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ROUSTABOUT/ Shout lulu/ Shout Little Lulie See Also: "Shout Lulu" and "Hook and Line"
Old-Time, Breakdown. USA; southwestern Va, western N.C.
ARTIST: Tom Carter & Blanton Owen
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes
DATE: 1800's;
RECORDING INFO: Shout Lulu [Me IV-E 8]
Stanley Brothers. Evening Long Ago, Columbia Legacy CK 86747, CD (2004/1956), trk# 8
Acuff, Roy. Steamboat Whistle Blues (1936-39), Rounder SS023, LP (1985), trk# 7 [1938/11/03]
Bowles, Jim. I Kind of Believe It's A Gift, Meriweather Meri 1001-2, LP (198?), trk# 1.09 [1959]
Bruce, W. Guy. Rosenbaum, Art (ed.) / Folk Visions & Voices. Traditional Music & So...., Univ. of Georgia, Bk (1983), p140 [1980/09/20]
Bruce, W. Guy. Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1, Dust to Digital DTD 08, CD( (2007), trk# 4.26 [1983/09/09]
Crisp, Rufus. Rufus Crisp, Folkways FA 2342, LP (1972), trk# A.01 [1946] (Shout Little Lulu/Lulie/Luly)
Foreacre, Louise. Close to Home, Smithsonian/Folkways SF 40097, CD (1997), trk# 9 [1956/11ca] (Shout Little Lulu/Lulie/Luly)
Grayson and Whitter. Going Down Lee Highway, Davis Unlimited DU 33033, LP (1977), trk# 8 [1928/10/10]
Iron Mountain String Band (Galax). Music from the Mountain, Heritage (Galax) 101C, Cas (1992), trk# 1
Jenkins, Oren. American Banjo - Tunes and Songs in Scruggs Style, Folkways FA 2314, LP (1966), trk# A.08
Jenkins, Snuffy; and Pappy Sherrill. 33 Years of Pickin' and Pluckin', Rounder 0005, LP (1971), trk# 2
New Lost City Ramblers. String Band Instrumentals, Folkways FA 2492, LP (1964), trk# B.08
Patterson, Uncle John. Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1, Dust to Digital DTD 08, CD( (2007), trk# 4.24 [1978/03/25]
Roan Mountain Hilltoppers. Down Home, Roan Mountain, CD (2000), trk# 15 [1982/02]
Staggers, Jake. Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1, Dust to Digital DTD 08, CD( (2007), trk# 4.25 [1981/04/18]
Stanley Brothers. Stanley Brothers on the Air, Wango 115, LP (1976), trk# B.03 (Shout Little Lulu/Lulie/Luly)
Stanley, Ralph. Man and his Music, Rebel SLP 1530, LP (1974), trk# 1
Stanley, Ralph. Masters of the Banjo, Arhoolie CD 421, CD (1994), trk# 26c [1993/11/13]
Stanley, Ralph. Banjo Newsletter, BNL, Ser (1973-), 1981/02,p16 (Shout Little Lulu/Lulie/Luly)
Stanley, Ralph. Banjo Newsletter, BNL, Ser (1973-), 1983/12,p22 (Shout Little Lulu/Lulie/Luly)
Steele, Pete. Anglo-American Songs and Ballads, Library of Congress AFS L21, LP (196?), trk# A.06 [1938] (Shout Little Lulu/Lulie/Luly)
RECORDING INFO Roustabout: Rt - Shout Lulu
Cahill, Susan. Southern Clawhammer, Kicking Mule KM 213, Cas (1978), trk# A.07
Cockerham, Fred. Clawhammer Banjo. Vol 2 [More Clawhammer Banjo], County 717/CD 2717, LP (2003/1969), trk# 2
Creed, Kyle. New River Jam: One, Mountain 308, LP (1976), trk# 15
Creed, Kyle. 39th National Folk Festival, NCTA NCTA 77, LP (1977), trk# A.03
Creed, Kyle. Liberty, Heritage (Galax) 028 (XXVIII), LP (1977), trk# B.05 (Roust-a-bout)
Fuzzy Mountain String Band. Fuzzy Mountain String Band, Rounder 0010/CD11571, CD/ (1995/1972), trk# 25 [1972/08]
Fuzzy Mountain String Band. Brody, David (ed.) / Fiddler's Fakebook, Oak, Sof (1983), p236
Holt, David. It Just Suits Me, June Appal JA 038, LP (1981), trk# 12
Roberts, Dink. Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia, Smithsonian SF 40079, CD (1998), trk# 28
