veteran named Old Man MacColl,
There’s two gangs of swampers whose names I don’t mind,
But I’ll never forget the name Johnny O’Brien.
Refrain

Noble Wilson is our foreman, we all know him well,
He runs through the woods, he curses like hell,
Turns us out in the morning in rain or sunshine,
And works us like blazes for Johnny O’Brien.
Refrain

He’ll pull out his watch and look up to the sun,
Saying, “Hurry up boys, let’s get this work done,
Pitch in there you sawyers and down with the pine,
We’ll all go to Hinckley when we’re done with O’Brien.”
Refrain

Charley Olson is our cook, boys, I’m telling no lies,
He’s a dandy at putting up puddings and pies,
He’ll fill you with grub till your bellies will shine,
You never go hungry when working for O’Brien.
Refrain

Hurry up boys and let’s get it all done,
The job’s nearly completed, we’ll soon all be gone,
But in years to come we will all bear in mind,
The years that we worked for old Johnny O’Brien.
Refrain

_________

In addition to the “come-all-ye” type ballads so popular in northwoods lumber camps, shanty-boys (lumberjacks) also enjoyed lighthearted, extremely localized songs celebrating, and often lampooning, the personalities found in their particular camp. Collector Edith Fowke documented numerous examples of these “camp songs” in Ontario.

The above is my own adaptation of a rare Minnesota-based camp song that originated in an 1881 camp on the Kettle River near Hinckley, Minnesota. “Kettle River” was sung “lustily” by an 88 year-old John Stewart of Port Wing, Wisconsin, for historian Agnes Larson in 1932. In her 1949 book The White Pine Industry in Minnesota, Larson wrote that “somehow the old camp came back to life in [Stewart’s] soul as he sang.” Unfortunately, some of the words did not come back to Mr. Stewart so I added a few here and there to flesh out his version. Since Larson’s book included no melody, I chose a version of a melody used for several Ontario camp songs documented by Fowke.

The boss Johnny O’Brien mentioned in the song was most likely the father of Irish-American lumber baron William O’Brien. An 1896 obituary in The Hinckley Enterprise says “John O’Brien, an old time logger, and resident of Taylors Falls, and father of Wm. And Jos. O’Brien, loggers . . . has been a prominent logger on the St. Croix for the past 40 years, the major portion of the time being in Pine County.” Like many other early loggers in this area, John was born to Irish parents in Canada and came to Minnesota following logging jobs. His son William made his first million in Pine County, lived in a mansion next door to the governor’s mansion her in St. Paul and is the man for whom William O’Brien State Park is named. I also found evidence that William was a fishing buddy of Pine County resident and singer Mike Dean who turns up frequently in this column.

I recorded this song with guitar accompaniment on my album Minnesota Lumberjack Songs.