A lovely local love song from the Shores of Lake Simcoe. There are both a steamboat and a train in the lyrics , so it likely dates from sometime after about 1870. (probably not long after) LaRena Learned The song from her grandfather. From her lp "Family...
From the Ivan Walton Manuscript. Collected from Norman "Beach" McIvor of Goodrich in 1934 This ode to to the working girls of Canal Street (in Buffalo) is pretty goofy, and kind of rude, but I thought I ought to include it in any case. It’s almost ident...
A "fore bitter" about a schooner from Port Burwell from The Walton Collection. Ivan Walton (1893-1968) was a song collector from Michigan. In the 1930s he travelled around the Great Lakes in both the U.S. and in Ontario, seeking out the songs and chantey...
A capstan chantey from the Great Lakes. The song talks about the part-time sailors on lake schooners who might really have been better off working the fields. This song is one of many parodies based on a Victorian parlour piece called "The Ship Goes Saili...
A capstan chantey from the Great Lakes Collected from Jim McCarthy, "Ves" Ray, and William Small - Port Huron MI by Ivan Walton. The first job in getting a schooner underway was either warping the vessel away from the dock or “busting” the anchor off the...