Tate, Dan. Visits, Heritage (Galax) 033, LP (1981), trk# B.02 [1974/08]
Tenenbaum, Molly. And the Hillsides Are All Covered with Cakes, Cat Hair, Cas (1994), trk# 11
Wimmer, Dent. Old Originals, Vol. 1, Rounder 0057, LP (1978), trk# 4 [1974/08/12]
RELATED TO: "Going down to Cairo" "Lynchburg town" "Hush Little Baby;" "Say, Darling, Say;" "Hook and Line"
OTHER NAMES: "Shout Lu/Lulu," "Shout Little Lulu/Lulie;"
"Hop Along Lou"
SOURCES: Kuntz; Mudcat; Folk Index; Fuzzy Mountain String Band (North Carolina), who had the tune from Gaither Carlton {d. 1972} (Deep Gap, N.C.) [Brody, Spandaro]. Brody (Fiddler's Fakebook), 1983; pg. 236. Spandaro (10 Cents a Dance), 1980; pg. 32. Heritage XXXIII, Dan Tate (Fancy Gap, Va.) - "Visits" (1981). Kicking Mule 213, Susan Cahill- "Southern Clawhammer Banjo." Rounder 0035, Fuzzy Mountain String Band- "Summer Oaks and Porch" (1973). Rounder 0057, Dent Wimmer (Payne's Creek section, Floyd County, Va.) - "Old Originals, Vol. 1" (1978. Learned from the Smith boys {John, Dink, and Dan} of Green Creek, Va.).
NOTES: C Major/G Major (Dent Wimmer): D Major (Dan Tate). GDGD. AABB. The tune is known as a banjo song and employs a special tuning on that instrument.
Mary Wheeler, of Paducah, Kentucky, an old Ohio River town, published a collection of the steamboat's roustabout songs in 1939: ROUSTABOUT SONGS; A COLLECTION OF OHIO RIVER VALLEY SONGS. Words and melodies collected by Mary Wheeler; arranged by William J. Roddick.
Roustabout is closely related to Shout Lulu, another driving banjo song found in the southern mountains.
"Coonjine" was the term used by roustabouts for the hurried, but very carefully balanced walk used when carrying a heavy load to or from the decks of a steamboat. Some informant described it to Mary Wheeler (author of Steamboatin' Days) as resembling the movement of a raccoon on a slender branch. Too much bouncing up and down on a quite springy plank was likely to toss the roustabout and his load into the river. [Sandy Patton]
The Mississippi Roustabout: The New England magazine. / Volume 17, Issue 3, November 1894 By Sloughon Cooley. [excerpt] Article is here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=m6ETAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA290&dq=roustabout&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html
FROM the time when the Argonauts sought the golden fleece, and the men of Tyre
and Sidon went down to the sea in ships, there has been a never-failing interest in the
life of a sailor. Stories of adventure by sea have been told without number, and the songs and sayings of the seamen have been treasured with fidelity.
The sailor has been one of the most conspicuous citizens of maritime countries in all times, and owing to his peculiar associations and daily familiarity with danger he has occupied a unique position in the minds of men. But interest in the seaman ceases when the ocean is left. The sailor on the great inland seas and lakes, though subject to all the dangers of the ocean marines, is almost as commonplace as the farm hand; while the roustabouts of the Mississippi steamboats are left in obscurity by the writers of fiction. And yet, the roustabout is not without his individuality; his manners, cvustoms, sayings and doings are upon a different level from those of the seamen,
but they are nevertheless unique.
