Music Hall - evergreentrad

20 Oct

Barney Blake

[as usual, I mis-remembered a few bits of the melody in this recording… I’d redo it, but the location was too good!]

O me name is Barney Blake, I’m a roving Irish rake
I’m considered by my neighbors good and handy
I was brought up to the spade til I learned the tailor trade
And I think myself as good as Ben or Sandy.

Chorus
O it’s Biddy Donahue sure I caught my eye on you
If you marry Barney why be damn you’ll never rue
You’re the apple of me eye and my Irish cocateau
Mr. Cupid’s knocked me stupid over Biddy Donahue

It’s at a wedding of Pat Malare, sure I first met Biddy there
As I sat beside her at the wedding supper
How I felt I couldn’t say when she handed me the tay
For my heart it melted like a lump of butter.

Now she’s handsome and she’s mild she’s a dacent father’s child
She’s the pride of all around our Irish nation
You would go from here to Spain to hear her sing Napolean’s Dream
And for dancing, boys, she has a lovely carriage.

Now some folks they do try, for to poke out Barney’s eye
But in this I’m sure they all will find a failure
She would not see me fooled, she’s as good as guinea gold
And she’ll marry none [hold on “none”] but Barney Blake the sailor.

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This is another song I transcribed from a reel-to-reel recording made in Beaver Island, Michigan while I was at the American Folklife Center in Washington, DC this summer. Singer Dominick Gallagher (1867-1954) sang this for collector Ivan Walton in 1940.

A wonderful aspect of field recordings can be the chat caught on tape before and after songs. Walton made a point of asking Gallagher where he got each song and when he asked him about “Barney Blake,” Gallagher replied:

Gallagher:            “I learned that in the lumber woods about 45 or 50 years ago from a Canadian Scotsman.
Walton:                 “What lumber woods was that?”
Gallagher:            “Up in Grand Marais [pronounced Marase] on Lake Superior shores.”

The song itself seems to have its origins in the Irish music halls of the 1870s where I have found evidence of it being performed by (and perhaps written by) a song and dance duo by the names of Devlin and Tracy that were active in Boston and New York in that era. It was very common for singers to pick up Irish music hall songs and sing them unaccompanied in lumber camps. In fact, another version of Barney Blake was collected from Ottawa Valley singer O.J. Abbott.

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CORRECTIONS FROM PRINT VERSION: I made a couple mistakes in the version published in the IMDA October newsletter and they are correct above. Here’s what I got wrong the first time around:

First, I misidentified the singer as John W. Green instead of Gallagher who actually sang the song for Walton.

Also, I was a bit over-eager to claim a Grand Marais, Minnesota connection for this song based on this mention of “Grand Marais on Lake Superior shores.” After I sent in my column to be published in the IMDA October newsletter, a friend reminded me that there is another Grand Marais on the southeastern shore of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It is much more likely that Gallagher did his logging in the locality of the Michigan Grand Marais, not on Minnesota’s north shore.

04 Sep

Johanna Shay

In the Emerald Isle so far from here across the dark blue sea,
There lives a maid that I love dear and I know that she loves me,
With roguish eyes of Irish blue her cheeks like dawn of day,
Oh, the sunshine of my life she is, my own Johanna Shay.

Oh, Johanna is tall and lovely and like a lily fair,
She is the prettiest girl that can be found in the County of Kildare,
And if I have good luck, me boys, I’ll make her Mrs. O’Day,
For my bundle I’ll pack and I’ll sail right back to my own Johanna Shay.

There’s a bird in yonder garden singing from a willow tree,
That makes me think of Johanna when she used to sing to me;
When side by side o’er the mountains or by the lake we strolled,
And her cheeks would flush with an honest blush whenever a kiss I stole;
Though the ocean rolls between us, if harm was in her way,
I would jump right in and boldly swim to my own Johanna Shay.

