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Rainshadow Media Gallery
Jon Bartlett &
Rika Ruebsaat
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Our Singing Tradition Volume 1
COME TO ME IN CANADA
Item #
WL87-0327
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This CD contains a
selection of Canadian songs, many of which speak directly of life
in this country. The songs can be divided into three rough
categories: traditional songs, composed songs that have entered
the oral tradition, and composed songs whose makers are known.
The oldest
traditional songs in Canada are those that were sung in the old
country and survived in the new world. The earliest of these are
many of the songs of French Canada, passed on over the course of
nearly four centuries. The Scottish and Irish immigrants to the
Atlantic provinces also came with a wealth of songs such as
“The Unquiet Grave” and “The Kangaroo”.
Life in the new world made its mark on the songs as they began to
reflect new conditions. A song of lost love gains a chorus and
becomes a paddling song in the fur trade. A song about a prisoner
of war (“Prison de Londres”) is sped up and
becomes a dance tune. Often new songs about life in Canada are
made to traditional melodies. The loggers in the eastern lumbering
woods were predominantly Irish and French-Canadian and carried
with them many songs and tunes. Out of their experiences grew such
songs as “The Lumberman’s Alphabet” and
“Nous sommes trois frères”. Songmaking in the west, on
the other hand, was influenced by American musical traditions,
giving rise to such songs as “’Twas Out in Alberta”,
to the tune of “Sweet Betsy from Pike”.
Sometimes songmakers
made such good songs that the song was passed on orally and its
source was forgotten. “Peter Amberley” is such a
song.
Contemporary
songmakers are still composing songs that reflect life in Canada.
The best of these was Wade Hemsworth (1916-2002), maker of such
songs as “The Black Fly Song”, “The Wild Goose”
and “The Logdriver’s Waltz”. Without the aid of
frequent radio play and record sales, Wade’s songs have been
widely sung and passed on for decades, because they speak plainly
and eloquently about life in this country. |
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Notes on the Songs
Songs of the
Lumbering Woods
Four of the songs—“The
Logdriver’s Waltz”, “Peter Amberley”, “Nous sommes trois frères”
and “The Lumberman’s Alphabet”—reflect the early
days of logging in eastern Canada. Logging was a task of winter;
in the summer, many loggers worked on their farms, worked in town
or signed on as seamen on the tall ships. In the fall, they headed
up to the logging camps (les chanquiers). Trees were felled
with axes and saws and the logs loaded onto horse-drawn sledges
and pulled along ice “roads” to the riverbank. All winter, the
piles of logs along the river rose higher and higher. When the ice
went off the rivers in the spring, the logs were rolled into the
water and floated downstream to the sawmills. This was the log
drive (la drave) and the most dangerous part of the
season’s work. With their pike poles and peavies in hand, the
loggers often had to walk out on the floating logs to keep them
moving. When the logs got caught up, the loggers had to “turn
over” the logjam, a dangerous and often fatal job. This method of
logging was carried out all over eastern North America throughout
the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century.
The Logdriver’s
Waltz
This song by Wade
Hemsworth describes the light-footedness of the loggers who walked
on the logs as they floated downstream. It was said that a
logdriver who was really light on his feet on the river could
“ride the bubbles to shore”. The song was the origin of and music
to a famous NFB short film. “Burling” means keeping your balance
on a rolling log.
Nous sommes trois
frères
This song tells the
sad story of three brothers who head up to the logging camps to
work. One of them is drowned one Sunday morning while running the
logs downstream on the log drive. He laments the absence of a
priest and the sorrow of his family at his death. Many eastern
logging camp songs speak of the very bad luck attending those who
worked on Sundays. Marius Barbeau collected the song from Philéas
Bédard shortly after World War I.
Willie Drowned in
Ero (Child 215)
Ballads are songs
that tell stories, and “Child” ballads are those collated by
Professor Child and published in the late nineteenth century as
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. We learned this
ballad (known in Scotland as “Rare Willie Drowned in
Yarrow”) from the singing of Ian Robb, who had it from
the version collected by Edith Fowke from Mrs. Eva Bigrow of
Calumet, Quebec in 1964.
Peter Amberley
John Calhoun
(1848-1939) of Boiestown, NB, who had known Amberley, made this
song. It soon entered oral tradition, and variants have been found
throughout the Maritimes. Falling limbs such as the one that
killed Peter Amberley were known as “widow-makers”.