In the early days of Mississippi steamboating the roustabouts, or, as they are generally called by landspeople, deck hands, and by boatmen, roosters, were white men, and usually Irish. Many negroes were used in the extreme south, but the northern boats were mostly manned by whites. Gradually, however, and for a number of reasons, the negroes displaced the white men, until today they have a monopoly of the roustabouting business.
The Irishman was impulsive; he had ideas, thought himself as good as any other man, if not a little better, was prone to talk back to those in authority, and was not amenable to the discipline necessary to secure harmony on board. The negro was the reverse of all this. His life in slavery and the fact that he was of a different and inferior
race made him absolutely the child of authority. So long as his strength and health held out, he resented neither the domineering of the mate nor the imposition of the cook. Though the importance of steamboating as compared with railroading has
greatly fallen off during the past generation, the decrease has been less in the
WHERE THE ROUSTABOIJTS COME FROM. southern states than in the northern.
New Orleans is still the home port of a great many steamers; and hence it is in
that city that the roustabout still flourishes in so much of his pristine glory as this
practical age has left him. There, upon the broad level plank levee, he can main-
tain existence for an indefinite period upon what a Chinaman would starve on.
The atmosphere is so well tempered to his shiftless nature, that he requires no
more protection from the elements than decency demands; and when not working he can sleep on the bales of cotton or sacks of cotton seed, thus suspending the wear and tear incident to physical exertion. When he tires of this inglorious ease, he can ship on a boat which will be absent from port anywhere from three days to two weeks. So long as he has health and strength, he can secure highly remunerative employment for the
asking; when he is sick, he can go to the marine hospital on the recommendation of his last employer.
Where he comes from or where he goes to, no one knows. He is neither young nor old, but always in the prime of life. As in the case of Dicken's post boy and dead mule, no one ever sees a young roustabout.
It is supposed that when the plantation negroes of a restless, roving disposition
are old enoug, they ship as roustabouts on a passing steamboat short of men,
and when they have given their years of strength to this vehicle of commerce,
such of them as have not been blown up or drowned, or who have not died in
the hospital, retire to some quiet place with a brush and pail, and eke out a
precarious existence whitewashing fences and chicken-houses.
SHIPPING A CREW AT NEW ORLEANS
As all the boats entering New Orleans ship their crews in that port, that city has
become the great centre of roustaboutdom. A crew is shipped for a single trip, and serves only from the time of departure until the arrival in port again,
the loading and unloading in port being done by hour men. The same man may
be with one boat during the whole season, or he may be on a different one
each trip. Some men follow the boat regardless of its mate; some follow the mate from one boat to another when he changes. Some like a big boat, where all is bustle and confusion the whole trip; others like a small boat, which has plenty of time to make the trip, and treats the men well.
Passing of the Negro Roustabout: Volume: 02 Issue Number: 32 Page Number: 01
Date: 10/22/1904 White men hired to work steamboats
http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam/page1.cfm?ItemID=3574
COONJINE IN MANHATTAN
(circa 1939)
Garnett Laidlaw Eskew ; 4700 Kenwood Avenue; Chicago, Illinois
On a bright October afternoon I walked along pier-lined West Street that borders the Hudson shore in New York City. Near at hand the city roared past; beyond, rose the Jersey cliffs. Here on West Street there is always a crowding and pushing of ocean vessels--transatlantic and coastwise ships; freighter and "luxury liners"--lying in at their berths, thrusting sharp prows against the very city pavements, or edging away from their wharves in the wake of straining tugboats. Today {Begin deleted text} {End deleted text} there were, as always, crowds of stevedores, longshoremen, and dock laborers on hand, busy about the loading and unloading of cargoes arriving from, or destined for, the ports of the seven seas. Stolidily these men went about their work--Hungarians, Italians, Irishmen, Germans, Swedes, with a fair scattering of the native born product. They seemed to toil with a grim desperation as though the mark they did was distasteful but necessary.
