Category: Folk Music

Jolé Blon

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Jolé Blon by Gary U.S. Bonds from his 1981 album Dedication

This song was on the “come back” album released by Gary U.S. Bonds in 1981. It was the first of two albums for Bonds thanks to Bruce Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt and recorded with the E Street Band. The song is in fact a duet with Bonds and Springsteen.

I was all over this when it came out, for me as Bruce Springsteen and Bonds fan it was the perfect match up. Check out Gary from the 1960’s “Quarter to Three“, “New Orleans“, “Seven Day Weekend“, “Schools Out“.

The lead single from Dedication was “This Little Girl” that did very well and peaked at #11 on the Hot 100 and #5 on the R&B charts. While “Jolé Blon” reached #65 and #29 respectively.

At the time I knew enough about the song to know it was not an original tune but it was not until about six years ago that I did some serious research on it’s roots. As we go down this trou de lapin (rabbit hole) we need a lesson in French language, Acadian, Canadian, Creole and Cajun history just for starters. Too much? Yes I agree. So just how does one unravel a song with a 200 year old history? I mean this song has as many versions as a female rabbit has babies, which in the wild is not unreasonably about 1,000 bunnies!

Just what or who is a “Jolé Blon” anyway? Here is the opening line and that’ll give you a good idea.

“Pretty blond, look at what you’ve done, You left me to go away”

Let’s get back to Bruce and Gary for a moment. Bruce had been playing around with a version(s) of “Jolé Blon” for a while, he had done it live but he did not record it. It was destined for The River but did not make the cut. Hence he thought it would be a good match for he and Gary.

Recordings from the Telegraph Hill Rehearsals in 1980. Source: Covered by Springsteen

Just where Bruce first heard the song I can’t say. But if we backtrack a bit we can trace the songs history to a possible version or versions.

This was Waylon Jennings first single (1959) “Jole Blon”. Recorded in 1958 with his mentor, Buddy Holly on guitar and the legendary King Curtis on saxophone. Sang in an adulterated Cajun French.

Waylon could have been inspired by a number of versions of the song but by all accounts and based on the lyrics he used we can go back to the first recording of “Jolé Blon” by Harry Choates in 1946. Here is the English version below.

Jolé Blon by Harry Choates & His Fiddle (1946)

The Choates version spawned a number of covers and similar songs in the Country genre that includes Red Foley who had a #1 hit and Moon Mullican went #2 with “New Pretty Blonde” and he also bought the publishing rights, hence he shows up in the Gary U.S. Bonds song credit. But none of these names can actually take credit for authorship of the song. While Choate’s appears to have been the first to translate and record it in English, it was originally written in Cajun French and according to Secondhandsongs.com it is credited to Amidie (Amedée) Breaux and Luderin Darbone.

Even as I say that, it’s not even close to the beginning of the songs history.

If you are interested, by all means read on and learn a bit more about the song.

The first known recording of a Traditional Cajun song is “Allons à Lafayette” by Joe e Cléoma Falcon in 1928. Joe Falcon was an accordionist and his wife Cléoma (Breaux) was a guitar player. We can give thanks to Musicologist and Folklorist Alan Lomax for recording and preserving this music. Sometime in the late 1920s, Cléoma wrote the lyrics to what has been referred to as the ‘Cajun National Anthem’, the song “Jole Blon”.

From a very musical family, Cléoma’s three brothers formed the performing and recording group the Breaux Brothers. One of the brothers, Amedée Breaux, is the only one who got credit for the song. It appears (from what I’ve gathered) he composed or more accurately arranged the music as it’s based on a traditional melody. The song was originally titled “Ma blonde est partie”. There is also some connection to an earlier song “La Fille de la Veuve” also composed/arranged by Amedée Breaux that may be based on older Traditional Cajun/Creole songs.

I have also read there are connections to Angelas Lejeune who was an inspirational Cajun and Creole singer and musician in the New Orleans area. However you spell it, it seems the melody and the story have connections back to settlements known as Acadia. This are included what is now the Canadian Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, along with the U.S. state of Maine. Acadians arrived in Louisiana from this area, that history you can read about in Wikipedia if you like. Expulsion of the Acadians.

Here is the version that introduces the lyrics by Luderin Darbone of the Hackberry Ramblers.

Sea Shanties

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What is a Sea Shanty?

The simple answer is “What Will You Do With a Drunken Sailor?” But there is an interesting history to the songs that have endured the test of time. The origins of the shanty have been traced to sailors’ work songs on the merchant ships that traveled the world trading food, raw materials, cloth and other goods. The idea behind the specific cadence of the songs was to provide a rhythm to the work being done aboard ship. It provided a certain efficiency and helped pass the time. It was a common practice among fishing boats as well when hauling nets and ropes.

The above is a great song about the hard life of the merchant sailor called “Barrett’s Privateers” by Canadian Folk legend Stan Rogers. The poor fictional antagonist cries out “Now I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier, the last of Barrett’s Privateers”. The song demonstrates the shanty style and tells a story of the sailors who sang the songs.