Dondaine la ridaine
A traditional
Quebecois song about a young woman who refuses a shoemaker’s love
because she is afraid he might prick her with his awl. We learned
it from the adaptation made by Rêve du Diable’s Gervais Lessard.
The Lumberman’s
Alphabet
Versions of this
song were sung in logging camps throughout eastern North America,
and as the “Sailor’s Alphabet”, by English-speaking sailors all
over the world. This one comes from the Miramichi region of New
Brunswick. The ’I’ is for ile we burn in our lamps points
to its origin among loggers of Irish extraction.
The Kangaroo
Most versions of
this song are about a “carrion crow” being shot at by a tailor.
Somehow, in the process of oral transmission the crow became a
kangaroo. Helen Creighton collected this particular version in
Nova Scotia.
The Ballad Of
Springhill Disaster
Made by Peggy Seeger,
this song describes a coalmining disaster in Nova Scotia.
Springhill is a coalmining village and on October 23, 1958, the
No. 2 Colliery was the site of a huge explosion, which killed
seventy-five miners.
’Twas Out in Alberta
Most traditional
songs from the Prairies complain of the near impossibility of
survival in the face of hardships. Vicious weather, pests and
loneliness forced many off their homesteads. This song, collected
by Jon’s old singing partner Al Grierson (1948-2000) in Vancouver
in 1977, was first published in Canada Folk Bulletin I-3,
and is typical of the genre.
Dans la prison de
Londres
Versions of this
song about the prisoner who is freed by the jailer’s daughter have
been collected throughout French Canada. In some versions, the
prison is in Nantes rather than London.
Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson made
four voyages to the Arctic to seek a passage to the Orient. On the
final voyage in June 1611, his crew mutinied and cast Hudson
adrift in a small boat in the bay named after him. With him were
seven “poor, sick, lame men” and his son John. In the early
1970’s, Chris Rawlings saw John Collier’s painting The Last
Voyage of Henry Hudson, and was moved to make this song.
Mussels in the
Corner
One of the
most-recorded dance tunes in Newfoundland, there appears to be no
trace of it in print until its publication in Canada Folk
Bulletin in 1978. Torbay is a town along the coast a few miles
north of St. John’s, and you’re a Bayman if you live on the coast
but not in St. John’s.
The Unquiet Grave
(Child 78)
Grief at the loss of
a lover is the subject of many ballads, of which this is one of
the finest. Variants of this song have been collected throughout
Britain and North America; the Greenleaf and Mansfield Expedition
collected this Newfoundland version from Mrs. Rosie White in 1929.
Come to Me in Canada
We learned this song
from the singing of Walter Pardon of Norfolk, England, thanks to
the collecting work of Michael Yates. Walter had heard it from a
cousin in the early 1930’s, who had himself learned it before
World War I. It was probably composed to be sung in the English
Music Halls to encourage immigration to the Canadian west.
Le sirop d’érable
The tune is by Ward
Allen of the Ottawa Valley, and has entered the oral tradition
among both franco- and anglophone fiddlers. The words, by Jean
Pierre LaChance of the group Rêve du Diable, describe a
sugaring-off expedition followed by a party.
Song List
The Logdriver’s
Waltz (Wade Hemsworth) 2:08
Nous sommes trois
frères (trad.) 1:25
Willie Drowned in
Ero (trad. Child 215) 4:04
Peter Amberley (John
Calhoun) 2:09
Dondaine la ridaine
(trad.) 2:13
The
Lumberman’s Alphabet (trad) 3:44
The Kangaroo (trad.)
1:39
The Ballad of
Springhill Disaster
(Peggy Seeger) 2:59
’Twas Out in Alberta
(anon.) 1:39
Dans la prison de
Londres (trad.) 1:39
Henry Hudson
(Chris Rawlings, Cooking Fat Music) 2:41
Mussels in the
Corner (trad.) 2:31
The Unquiet Grave (trad.