Among the crowd of laborers on this particular day, however, was one--a powerful, gray-haired old Negro--who alone seemed to be enjoying his back-breaking duties. For he was singing at his work. Singing:--chanting, in a rhythmical barbaric sort of regularity, a kind of song that awoke vague nostalgia longings in my innards.
Coonjine! Was it possible, I asked myself, that here in New York there was a steamboat roustabout--a "Coonjine *Negro"--from the Mississippi country? A stray from my native Midlands and South?
Looking at him closely I could not doubt it. He wore the conventional old battered hat turned up in front, the gunny sack fastened with nails across his chest and shoulders.
Anyone reared along the Inland rivers would know that this was the characteristic dress of the steamboat roustabout, from Cairo, Ill. to St. Louis; from Cincinnati to New Orleans. I listened carefully to his song as he laid down on the dock a large box from his shoulder and turned back to the ship again.
Love her in de sunshine,
Love her in de rain!
Treats her like a white gal,
She give my neck a pain!
De mo' I does for Sadie Lee
De less dat woman thinks er me
I had never heard the words before but his manner of singing them smacked undeniably of the river Negro. There was a guileless naiveté that I could not mistake.
Back in the days when the queenly white steamboats of the Mississippi, the Ohio and Illinois Rivers, were busy carrying the freight and passengers of the American Inland Empre, an army of freight handlers was necessary to take care of the loading and unloading. At one time in the middle of the nineteenth century before the railroads had fully come, nearly two thousand steamboats steamed gracefully along the rivers. One fairly good-sized boat carried fifty roustabouts. Therefore, you can at once apprehend the great need, for strong arms and backs to do the loading and unloading at the city landings where the boats touched.
Along the rivers that border Southern Illinois, Kentucky and the Southern States, Negroes gravitated instinctively to the river life. Steamboating appealed to them because of its inherently nomadic character, its constant change of scene, its hours of pleasant idleness on deck, between landings, when a black boy could rest and sleep and roll the spotted ivories with his buddies. The wages were relatively good. Particularly, the food was plentiful and substantial. And that was an important factor in any job!
And so from the beginning of steam transportation on the Mississippi (1817) the Negro, as a freight handler--known locally as a roustabout, or in the vernacular a "rouster"--became an important figure in the mid-American scene. Especially after the long arm of emancipation had freed the slaves and they sought out their own careers.
A roustabout's job while it lasted- rolling cotton bales over the stageplanks, carrying tierces of lard and sides of bacon, swinging a recalcitrant pig calf over the shoulder, carrying it squealing along, working in all kinds of weather, and under the constant tongue lashings of a profane and two-fisted steamboat mate. . .was about as hard a job as could be found. Yet the Negroes loved it because there was plenty of time between landings for "restin' up."
And there was another way to lighten the labor. If a boy put his mind on his work and kept it there, he could not long stand up under the strain. But if he sang while he worked, " released his spirit on the wings of song" while his back bent and the sweat trickled copiously from his pores, he would forget his weariness.
There is in every rightly constructed Negro a profound sense of rhythm, an inherent love for the beat and timing of music, running back to African days. He sings as naturally as he eats. It was to alleviate the weariness of carrying freight on and off the steamboats, that the roustabouts sang. And the songs they sang and the shuffling, loose kneed dance-job-trot to which they timed their movements, became known among themselves as the Coonjine.
It was such a song that I heard this gray haired brawny Negro singing on the West Street docks, a thousand miles away from the Mississippi country, on this October afternoon.
No one seems to know definitely where the name "coonjine" came from. Harris Dickson, well known author of Vicksburg, Miss., and an authority on Negro lore, says that the word is possibly of African origin and points out the word "Coonjai" was the African term for a tribal dance. But, Judge Dickson explains farther, roustabouts didn't run much to "derivations" - to Greek or Latin roots. Whenever they wanted a word they made it up offhand, and usually the word they coined filled the bill so perfectly that it stuck. It may have been so with Coonjine.
