Boring
I love sea chanteys, which is what I thought I'd be hearing. There are some that are done well, but for the most part, this is a sea-related folk album. If you like "I gave my love a cherry," this 60's folk throwback is for you! I'm going in search of some sea chanteys that my sailboat crew can sing to...

A must-have for those who like this kind of thing...
Smithsonian's reissues of old Folkways label records, and their creation of new complilations from the archives, are always done well, and it's no different with this one. The fan of songs from workers in the oceans gets 32 of them here, from many different artists, some well-known, some obscure. Same with the songs: some seem to appear on every collection of this kind of music that's ever been released, and some were new to me. In fact, the songs and singers I had never heard before were the stars of the disc for me. As always with Smithsonian projects, the booklet is wonderful, and considerably adds to the value of the product. (Original Folkways LP booklets were often wordy, but frequently careless and inaccurate.) If there is a flaw here at all for my taste, it is that some of the solos could have benefitted from the addition of a chorus, and the few a cappella tracks would have been more interesting with accompaniement. However, that's the tiniest of quibbles. I have listened to this three times in the past six days, and like it more with every hearing. The only thing like it I ever thought was better was a record released in the late '70's or early '80's on the National Geographic label called "Songs and Sounds of the Sea." That was fantastic, but only half as long as this one, and it has not been translated to compact disc.

Wonderful sample of maritime songs and chanteys
You'll want to run off and join a whaler or be thankful you're on dry land after listening to this album. Good mix of humorous and poignant music about life at sea.

water-soaked tunes
In a very happy move Smithsonian Folkways has taken to plumbing Folkways' deep catalog for a series of "Classic" anthologies of American roots music. The previous five are variously focused on Southern styles: blues, bluegrass, and mountain music. In the sixth of the series, SF turns to a non-Southern genre which has passed into neglect in recent years: songs of salt- and freshwater sailors. These are not field recordings, but the work largely of revival singers, who include such familiar names as Dave Van Ronk, Paul Clayton, and Lead Belly, along with others not so well known. They are taken from albums released between 1951 and 1997.

This is, as one would expect, a satisfying collection, not just for the performances but for the usual well-informed annotations and documentation. This grizzled folk fan learned a few things I didn't know, such as that "Run, Come See Jerusalem" -- once a folk-scare standard, done nicely here by the X-Seamen's Institute -- was written in 1929 by Blind Blake. No, not that Blind Blake, the bluesman/songster from Florida whose first name was Arthur, but the Bahamian singer Blind Blake, born Blake Higgs. I also learned that "Hilo" in the song "Johnny's Gone to Hilo" (here "Tommy's Gone to Hilo") is not in Hawaii, but in Peru (the port city of Ilo).

A small number of performances don't move me much. Tom Wisner's original, all-too-well-intentioned "Chesapeake Born" strikes me as purely cornball in that distinctively gooey Pete Seeger sort of way. Alan Mills and the Shanty Men perform in what sounds, at least to my ear, in so stilted, theatrical a fashion as to remind the listener why sea shanteys are so often parodied and ridiculed. (Admittedly, they're here for all of :36, in a mercifully brief "Paddy Doyle's Boots.") Done right, shanteys are wonderfully affecting, and most of the singers here do them proud. There are also a few ocean-going ballads, the standards "Greenland Whale Fisheries," "The Sloop John B," "Lord Franklin," and "The Handsome Cabin Boy," whose subjects range from the wryly comic to the heartbreakingly tragic.

If you already love this sort of thing, you'll want this album. And if you're looking for one representative anthology of maritime folk music to fill a hole in your collection, this one will do just fine.