Songs of the Great Lakes by Ivan H. Walton and John W. Green This is a great book and cd for any maritime history enthusiast. Songquest: The Journals of Great Lakes Folklorist Ivan H. Walton by Ivan H. Walton and Joe Grimm Wayne State University Press, 2005 Paper: 978-0-8143-3234-4 ABOUT THIS BOOK Ivan H. Walton was a pioneering folklorist who collected the songs and stories of aging sailors living along the shores of the Great Lakes in the 1930s. His collection is unique in the annals of Great Lakes folklore. It began as a search for songs but broadened into a collection of weather signs, shipboard beliefs, greenhorn tales, and stories of the intense rivalry between sailors and the steamboat men who replaced them. Edited by Joe Grimm, Songquest: The Journals of Great Lakes Folklorist Ivan H. Walton is a selection from the daily journals Walton wrote during his travels as a folklore collector. It is clear that Walton, a professor of English at the University of Michigan, both admired the sailors of the Great Lakes for what they had done during their working years and worried about them as they entered the twilight of their lives. Walton went beyond the songs he set out to find and captured the pitch and roll of the Great Lakes alive with white-winged schooners. His writings provide a clear picture of the colorful individuals he met and interviewed--captains, cabin boys, tugmen, chandlers, boardinghouse owners, dredgers, and light keepers. Walton also documented the methods he used and recorded his personal thoughts about his nomadic life and the events going on around him during the 1930s, including the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt's election, and the end of Prohibition. Songquest is a companion volume to Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors (Wayne State University Press, 2002), which contains the lyrics from more than a hundred of Walton's collected songs, as well as musical scores, sketches, and a compact disc of field recordings. White-winged schooners once dominated commerce and culture on the Great Lakes, and songs relieved the hours on board, but that way of life and its music ended when steam-driven mechanical boats swept schooners from the inland seas. Recognizing in the late 1930s, almost too late, that this rich oral tradition was going to the grave along with the last generation of schoonermen, Ivan H. Walton undertook a quest to save the songs of the Great Lakes sailors. Racing time and its ravages, he searched out ancient mariners in lakefront hospitals, hangouts, and watering holes. Walton reconstructed songs from one of the most colorful periods in American history, discovering melodies and lyrics to more than a hundred songs. With its stories, lyrics, musical scores by folksinger/historian Lee Murdock, and accompanying CD, Windjammers ensures that sailing chanteys that have not been heard for over one hundred years can be heard again and again far into the future. http://wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/windjammers Video footage originally posted by British Pathé Windjammer shots, location of events unknown C/U log book. Various shots crew at work on board old fashioned tall ship sailing in rough seas. The crew gather in the sails in strong winds. Clouds in sky. Crew on deck as waves splash over deck. Sailors gathered around table below deck. More shots ship in very rough seas. Ripped sails. Sailors below deck. Ship sailing near island. Sailors hauling ropes, sea is calm and weather looks hot. Sailors in the rigging. Sailors relaxing below deck; mending clothing and making model ships. Sailors putting wet weather gear on to go above deck. General shots activity on deck. CU log book - writing says ship is sailing around Cape Horn. Sunset. Log book. Sky and sea. Sailors around table below deck. Scenes on deck in rough seas. Torn sails. Sailors below deck (looks like dramatised scene). More shots activity on deck. Scene showing sailor falling from mast (dramatisation). Funeral scene - burial at sea. Sailors singing sea shanties below deck. Ship sailing in calm waters. Ship approaching coast. http://bibliorights.com/BV.book.epl?ISBN=9780814332344

• published: 14 May 2014
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