Coonjine songs were not spirituals--neither the genuine nor the "Broadway" variety. There was nothing spiritual about them that I have been able to discover.
Into these songs the rousters put the problems and the incidents of the day's labor, the characteristics of the people they met. The peculiarities of a mate or captain or fellow rouster; the speed and qualities of a particular boat; the charms or meanness of a woman-friend; domestic matters--all these were subjects which the steamboat roustabouts move into the texture of the Coonjine songs with which they lightened the labor of steamboat work. Composed sometimes on the spur of the moment, or garbled versions of songs previously heard, often the words were ridiculous, sometimes senseless, but nearly always ludicrous with occasionally a touch of pathos:
Old roustabout aint got no home,
Make his living on his shoulder bone!
There came a lull in the unloading of the ship. The Negro exhaled gustily, mopped his brow and chancing to glance in my direction, grinned and shook his head.
"Sho' is hot!" he announced, "and man is I tired!"
I beckoned him over to one side.
"What boats you work on?" I asked him. "Ever roust on the Kate Adams ?"
At which his smile broadened and he broke out in a loud guffaw.
"Go 'long, Boss! You come frum down on the River? Lawd, Lawd! Yassur, I sho'ly did wuk on de ole Lovin Kate . (Dat's whut we useter call de Kate Adams ). I wuk on Cap'n Buck Layhe's Golden Eagle , too, an' on de City er Louisville and City er Cincinnati , up on de Ohio River. One time, 'bout fifteen years ago, I rousted fer Ole Cap'n. Cooley up de Ouachita River. Yassuh!"
He turned scornfully to the group of laborers still carrying articles of freight, "Dese hyuh dagoes and furriners--dey don't know nuthin' bout roustin'! Dey doan know nothin' bout Coonjine, like us does out on de river."
"Do you remember any more of those Coonjine songs?" I asked him. Whereupon he at once became a trifle reticent and embarrassed.
"Laway, hit wuz so long ago I mos' fergit 'em. I useter know a lot dem songs when I wuz a young buck. But sense I done got ole, I got me a wife and jined de chu'ch and fergit mos' all dem ole Coonjine songs."
"But you were singing just now," I told him.
"Wuz I?" he asked, his eyes wide. "Well, dat - dat wuz jes cause I wuz workin', boss!" Presently he resumed: "I 'members one song we uster sing on de Lizzie Bay , when she was runnin' from Ragtown ter Cairo."
"Ragtown? Where was that?"
"Aw - dat's jes' de name de rousters give her Cincinnati. So many rags wuz sold and shipped out on de boats ter make paper outen.
"Dat song went dish here way:
De ole Lizzie Bay she comin' roun' de ben'
All she's a doin' is killin' up men.
De ole Lizzie Bay she's a mighty fine boat
But hit take nine syphon ter keep her afloat
.......... "An' boss, you member dat song 'bout:
Who been hyuh sints I bin gone?
Big ole rouster wid a derby on,
Layin' right dar in my bed
Wid his heels crack open like cracklin' bread.
I whoop my woman and I black her eye,
But I won't cut her th'oat kaze I skeered she
might die. . .
I had heard garbled versions of this epic at various river towns, even as I had heard variations of that well-nigh unprintable song with the recurring refrain of "Rango - Rango" and the often twisted, "Roll, Molly, Roll."
This seemed to please him mightily. Under pressure, and in acknowledgement of some silver change, he recalled others of the songs he had chanted years ago, in the days when the big steamboats ran--recalled them slowly, one by one, each song suggesting another. Standing there with him in the West Street pier shed, I gathered a sizeable collection of Coonjine songs. Many, I have no doubt, bore only a slight resemblance to the original wordings. For roustabouts felt, so long as they preserved the thought and central idea and rhythm of a song, they could change the words at will. Sometime they abandoned the existing words and made up new words of their own. I have heard different versions of barely recognizable Coonjine songs in various towns from St. Louis to the Delta. Once, an antiquated porter at the old Holliday House, fronting the river at Cairo, Ill., sang this one for me:
"Whar wuz you las' night?