Child 78) 2:22
Come to Me in Canada
(anon.) 4:24
Le sirop d’érable
2:06
(tune: Ward Allen,words: Jean Pierre LaChance)
Piano – Murray
Shoolbraid
Concertina – Bob
Webb
Viola – Keith
Malcolm
Button accordion &
chorus singing
– Fred Weihs
Guitar and clogging
– Rika Ruebsaat
Bass – Paul Newman
Recorded in 1979 by
Hal Beckett at Entmoot Studios. Remixed and “Nous sommes trois
frères” and “The Unquiet Grave” recorded in 2003 by Jim Woodyard
at Creation Studios.
Cover photo taken by
Rika Ruebsaat, near Trois Riviéres, PQ.
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Our Singing Tradition Volume 3
THE GREEN FIELDS OF CANADA
Item # WL87-0328
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About this CD...
Canada’s Songs from Coast to Coast
A representative album of Canadian folk songs was not possible until 1979 when the last of the major collections of traditional folk songs was published. Phil Thomas’ Songs of the Pacific Northwest (Hancock House, North Vancouver), from which five songs in this album have been drawn, accurately represents the history and the economy of British Columbia, and allows us to assemble a composite picture of the regional varieties of Canadian song.
The songs on this album range in age from the title track, dating back to the eighteen-fifties, to the two songs of Wade Hemsworth made in the nineteen-fifties. Though the tunes of the songs vary from Irish modal through Protestant hymn to Tin Pan Alley, (whichever mode was the most significant and familiar to the community out of which the song came), the songs are unified in voice: in each of them, we can
imagine a singer passing on a song in and to a community, whether an eastern or western logging camp, a prairie or Quebec town or a small Atlantic fishing village. This is the authentic voice of Canadians speaking to Canadians: we hope our arrangements and singing have done them justice.
Song List
The Red River Valley (words, Chris Dafoe) 2.30
The Grand Hotel/The Peekaboo Waltz
/Buck’s Camp Down at Monroe (trad.) 4:06
It Was Way Out West in Alberta
Bill “Bud” Baldwin) 1:55
The Hard Rock Miner (trad.) 1:56
Far From Home (tune, Phil Thomas) 4:00
Saskatchewan (words, William W. Smith) 2:31
The Doryman (tune, Phil Thomas) 3:10
The Homesick Trapper(words, Harold Smith;
tune Stanley G. Triggs) 1:34
La Famille Latour (trad.) 3:52
The Wreck of the Mary Somers (trad.) 4:04
Hard, Hard Times (trad.) 2:27
The Green Fields of Canada (trad.) 3:38
Les Raftsmen (trad.) 2:38
The Wild Goose (Wade Hemsworth) 2:22
The Black Fly Song (Wade Hemsworth) 3:45
Fiddle & viola — Keith Malcolm
Bass — Paul Newman
English concertina, guitar & clogging
— Rika Ruebsaat
Piano — Murray Shoolbraid
Five-string banjo & voice — Bob Webb
Button accordion & voice — Fred Weihs
Recorded in 1979. Cover photo taken by
Rika Ruebsaat, near Merritt, BC.
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Our Singing Tradition single Volume
for $18.00 prices in CND |
Buy the 3 CD Set for $51.00
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Our Singing Tradition Volume 2
THE YOUNG MAN FROM CANADA
B.C. songs from the P.J. Thomas Collection
Item # WL87-0329
Sample
♫ ON/OFF è
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This CD features
the collecting work of Phil Thomas, a folklorist deeply
attached to the historical and cultural roots of his native
province. The PJ Thomas Collection, now housed in the
Provincial Sound Archives, comprises the material he himself
collected between 1954 and 1975. Some of the material saw
print in the publication of Songs of the Pacific
Northwest (Saanichton: Hancock House Publishers,
1979) and more was released on his LP, “Where the Fraser River
Flows” (1980).
The European
development of BC occurred very late in the history of
traditional folk music, and much of the material Thomas
collected was not at first glance folk music at all. Where
were the Child ballads and the love lyrics, so ubiquitous in
the eastern provinces? In their place, Thomas presented a
mélange of Tin Pan Alley and hymn tunes, with textual
reworkings from the same sources, often so full of technical
talk (see “Taku Miners”) as to be all but
incomprehensible.
But what Thomas
showed in his collection was that the history of folk song in
this most westernmost province was a history of struggle: the
struggle to harvest and mine the natural resources (fish,
timber, coal and metals), the struggle between the early
capitalists and their work forces, and the struggle with the
landform itself, allowing such easy access from the south and
resisting it from the east.
