Review: Steamboatin' Days
by Mellinger Edward Henry
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 59, No. 231 (Jan. - Mar., 1946), pp. 83-84
STEAMBOATIN' DAYS: FOLK SONGS OF THE RIVER PACKET ERA. Mary Wheeler. (x +121 pp. ii illus. $2.75. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1944.)
Here is one more triumphant volume of folksongs from the heart-a fine addition to American folksong publications. Miss Wheeler, the editor, has distinctly put her charming personality into this work. From the dust jacket I take the following statement:
In Paducah, where the Tennessee flows into the Ohio, Mary Wheeler has cultivated a vivid interest in river lore. Three generations of her family have lived in the big house with its front yard on the water's edge.... [She] has sought tales and tunes along the levees and dead-end streets of river towns and over hilly country lanes.
It is a book that gets hold of you at once. The steamboat river packets, those vessels carrying dispatches, mail, passengers, and goods and having fixed sailing dates, are a rich source of folksongs. This collection is decidedly one of the best books on American folksongs that has been published. The reason for this lies in the broad and deep touch of human nature in the soul of the editor, in her consummate knowledge of music, in her thorough acquaintance with the river packets, and her earnest work in collecting the songs and the stories.
The editor tells us in her Preface that in the beginning she set out to collect only the words and the melodies of the songs, but that she soon realized that some facts about the songs and the singers-in other words, Negro stories-should accompany the songs. As Miss Wheeler says, "The background and thoughts of the folk singer are so inseparably associated with the song itself." And how thankful we are for these stories! What a picture of life on the rivers-the Ohio, the Tennessee, the Mississippi! These stories are almost as good as the songs. They are real folklore.
The information about the packets is historically important. They are a thing of the past for the most part. Our trains, buses, and trucks are now the carriers. The first steamboat on the Ohio was built in Pittsburgh in 1811 and the most romantic period of the packet was just prior to and following the War between the States. At that time they were actually floating river palaces. I count eighty-seven items on a dinner menu card for I879 which is quoted in the Introduction. And what inviting juicy dishes they are!
The form of the book is unusual. Its size is 10 by 7- inches. Its color is maize with a picture of a steamboat stamped on the front cover. The illustrations are good, especially those of the steamboats and the view of the Paducah river front in I873.
The Dedication reads: "To the Courageous Pioneers and Boatmen Who Made the Rivers a Course of Empire and to the Humble Minstrels Whose Songs Have Preserved for Us Something of an Era That Is Gone."
The Contents besides the Preface and Introduction are Work Songs, Songs of Boats, Soundings, Spirituals, Songs of Meditation, Love Songs, Dance Songs, and Songs of Lawlessness. Unfortunately I know practically nothing about music. However, I have always strongly advocated the collection of the melodies as well as the words. The words without the music are but half-songs. So I am very glad that the melodies have been included.
Miss Wheeler is a trained musician and in I937 published, with Miss Clara Gregory Bridge, Kentucky Mountain Folk-Songs, a valuable contribution to the work of folklorists of America, and Roustabout Songs in I939. The best I can do concerning the music is to quote from Miss Wheeler: "Musically, we have in these melodies the characteristics that are generally associated with the songs of the American Negro. Aside from the syncopation that is such a vital and interesting feature of all the music of this race, perhaps the most striking idiom is the frequent use of the pentatonic scale. Very few of the songs make use of a tone series as extended as our own major and minor scales. The melodies are frequently rhythmic arrangements of three or four tones. We notice a striking absence of half steps .... The slides that occur so surprisingly, the quick deviations from an expected pitch, for which the grace note has been used, though inadequately, and the perplexing rhythm that persists so easily, in spite of the demands of the words, all these give the collector a feeling of helpless dissatisfaction with the written record" (7, 8).
It is most difficult to make a selection from any of the songs. Here is one from the Love Songs (91):
Come love, come an' go with me
I'll take you down about Tennessee.
Next time I come be ready to go,
Floatin' down the rivuh on the Ole Ben Joe.
And here is a line from "I'm Goin' Down the Rivuh" (51):
Treat me right, I'd ruther work than play
which is identical with a stanza collected by the writer from a group of singing Negroes working on the Asheville, North Carolina watershed on the North Fork River at the foot of the Craggy Mountains. This book is undoubtedly a fine addition to the published works on American folk songs.
MELLINGER EDWARD HENRY
Ridgefield, N. J.