O tell me whar you wuz las' night?
Rattin' on de job
In Saint Chawles Hotel
Which requires some explanation. "Ratting" in rouster lingo for "loafing." The St. Charles Hotel referred, not to the historical hostelry in New Orleans of that name, but to a warm cleared space beneath the steamboat boilers on the lower deck on any boat where the rousters, whenever they were able to dodge the vigilant eye of the mate, were wont to hide away and sleep. Many a boat has been loaded, down in the cotton country, to the tune of a two line doggerel:
I chaws my terbacker and I spits my juice,
Gwinter love my gal til hit ain't no use
Roustabouts were always hungry. Near the steamboat landing in Vicksburg there stood, back in the eighties and nineties, an old brick bakery which specialized in "nigger belly"--that is, long slabs of ginger bread which sold at the rate of two for five cents. The roustabouts called it "boozum bread."
Boozum bread, boozum bread,
I eats dat stuff till I dam near dead
--sang the roustabouts of the Belle of the Bends of the Senator Cordell or the Belle Memphis , or any other of a dozen boats. Which also requires some explanation. In carrying articles of freight up and down the stageplank a roustabout had to use both hands to balance it on his shoulder or head. Soe he would stuff a strip of ginger bread under his shirt bosom next to his skin, the top extending up almost to his collar. By ducking his chin he could bit out chunks of the stuff (soon softened by sweat) without interference with his work. Hence the name, Boozum (bosom) bread.
Vicksburg roustabouts were also partial to this song, which had reference to a certain one-armed hard-fisted steamboat mate, named Lew Brown.
T'aint no use for dodgin' roun'
Dat ole mate jes' behine you.
Better cut dat step and coonjine out
Dat ole jes' behine you
But the songs eulogising the boats themselves stick longer in my mind than any others. There was something intensely personal about a steamboat. To the men who manned and owned and operated them, steamboats had personality. Hence the qualities of certain boats live today in Coonjine songs.
The boats of the Lee Line, in the Memphis-New Orleans trade until a few years ago, fed the passengers and crews well; but paid notoriously low wages. Still the Negroes liked to work for the Lee Line. The reason is to be found in this song:
Reason I likes de Lee Line trade,
Sleep all night wid de chambermaid.
She gimme some pie and she gimme some cake,
An' I gi' her all de money dat I ever make
The Anchor Line boats (running from 1869-1911) were each named for a Mississippi River City, and fine St. Louis and New Orleans packets, noted for speed, sumptious cabins and elaborate cuisine. I once met, up on the Ohio River, an old roustabout who called himself Ankline Bob--because, he said, he had worked for the Anchor Line. Bob had the lowdown on the different Anchor Line boats:
Dey wuks you hawd but dey feeds you fine
On dem big boats er de Anchor Line
There was intense rivalry between the different boats of this line. Notably that between the City of Cairo and the City of Monroe . Both were fine and fast, but the Cairo was once said to have a slight edge for speed on the Monroe . Whereupon the roustabouts on the Monroe would sing:
De City of Cairo's a mighty big gun,
But lemme tell you whut de Monroe done:
She lef' Baton Rouge at haff pass one
An' git ter Vicksburg at de settin' er de sun
Another Anchor Liner; the City of Providence , was nicknamed by the roustabouts "The Trusty Trus'" for the reason that her mate was always willing to trust a rouster with a dollar until pay day. They would sing:
Me and muh woman done had a fuss,
Gwinter take a little trip on de Trusty Trus!
I owes de lanlady fifty cents,
Gwinter roust on de Providence.