This shanty singing practice was banned aboard military vessels for fear of interfering with the need to shout and pass along commands. The Shanty was the domain of the fisherman, merchant marines, privateers and of course Pirates!

A Brief History of Sea Shanties

The songs have their roots in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This is where the traditions of the songs are best kept, as in the example of the Fisherman’s Friends who hail from Port Isaac, a small Atlantic coast fishing village in North Cornwall, England.

There are also African work songs as well as Caribbean sailor and stevedore contributions in these songs. All these influences met primarily on the American Merchant Ships beginning around the 1830s. It was very common for these ships to have a musician, typically a Black slave(s) or later a Black labourer playing a fiddle but more likely a fife or another pipe instrument to keep the pace. These ships would have sailors from all around the world, many bringing their own musical influence. Ships would also employ the official use of a Shantyman who would provide the main vocals and lead the other sailors and workers in song a cappella.

The proliferation of the steamship in the 1870s reduced the need for much of the hard labour, not to mention the noise of the new ships spelled the end of the heyday of the sea shanty. It was for the most part relegated to folklore. However, in the early 1900s, thanks to writers such as Cecil Sharp and others of the English Folk Song Society, the shanties, as well as other traditional Folk Songs from around the world were written down. Credit is due to the preservation effort of many folklorists and musicologist in the US as well where it was written as sheet music and in some cases live recordings were made of these songs.

As mentioned, the shanty traditions had been carried on in some fishing villages, primarily in the United Kingdom but also in other coastal regions and at a number of Maritime music festivals. There is perhaps a thin line between the Shanty and Irish/Scottish/Newfoundland and other regional folk songs such as The Dubliners with “Whiskey in the Jar”.

These folks songs can be about soldiering and wars, politics, people and relationships, they do not have the same structure as a Shanty. So the former (Shanty) is the typical work or call and response song. I read a very nice thesis by Sharon Marie Risko (1999) that explains there were different songs for the types of work done aboard ship. Some songs were shorter than others or had an up or downbeat tempo, depending on the chore at hand, not to mention the weariness of the crew.

The Songs

The best collection of songs is credited to the British merchant seaman and historian, Stan Hugill, who was born on November 19, 1906, and died May 13, 1992. This brilliant man was a German prisoner of WWII, spoke many languages and served as a Japanese translator, sailor, shantyman, recording artist, broadcaster and, after being laid up with a broken leg, he authored several books on sea shanties. Shanties from the Seven Seas (1961) is one of his books and it contains 400 different songs.

Here, in no particular order are some Sea Shanties, enjoy!

The pride of Newfoundland, Great Big Sea “General Taylor”

The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, “Paddy Doyle’s Boots”

The Yarmouth Shantymen, “Cape Cod Girls” also know as “Codfish Shanty”

Coda singing “Leave Her, Johnny, Leave Her”

The Dogwatch Nautical Band, “Ranzo Ray / Cheerly Man”

“Way Me Susiana”

The Longest Johns “Wellerman”

The Dreadnoughts with “Randy Dandy-Oh”, sorry couldn’t resist!

The Johnson Girls “Ballast Shanty”

The finale from the Deal (UK) Maritime Festival on 22nd September 2013. The whole crew led by John Bromley of Kimber’s Men, “Bully in the Alley”

Many of you may have enjoyed the fictional account of The Fisherman’s Friends that I mentioned above, two great films and some superb singing by the cast members led by James Purefoy. The singing in the movies is a blend of the original group and the actors.

Lead Belly

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Lead Belly is a Folk Blues legend that came to prominence with the release from Time Magazine called the March of Time newsreels in 1935. While he lived not too far away from the Mississippi Delta there was a different ‘Blues’ sound, and Lead Belly would lean much more toward Folk music. Is it Lead Belly or Leadbelly? I see a lot of both spellings. A bit of a mini-bio on an artist I haven’t talked much about.

Labeled as “the singing convict” and a performer of the negro Folk songs.

Huddie William Ledbetter was born January 20, 1888 in Louisiana and died December 6, 1949 in New York. His family moved to Texas when he was five, it is believed he did not take up an instrument until his early twenties. Still living in Texas, as a father of two he left home in search of making a better living. He spent time as an itinerant musician, playing the accordion and later learning guitar. Much of his time was spent just across the Texas border in Shreveport, Louisiana. He struggled to get by and found himself at odds with the law several times and was in and out of prison from 1915 to 1939.

While at the Angola Penitentiary in Louisiana he was introduced to Musicologist and Folklorist, John Lomax and his son Alan who were conducting a recording project for the Library of Congress. It was here he recorded his version of “Midnight Special” in 1934 but it was not released. The song had actually been recorded in 1926 by Pistol Pete as more of a “Country” song and at least three more times before the Lomax’s mistakenly credited the song to Lead Belly. While he did add some new lines to the song, we don’t know who wrote it originally and there are several versions with different verses and in fact other songs that were quite similar. His fist release was a recording by Lead Belly and The Golden Gate Quartet

“Midnight Special” by Lead Belly and The Golden Gate Quartet released in 1941

“Irene” was first recorded in 1933 when Lead Belly was in prison. Written with some assistance from John Lomax. The first release was a 1943 recording.

