Tag: folk

From Norfolk – the distinctive singing and melodeon playing of Tony Hall

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Yarmouth, engraving by William Miller after Turner

A 19th century engraving of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, by William Miller, after a
typically drama-packed painting by Turner. Image from the Wikimedia

For the last few days I’ve been listening to the melodeon playing of Tony Hall, a musician I’ve admired since the 70s. Tony plays the melodeon, a kind of push-pull accordion that came to dominate the music of much of England, when cheap models arrived in large numbers from Germany in the 19th Century.

Of course, it’s commonly been a seaman’s instrument – just think of old Bob Roberts, skipper of the last working sailing sailing barge, the Cambria. I’m glad to say I was lucky enough to hear him perform not so very long before he passed away.

Now, since one of Tony’s recently recorded songs, Down on the Hard, has some dreamy boatbuilding references, I thought I should share it – with the CD label’s permission, of course. Click on the link for a little song that I think will make many of you smile.

And for a bonus, here’s Tony again, this time playing his version of The Abbot’s Bromley Horn Dance.

For more of this stuff, order a copy of Tony’s new album, One Man Hand on the Wild Goose label.

Follow the link for more references to songs and singing at intheboatshed.net.

A man called John Short

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John Short, otherwise known as Yankee Jack, sitting on the breakwater at Watchet

John Short, otherwise known as Yankee Jack, sitting on the breakwater
at Watchet. Thanks to the EFDSS/Cecil Sharp Collection for
allowing us to use this image

John Short statue by the harbur at Watchet

The John Short statue by the harbour at Watchet

Still on the theme of Watchet, I’d like to introduce readers to a man I hadn’t even heard of until my parents decided to buy a holiday cottage in the little town some years ago.

My ignorance that was my loss. John Short is commemorated in Watchet as Yankee Jack (he earned the nickname sailing in Yankee ships during the American Civil War) and is remembered for being a great seaman. However, he was an even greater singer: Yankee Jack had a tremendous memory and had learned many songs during a widely-travelled seagoing career. In fact, he provided the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp with a splendid collection of sea songs and shanties, many of which have become the standard versions we still know today.

These days, John Short the sailor and singer is represented by a fine statue by the harbour in Watchet, but I think his greatest memorial must be the songs, which from Sharp he sang in fine style with lots of melisma – that is, frequent changes of note within syllables. I only wish I knew of recordings that we could hear!

There’s an impressive list of his songs at the English Folk Dance & Song Society website.

Hervey Benham tells stories from the great storms of 1883 and 1884

The chilling engraving The Storm by William Miller after Van de Velde,
published in 1858. From the Wikimedia

The great gales of ’83 and ’84 were legendary. The song Three Score and Ten describing their effects on the East Coast fishing fleet was widely sung from Yorkshire down to Cornwall, and when talking to Ewan MacColl in the 1950s, old Norfolk fisherman Sam Larner said that as a boy in those years he remembered seeing the body of one of the sailors washed up on the shore through the window of a mortuary.

It seems that the 1884 storm was a double hit, for in the months before the 1884 storm fish had suddenly become so plentiful that the prices paid at the fish markets were very low – so a period of relative poverty for the fishing community was followed by the tragedy of many deaths.

Larner said that after these events there was a local saying: ‘Oh dear, oh lor, the dreadful fishing of 1884.’

A few years before MacColl interviewed Larner, Hervey Benham recorded the dramatic recollection below and published it in his excellent book The Last Stronghold of Sail – the story of the Essex sailing smacks, coasters and barges. You might find a copy at ABE Books.

I should explain that the ‘skilling’ was the practice of dredging for oysters off Terschilling on the Dutch coast, and bringing them back in wet holds. It was a big business in those days.

‘The terrible losses in the great gales of 1883 and 1884 had as much as anything to do with the end of the ‘skilling’. Five smacks, Mascotte, Conquest, Recruit, Pride and William and Mary, and 27 men from Brightlingsea were lost in two gales in those years, days of disaster which the tablets round the church walls recall.

‘From Charlie Death, a grand old veteran of the place, I heard how the cutter Express came as near being lost as was possible in the 1884 gale. About seven in the morning they were in a gale of wind with a seven-cloth jib set abaft the mast, when a sea broke aboard and took everything out of her except the mast and bowsprit. One hand, Walter Crampton, was washed overboard and lost. Sails, boat, spars and bulwarks were gone, and, believe it or not, even the cross trees from the mast. The ballast, dredges, and eight thousand oysters in her hold had shifted so that she lay with her upper dead-eyes in the water.

‘They let go a couple of dredges over her bow to try to bring her up to the sea, but it was to no avail, and as fast as they tried to get the ballast back it shot up into her side again. At two o’clock in the afternoon another sea swept them, taking the hatches and ripping up the decks. Now they were a floating wreck, and the men felt inclined to give up, but Death got them to set a five-cloth jib abaft the mast, and, having done this, they left him with some rum at four o’clock in the afternoon lashed to the tiller. Once he was swept away bya a sea, but at dawn the battered Express crept into Yarmouth Roads and anchored. Next day they sailed her home – and drew four shillings a head!’