Mahogany Meat & Weevily Bread
Songs and Tunes of the Sea
by Steve Winick
Once again, it's time to go to sea in the good ship Dirty Linen...a wealth of sea music albums have come our way in recent months, and it's high time we explored them. From shanties to off-watch dance tunes to romantic ballads of the tall ships, there's something here for everyone. Hop aboard!
In the annals of sea-songs, there is no figure more renowned than Stan Hugill. Hugill went to sea in 1921, at the end of the age of sail. He was sailing on the Garthpool when she was wrecked in 1929, thus becoming the last man to sing shanties at work aboard a British merchant square-rigger. He later became a collector and scholar of sea shanties, as well as a performer. His classic books (Shanties from the Seven Seas, Shanties and Sailor Songs, Songs of the Sea, and Sailortown) provide a wealth of information on the lives of sailors and the songs they sang. His regular appearances at shanty festivals and nautical museums also helped him spread his knowledge of the songs. Although he died in 1992, recordings of these performances are still being released. Case in point: Stan Hugill in Concert at Mystic Seaport [Mystic Seaport (1998)], recorded in 1988 and released a decade later. This disc gives the listener not only a set of rousing shanties sung by a master (admittedly, an 82-year-old master), but also a wealth of Hugill's talk. In some ways the pre-song introductions, post-song disclaimers, poetry recitations, and general ramblings of Hugill's presentation are more valuable than the shanties themselves. Hugill had already guaranteed that the songs would be remembered in his books, but this CD reveals Hugill as the opinionated, charming, authoritative figure he was. At one point, he comments on his fans in France, saying "they think the blinkin' world of me. I don't know why, but they do!" This disc will show you why: 10 shanties, two poems, and two tracks of talk about sailors' lives add up to one of the most charming shanty albums of recent times.
There are five more recordings reviewed in this article in Dirty Linen #93 (Apr/May '01).
