New York - evergreentrad

20 Apr

The Smugglers of Buffalo

It was the 6th of Aperil as I lay on my bed,
And thinking of the sorrows that crowned my aching head.
And surrounded I was by officers, and with them I was forced for to go,
For to serve a long and dreary trip to the jails of Buffalo

Then I’ve done my task and got pardoned and once more I am free
And I went down to Sandusky my true love for to see.
But perhaps, my boys, she will give me the bounce when she does a-come to know
That I led a gang of smugglers to the jails of Buffalo.

Oh this girl she came from Patterson, the truth to you I will tell
She was an only daughter and her parents loved her well
They brought her up in the fear of the Lord but little did she know
That she was married to a smuggler who served time in Buffalo

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This month we step away from the songs of Irish-Minnesotan Mike Dean for a visit to one of the most fascinating (and musical) Irish settlements in the Great Lakes region: Beaver Island, Michigan. Situated in the center of the northern end of Lake Michigan, Beaver Island’s stranger-than-fiction history is far too colorful to fully convey in this space. In 1851 it was taken over by self-proclaimed Mormon king James Strang and his followers. In 1856 Strang was assassinated (by Mormons on the island) and a group of Irish fishermen, primarily from County Donegal, quickly drove the remaining Latter Day Saints off the island and established a tight-knit community whose isolation made it one of the last great rural strongholds of Irish folk culture in North America.

I transcribed the above song from a field recording made of Beaver Island singer John W. Green (1871-1964) in 1938 by Ivan Walton and Alan Lomax. John W. Green’s parents were Daniel “White Dan” Green and Bridget O’Donnell, both born on the island of Arranmore, County Donegal. Like many Island men of his generation, John Green was a fisherman by summer and a lumberman by winter who knew well over 100 songs, many learned from his musical family members.

Green was frustrated at the time of the recording that he could only recall three verses to “The Smugglers of Buffalo.” He does not say, on the recording, what contraband might have been smuggled in the song but the fact that the singer’s head is aching might give some indication!

References:

Biographical History of Northern Michigan, 1905.

“Detnews.com | Michigan History.” Accessed March 20, 2013.

“RootsWeb: IRL-ARRANMORE-L [IRL-ARRANMORE-L] Aran/Beaver Is Green.” Accessed March 20, 2013.

Walton, Ivan H, with Joe Grimm; illustrated by Loudon G. Wilson; musical scores by Lee Murdock. Windjammers : Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2002.

19 Mar

As I Rode Down Through Irishtown [The Crimean War] (Laws J9)

As I rode down through Irishtown one evening last July,
The mother of a soldier in tears I did espy,
Saying, “God be with you, Johnnie dear, although you are far away,
For you my heart is breaking since you went to the Crimea.

“Oh, Johnnie, I gave you schooling, I gave you a trade likewise.
You need not have joined the army if you had taken my advise,
You need not go to face the foe where cannons loud do roar,
Think of the thousands that have fallen now upon that Russian shore.

He joined the Fourteenth regiment, it was a splendid corp,
They landed honorable mention upon the Russian shore;
He fought in foreign engagements with the loss of men each day,
And there is many a mother shedding tears for sons that are far away,

“You fought at Kurksharosko where you did not succeed,
Likewise at the valley of Inkerman, where thousands there did bleed,
You fought at Balaklava, too it was there you gained the day,
And my darling is a hero although he’s far away.

“It was when we attacked Sebastapool, it was there you’d see some play,
The very ground we stood upon it shook, the truth I say,
The clouds were black with heavy smoke from bomb shells firing there,
And thousands weltering in their blood that went to fight the Bear.

“The English said they would gain the seas whate’er might be their doom,
And thousands there a-falling, cut down in their youthful bloom,
There Paddy’s sons with English guns their valor did display,
And together with the sons of France, thank God, we gained the day.

“Had your heart been made of iron for them you would shed tears,
To see those heroes falling, cut down in their youthful years,
To see those heroes falling and weltering in their gore,
Far from their home and friends, my boys, upon that Russian shore.

“So now to end and finish and to conclude my song,
I thank the God above me for having survived so long,
Likewise my poor old mother, ’twas her I did adore,
And I hope, dear mother, to meet you safe in Garryowne once more.
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Every town is an “Irishtown” on St. Patrick’s Day but there are also a few places scattered around the world actually named “Irishtown” including a small town in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. The above version of this song lamenting the sad fate of Irish soldiers in the Crimean War (1853-1856) was sung by Minnesotan Mike Dean (1857-1931) who was born just north of the Adirondacks. “Irishtown” could refer to the Adirondack town, or it could be a simple reference to an Irish neighborhood somewhere else. Versions collected in Ontario and Michigan say “Irish town.”