A song which was popular in America twenty years ago was "Alabama Bound." An ex-roustabout on the St. Louis levee once explained to me that this song was originally a Coonjine song. The steamboat Saltillo was a doughy little sternwheeler which late in the evening used to pull away periodically from the landing and turn her nose southward down the Mississippi. At Cairo she would turn into the Ohio and up that stream to the mouth of the Tennessee River, following the lovely channel of that river back into the Muscle Shoals section of Alabama which the great government dams are today being built to improve navigation.
With their usual happy facility for conferring euphonious nicknames, the Negroes called the Saltillo the Sal Teller:
Sal Teller leave St. Looey
Wid her lights tu'n down.
And you'll know by dat
She's Alabama bound.
Alabama bound!
She's Alabama bound!
You'll know by dat
She's Alabama bound!
Doan you leave me here!
Doan you leave me here!
Ef you's gwine away and ain comin' back
Leave a dime fer beer!
Leave a dime fer beer
Leave a dime fer beer!
Brother, if yu gwine away
Leave a dime fer beer!
I ask de mate
Ter sell me some gin;
Says, I pay you, mister
When de Stack comes in
When de Stack comes in
When de Stack comes in!
Says, I pay you mister,
When de Stack comes in
The name Stack , recurring several times in the song, referred to one of the Lee Line boats, the Stacker Lee.
Mates and captain, far from objecting to coonjine, encouraged their roustabouts to sing. There was a sound utilitarian reason for this. Anyone who has worked with Negroes knows that they will work better when they work to music, timing their movements to the beat of the tune. A thousand tons of miscellaneous freight and a few hundred bales of cotton could be loaded, to the beat and time of Coonjine, in half the time that songless labor would demand.
Coming up the Mississippi on Captain Cooley's little sternwheeler Ouachita in company with Roark Bradford, one early spring, I learned this song from that skillful portrayer of the Negro character: (This was a cotton-loading song heard frequently on the docks at New Orleans).
Catfish swimmin' in de river
Nigger wid a hook and line
Says de catfish, Lookyere, Nigger,
You ain' got me dis time.
.......... Come on, bale (spoken) - got yuh!
And there was another value to Coonjine. Moving in perfect time meant that the rousters' feet hit the stageplank with uniform precision. A wise thing, too! For if a rouster should step upon the vibrating boards out of time , and thus catch the rebound of the stage-plank, he was very likely to be catapulted with his load over into that muddy bourne from which no roustabout returns--or rarely so.
A general opinion prevails throughout the River Southland that nobody but the Negroes can sing Coonjine. This may be true, for if you have ever tried to capture a Coonjine tune from hearing a Negro sing it, you must have realized how utterly futile it is to put down in cold black and white on paper the color and barbaric beauty of the tones.
However, an attempt is being made--as this is written--by an accomplished musical composer in Paducah, Kentucky, to bring out a book of Coonjine songs with music. Such a collection would be an invaluable addition to our vanishing Americana.
For this phase of American life is fast vanishing. With the coming of the railroads, the steamboats (as we knew them once) have gone. So have the black freight handlers who by their songs and ever-rebounding good nature, added much to the pleasure of steamboat travel. Many of the old roustabouts have died. More have left their native South and come to the north to live with grown-up "chillens."
You will find them, not only on the West Street docks in New York, but in Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati and other cities. And to those black "creators of American folklore" the writer ascribes this brief tribute.
Roustabout Dink Roberts
Here are the lyrics to Dink Roberts' [1894-1989] version of 'Roustabout':
ROUSTABOUT ("Buffalo")
Where you been?
You - roustabout
Say, when you go a-courtin'
Yea, when you go a-fishin'
Carry a hook and line
Yea, when you go a-courtin'
Court with a willin' mind
Yea, who been here since I been gone?
Little bitty girl with the red dress on
Source: transcription in booklet in Various Artists 'Black Banjo Songsters of North Carolina and Virginia' Smithsonian/Folkways SFCD 40079.