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This summer marks the 90th anniversary of a productive three-week song collecting trip around Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin by folksong collector Franz Rickaby. Rickaby had just finished his final year as English professor at the University of North Dakota in 1923 and was about to move to the warmer climes of California in an attempt to ease the pain of rheumatic fever—the disease that tragically cut his life, and the preservation of Upper Midwestern traditional folksong, short. He gathered songs first in Bemidji and then met with prolific singer Michael Dean in Virginia, MN before heading to Eau Claire, WI and Bayport, MN. The above song text comes from Dean’s repertoire as printed, not by Rickaby, but by Dean in his self-published songster The Flying Cloud. Rickaby did not transcribe “Johanna Shay” from Dean’s singing, but he did jot down the melody used for it by Eau Claire singer Elide Marceau Fox. I married Fox’s melody to Dean’s text above.

I have found not one single other instance of this song in any other collection of texts, transcriptions or recordings—remarkable in this age of searchable digital archives and well-researched databases of folk song! Fox’s melody (and some of the poetry) hints at a connection to the Irish Music Hall song-writers of the 1800s. Whether it was born on the stage or was simply in imitation of that style we may never now. Still, quite a nice little song I think.

31 Aug

The Day That I Played Baseball

Oh, me name it is O’Houlihan, I’m a man that influential,
I mind my business stay at home me wants are few and small;
But the other day a gang did come, they were filled with whiskey, gin and rum.
And they took me out in the broiling sun to play a game of ball.

They made me carry all the bats, I thought they’d set me crazy,
They put me out in the center field, sure I paralyzed them all;
When I put up me hands to stop a fly, holy murther, it struck me in the eye,
And they laid me out by the fence to die on the day that I played baseball.

There was O’Shaughnessy of the second nine, he was throwing them underhanded,
He put a twirl upon them and I couldn’t strike them at all;
The umpire he called strikes on me; “What’s that?” says I, “You’re out,” says he,
Bad luck to you O’Shaughnessy, and the way that you twirled the ball.

Then I went to bat and I knocked the ball I thought to San Francisco,
Around the bases three times three, by Heavens, I run them all,
When the gang set up a terrible howl, saying, “O’Houlihan, you struck a foul,
And they rubbed me down with a Turkish towel on the day that I played baseball.

The catcher swore by the Jack of Trumps that he saw me stealing bases,
And fired me into a keg of beer, I loud for help did call;
I got roaring, staving, stone-blind drunk, I fell in the gutter, I lost my spunk,
I had a head on me like an elephant’s trunk on the day that I played baseball.

The reporters begged to know my name and presented me with a medal,
They asked me for my photograph to hang upon the wall;
Saying, “O’Houlihan you won the game,” though me head was sore and shoulder lame,
And they sent me home on a cattle train all the day that I played baseball.

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A seasonal selection from the repertoire of Mike Dean: Irish American lumberjack/saloon-keeper who lived in Minnesota from 1885-1931. Dean’s self-published songster The Flying Cloud contains many songs from the Irish-American music hall stage and this one falls squarely in that genre.

This song was written by Patrick James Rooney (1844-1892) in 1878. Rooney was a “clog dancer” who, along with his son, Pat Rooney Jr., had one of the most famous vaudeville song-and-dance men of his day. William H. A. Williams, in his book ’Twas Only an Irishman’s Dream writes: “In spite of moments of burlesque when he would sing ‘Biddy the Ballet Girl’ and then clog around on his toes dressed in a tutu, Rooney was apparently a graceful dancer.” Irish performers like the Rooneys dominated American popular music in the late 1800s. “The Day I Played Baseball” was one of Pat Sr.’s few successful compositions. It was eventually overshadowed in 1908 by another baseball song in which “Katie Casey” begs her man: “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

In my search for information on Mike Dean’s life in Hinckley, Minnesota (1885-1908) I have found that baseball was wildly popular in Hinckley in the 1890s. Local papers in 1889 proclaimed a “baseball craze” in Hinckley and summer papers thereafter were filled with accounts of the exploits of the Hinckley Monarchs.

Interestingly, the sheet music I found for Rooney’s version of his own song (from which I took the above melody) only had four verses where Dean’s has six. Perhaps Dean composed the verses (missing in the sheet music) about the ball-twirling O’Shaughnessy and the catcher’s intoxicating “punishment.” Maybe the added verses were even based on experience?
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More on this song online:

Original sheet music for “The Day I Played Baseball” courtesy of the Library of Congress