Dean’s melody is a nicely turned version of the usual one for this song in tradition and it is a well-travelled air associated with many traditional songs including the Scottish “Tramps and Hawkers.” It was also used by song-maker and lumberjack Billy Allen (1843-1929) of Wausau, Wisconsin for his song “Driving Saw Logs on the Plover.” Bob Dylan (born in Duluth just ten years after Dean’s death up the road in Virginia, MN) also seems to have been inspired by this melody in the air he used for his song “I Pity the Poor Immigrant.”

References:
“Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads.” Accessed February 20, 2013. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/

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More detailed information on this song from the Traditional Ballad Index.

23 Oct

Recordings of Mike Dean Rediscovered

Lost 88-Year-Old Recordings of Irish-Minnesotan Singer Rediscovered

This is my fifth column here and, for this month, I have some exciting news that I would like to share rather than posting another song. I recently came upon some astounding recordings! Here is the story:

The texts of all four songs that have appeared in this column so far came from The Flying Cloud, a songster (simple, text-only song book) printed in 1922 by singer/lumberjack/saloon-keeper Michael Cassius Dean in Virginia, Minnesota. We would not know much about what Dean’s songs (and singing) sounded like if we only had his book. Luckily, in summer 1923, groundbreaking song collector Franz Rickaby, English professor at the University of North Dakota, visited Dean in Virginia, MN. Rickaby transcribed, from Dean’s singing, the melodies and words to 27 songs and took down some sparse but helpful notes about Dean’s life and the story behind some songs.

Rickaby’s notes on Dean gave me a starting point to figure out more about Dean’s life, and since so little is known about these early Irish lumberjack singers in Minnesota, it seemed like a worthwhile project. That was my thought back in 2009 when I began searching for everything I could find about Michael C. Dean. Using census documents, newspaper archives from Minnesota and New York State (where he was born) and correspondence with a descendant of his brother, I have been able to learn a great deal. His parents were both from County Mayo. He was born in St. Lawrence County, New York around 1858. By 1885 he was based in Hinckley, Minnesota. He moved to Pine City, MN in 1907 and then to Virginia, MN in 1917 where he stayed until his death in 1931. I have many more wonderful details, but let’s move on to the big news.

This July, I came upon an online collection of digitized New York State newspapers. I was using it to find out more about Dean’s family in St. Lawrence County. One day, I was searching for articles about his brother-in-law John Bird when I found the article to the right. It is from a September 16, 1924 issue of the Canton Commercial Advertiser.

The R.W. Gordon mentioned in the article was Robert Winslow Gordon, field recording pioneer and founding head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress! Gordon’s collection of recordings is housed at what is now called the American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress. However, there is no mention of any recordings of Dean in the catalog of the AFC…

I contacted Ann Hoog at the AFC and she found a section of the Gordon recording collection labeled “Miscellaneous.” Among hundreds of tracks in that section were two labeled simply “Dean-man” and three labeled “Mr. Dean.” My friend Deirdre Ní Chonghaile was kind enough to go in and listen to the “Dean” tracks and surrounding unlabeled tracks on the reel-to-reel tapes that were made from Gordon’s original wax cylinders in the 1970s. Deirdre compared voices and also sent me first lines of songs which I was able to compare to his book to find matches. It turns out that there are, at least, 31 songs recorded from Michael Dean’s singing that day in 1924 on the tapes! You can imagine my excitement when I found out I was going to hear the singing voice of this man I have been researching for three years!

Digital research copies of Library of Congress recordings are not cheap… but they arrived in the mail last Thursday. It is just amazing to hear his voice and I really enjoy his singing. He has great personality in his style and he definitely sounds Irish in the way he pronounces words and in how he ornaments his songs—he is very light and agile on some tracks especially. (There are also telling discrepancies between the recordings and the Rickaby transcriptions of the same songs.)

Gordon only captured a verse or two of most songs in order to save valuable space and the sound quality is, well, 88-year-old wax. Still, to hear recordings of so many songs from a singer who was born in 1858 and lived in Minnesota for most of his life is just priceless. I can’t wait to learn every one of them!
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