The notes by Cece Conway and Scott Odell to this piece read in part:
Along with 'Coo Coo', this ['Rousabout'] is one of the important showpiece tunes in the black banjo repertory ... This tuning [gCGBD] ... was also used by the earliest minstrels. The song is likely a reminder of the older uses of this tuning that was current when whites first learned the banjo from blacks in the 1830s and later when the 5-string banjo appeared ...
Dink says that he learned this song at age 15 from his family in the Piedmont. He took it with him when he moved to Mt Airy in Surry County to farm and to work on the railroad. The 2-part structure with the striking key change is found in other black versions and also in Fred Cockerham's. An outstanding white banjo player, Fred grew up and lived most of his life in Low Gap, not far from Mt Airy, but did not remember any black musicians in the area; nor is there any indication that he and Dink ever heard each other play. Some black players, including John Tyree and Rufus Kasey, call this tune 'Hop Light' or 'Hop Along Lou', echoing the refrain used in some versions, including Cockerham's. To the best of Fred's memory, Mal Smith brought 'Roustabout' to the area from Virginia in the first quarter of the century and called it 'Long Steel Rail'. The likelihood of a Virginia source is strengthened by the complex and closely related versions of black players Rufus Kasey, Josh Thomas and others from Virginia, many of whom were working on or near the railroads during this same period.[Cece Conway and Scott Odell, pp25-26 in booklet to SFCD 40079]
I have John Tyree's recording of 'Hop Along Lou' on Various Artists 'Virginia Traditions: Non-Blues Secular Black Music' Global Village CD 1001, but it is an instrumental piece only.
A roustabout was an unskilled labourer, especially one who worked on the oil rigs, and, according to Cece Conway (notes to Black Banjo Songsters - Smithsonian Folkways SF CD 40079) the tune Roustabout 'is one of the most important showpiece tunes in the Black banjo repertory'. It seems that the tune probably originated in Virginia, under the title Long Steel Rail, and is nowadays equally well-known among both black and white musicians. Dink Roberts performs a good version on the above mentioned Smithsonian Folkways CD, while Fred Cockerham can be heard playing his version of the tune on Rounder CD 0439.
Dan Tate's Roustabout liner notes: Dan Tate was born in 1896 and must at one time have known a phenomenal number of songs and banjo tunes. Though frail and almost totally blind, his welcome to a complete stranger was as warm and genuine as could be. After recording many of his songs in 1979 and 1980 I called to see him again in 1983. "Did I sing you Lily Monroe?" he asked when I walked through his doorway. "It must be about England, 'cause they send for a 'London' doctor to heal up his wounds." He also recounted how one recent snowfall had almost ended his life. "I thought I was a gonner, Mike. I woke up and it was quiet, real quiet; and cold, real cold. The stove had gone out and I had no wood inside. I tried to open the door but it just wouldn't open. The house had just about disappeared in the snow. Well...I wrapped some blankets around me and sat in the chair, expecting to die. And do you know? It wasn't long before I heard my friends coming to dig me out!" Strength of character, tenacity and sensitivity are words that I'd use to describe Dan and his neighbours.
Dan had been recorded for the Library of Congress by Professor Fletcher Collins, of Elon College, NC. Library records date these recording to 1941, although Dan was adamant that they had been made in 1938. I had heard one or two of Dan's recordings prior to meeting him and found that he still just loved to sing. One morning he began to talk about 'the war'. I thought that he was talking about the Great War, until he began to describe the American Civil War Battle of Shiloh. As a young man he had known people who had fought in the Civil War. Never before had history seemed so real!
Roustabout: by Tom Carter & Blanton Owen
***
How can you be so mean to me,
(When I've) Been so good to you.
Wish to the Lord I'd never been born,
Died when I was so young;
Never be here to eat this salty meat,
Or hear your lying tongue.
Who's Gonna shoe your pretty white foot,
Who's gonna glove your hand;
Who's gonna kiss your ruby red lips,
When I'm in a far off land.
Papa will shoe my pretty white feet,
Mama will glove my hand;
Nobody's gonna kiss my ruby red lips,
'Till you return again.
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