The song is covered most often with the title “Goodnight Irene”

Another very famous original composition was titled “Cotton Song” which is better known as “Cotton Fields”.

While his version of the song “Rock Island Line’ is seen as the definitive recording and the covers are based on this recording, I have run across references that say his was the first and that he wrote the song. Both are incorrect, the song was written by an actual Rock Island Line employee named Clarence Wilson as a promotional jingle. It was first performed by the Rock Island Colored Booster Quartet in 1934. It was first recorded by Kelly Pace and Group in 1934 but it was not released until 1943. The Lead Belly version had his own take on the song and was indeed the first release in 1942. Here is the Pace version followed by Lead Belly.

Lead Belly was a true American storytelling legend that contributed many other great songs that in total have been re-recorded well over 1,000 times.

Jim Croce

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Bad, Bad Leroy Brown

While I have been talking about Songs of Summer, Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” just happened to on the top of the Billboard chart for 1973. This prompted me to fast track a profile of someone that has been on my list for some time. I was planning a post, quite literally at the end of the summer. It’s hard to believe we are coming up on 50 years since he was lost to his family and his fans.

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Canada’s Indigenous Peoples

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Today marks the end of National Indigenous History Month in Canada. As we will celebrate Canada’s 156th Birthday tomorrow, July 1, I wanted to talk a bit more about the music of our Indigenous Peoples. There have been some shocking revelations you no doubt would have heard in the news, several from the past few years, and the healing will take a long time. The wheels of the Federal Government’s commitment for reconciliation turn very, very slowly.

In Canada, the three indigenous populations are generally divided by First Nations, Inuit and Métis. I have included several members of these three groups already, but there is more to talk about. Collectively about 1.8 million identify their heritage from one of these groups.

First Nations

There are 50 First Nations in Canada in 630 communities from Coast to Coast to Coast, and the largest population of Indigenous People. Traditionally every society had their own song or songs. Instruments included various drums, clappers, rattles, flutes and several other improvised devices. When it comes to performers there are many of full or partial heritage that have had success in the mainstream genre.

The Band’s Robbie Robertson was from Toronto but his mother was Cayuga and Mohawk and grew up on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario. I mentioned a few more names this month such as Shane Yellowbird. But I wanted to present just a few more, after all the first step is just to listen.

Northern Cree

They are from Maskwacis which is near Edmonton, Alberta. While they have not won, they have been nominated for nine Grammys in three different categories. In 2017 they performed at the Grammy Awards Ceremony. They have one nomination and one win (somewhat oddly) in the category for Classical Album of the Year-Large Ensemble at the Juno Awards. If you wanted to hear some incredible Pow-wow singing, storytelling and artistry you can’t do much better.

Logan Staats

He was born on the Six Nations Reserve, but grew up in the nearby City of Brantford Ontario. I had the opportunity to hear Logan when he opened for Buffy Sainte-Marie. I had not heard of him before but I was certainly impressed with his talent.

Willie Dunn

Willie (1941-August 5, 2013) was born in Montreal, but it is his heritage from the East Coast Mi’kmaq People that guided his music and message. He had such a classic Folk singer voice, in this song comparable to Bruce Cockburn.

Inuit

As I mentioned in an earlier post, if you are an Inuk, then typically you are one of the inhabitants of the Artic and Subarctic regions. The names there I’ve talked about were Susan Aglukark and Tanya Tagaq. I’m happy to add one more name, Elisapie (Isaac). Elisapie is from Salluit, Nunavik which is, I neglected to mention in my other post, on the Northeast tip of, and also part of the Province of Quebec.

Métis

Geographically the Métis have traditionally lived in the Northern Territories, all of four of Canada’s most western Provinces as well as Northern Parts of the American West. There are populations elsewhere to the East such as Northern Ontario and Quebec. I mentioned Tom Jackson earlier in our trip across Canada and he is of Métis heritage.

I have to say the only reason I recognized the name of Amanda Rhéaume among a list of Métis singers is because of her father, Eugène Rhéaume. He was from The Northwest Territories and was the first Member (elected) of Canada’s Parliament that was of Métis heritage. As her father was based in Ottawa, that’s where she was born. I gave her a listen, I am glad I found her, she has a beautiful voice.

Note

This is the last post in this Journey across Canada. Tomorrow, July 1 I will also not surprisingly feature a Canadian singer. Perhaps in relief to my subscribers, the once daily posting will come to an end. Thank you to all who read and especially to those who took the time to click on the links and have a listen. To those who commented, I appreciate the feedback and the sharing of your thoughts. And with some of you, there were memories brought about by my discussing just a small bit of the great musical talent of Canada. I don’t mind saying it has been a lot of work but it’s also been fun for me to reminisce a bit myself and to find some new voices as well. Thank you and Happy listening!