Walkalong, You Sally Brown [165] (132-133)

A variant on the "Sally Brown" theme but as a halyard chantey, this has probably West Indian origins. Hugill learned it from "Tobago" Smith. He is the only author I know to have published it.

By any account it is now a "rare" chantey; the actual performance style of it is surely lost. And it does not help that the notation is Hugill's text has clear irregularities. As I've noted before, I think these regularities suggest either that the chantey was sung non-metrically or in an unexpected meter...or was highly syncopated...or the lead and chorus voices overlapped a lot...or a combination of those things -- thus foiling Hugill's efforts to sing it solo and his brother's efforts to try to transcribe it.

Here, then, is my imagined rendition of what it might have sounded like. I am changing rhythms to guess at something that makes more sense, rather than literally performing the text. Notably, I've set it in 3/4 meter, as Hugill's 2/2 seems to get out of sync with the melody. The pulls also don't make sense with that...unless there is such a thing as a syncopated pull! I also tweaked the style of the chantey to fit into my pseudo-Caribbean "voice."

What I don't get is why no one has noted the similarity between this and "Shenandoah." In fact, versions of "Shenandoah" have used verses of "Sally Brown." There is clearly a relationship, and I have long supposed that the two names are of related origin.

Past performers of "walk along, you sally brown" have been Craig Edwards (from when?), The Johnson Girls (2000), and Pat Sheridan & Brasy (2008). My hunch is that they share a similar rendition, though I've not had the fortune of hearing any of these.

See the whole "Shanties from the Seven Seas" project, here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=58B55DD66F22060C

Category:

Music

Tags:

• caribbean
• sea
• shanties
• chanteys
• west
• indies
• jamaica
• barbados
• sailor
• sally
• brown
• halyard

[davedupplaw]

Liking your harmonies on this one. Good stuff.

[hultonclint]

Thanks. It's been noted that a lot of chanteys from the African-American/Caribbean side often "end" on an unexpected note/chord (from the European harmony standpoint), so I was playing with that.

[hultonclint]

The one catch is that figuring out how to make them "go" can be very hard! thanks