Across the Western Ocean

Price: backordered until Dec. 20

Item Number: CD-3010

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For over 30 years John Roberts and Tony Barrand have been the major ambassadors of English traditional music in North America. With rare wit and humor, they sing the ballads and songs of the sea, or rural pursuits of social and sociable situations, of industrial toil and strife and much more. Their trademark unaccompanied two-part vocals are augmented by concertinas, banjo and percussion.

This recording features the songs sung on board the packet ships which can be roughly divided into the categories of chantey and forebitter. The chantey was a work song used exclusively to provide the rhythm for the crew working on the deck or up in the rigging. The forebitters were sung in a more relaxed atmosphere, in off-duty hours in the crew's cramped quarters beneath the forecastle head. These were often popular ballads from the shore, and many would have been accompanied with fiddle, banjo or other portable instrument.

PLAYLIST

1. Introduction
2. New York Girls 4:38
3. Captain Samuels and his Sailors 1:05
4. Blow the Man Down 3:30
5. Impressions of the first voyage 1:07
6. The Crayfish 1:37
7. The Black Cook 4:04
8. The Lime Juice Ship 2:26
9. The wreck of the Staffordshire 1:14
10. The Flying Dutchman 2:42
11. Get Up Jack, John Sit Down 3:31
12. The Flying Cloud 4:10
13. Immigration conditions 1:17
14. Heave Away My Johnnies 3:50
15. Perils of Transatlantic Dalliance 0:45
16. Maggie May 2:46
17. Peter Street 4:17
18. The Seamen's Hymn 1:28

Revels®

Building tradition through music, dance and drama

Across the Western Ocean

PLAYLIST

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