That this
material was “folk song” was not quickly accepted, and Thomas
argued that the same characteristics (anonymity, wide
dispersal, variant texts) are found both in traditional “folk
song” and in the songs he himself collected in BC. He looked
to the functional reasons for these characteristics: a work
force that was mobile, that was more attuned (because of its
mobility) to industrial organization than what the Wobblies
called the “home guard”, and that was familiar with the world
of commercial song. It was natural that they should themselves
remake these songs to speak of new conditions.
The songs in his
collection are in the main from logging camps, from fishermen
and from the constantly roaming hard rock miners, men who
until just yesterday formed the overwhelming majority of the
male working population. To these categories might be added
songs of transportation—of railways, tugboats and wagon
roads—songs of the armed forces (mostly rude squibs about
military conditions) and songs made by Wobblies (the BC name
for the Industrial Workers of the World, a union/party made by
and for those who did not fit the polite labour unionism of
the time). The songs he collected are overwhelmingly male-made
and -sung. If there was ever a body of material made by women
of their equally hard but much more lonely work, Thomas never
found it.
Thomas himself
led three very rewarding and interesting careers: as an art
teacher, dedicated to the notion that art was something for
the masses, not the classes, and the first President of the BC
Art Teachers Association: as a collector, now the Honourary
President of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music; and
as a creative singer and musician, who in 1959 was one of the
founders of the Vancouver Folk Song Society, the oldest such
society in Canada and one of the oldest in north America. His
insistence that BC’s heritage of folk song should not simply
moulder on paper in books and archives, that it is a living
and creative force, and an expression not simply of the
province’s past but also of its present, has animated many
singers, not least the two who, under his guidance and with
his blessing, made in 1980 the radio series titled “Songs and
Stories of Canada”, sixteen half-hour shows for schools, from
which the songs on this CD are drawn. We hope that we have
done the songs justice. |
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Notes on the Songs
The European
settlement of British Columbia took place primarily in the
nineteenth century. The musical traditions on which songmakers
drew were those of that period—popular songs of Tin Pan Alley
and religious songs. The songs on this CD reflect that
tradition. Many of them have melodies borrowed from well-known
songs of the day.
The
Young British Rancher – a reworking of Kipling’s
“Young British Soldier”. Sons of well-to-do English families,
supported with regular cash transfers from ‘home’, were called
“remittance men”. They were able to ‘play-act’ at being
ranchers, much to the annoyance of their hardworking
neighbours.
The
Truck Driver’s Song – M. K. (“Mutt”) Papov, a logging
truck driver from Nakusp, made this song in the 1960’s to
share his feelings about trucks and driving them.
Taku
Miners – from the singing of Bill and Audrey Lore,
Tahsis, 1972. The chorus describes the process of drilling
holes for blasting. The verses describe the placing of the
explosives in the drilled holes and the counting of the
“shots” to ensure they are all fired properly. During the
song, Frank Columbus of the Britannia Mine describes drilling
and blasting procedures.
Stormalong – a pumping and capstan shanty learned
from the singing of Capt. Charles Cates (1899-1960) of North
Vancouver, who most probably had it from his friend Capt.
George W. Robarts (1870-1952). Accompanying the song is the
fall of the capstan’s pawl as the capstan is turned.
Song Of
The Sockeye – this song, originally a poem made in
1939 by Ross Cumbers, and with a tune from Phil Thomas,
describes the life of gillnet sockeye fishers in the 1930’s.
The fishers, who worked in small, cramped boats, often started
(and ended) the season in debt to the canneries.
Gold Rush Songs
Young
Man From Canada – During the Cariboo gold rush of the
1860’s, many young men came from “Canada” (what is now Ontario
and Quebec) to the goldfields, sailing around Cape Horn to San
Francisco, up the coast to Victoria and thence to the head of
Harrison Lake. From there, they hiked “the Douglas Way”, over
the mountains via Lillooet to the Cariboo. This song, which
‘sends up’ the experiences of many would-be miners, is from
Sawney’s Letters and Cariboo Rhymes, with a final couplet
by Phil Thomas. “Div” in the last-but-one verse is “dividend”,
and “Wake Up Jake’s” a well-known destination for a miner in
search of a “bully square”, a good square meal.
Old Faro
– also from Sawney’s Letters and Cariboo Rhymes. Phil
Thomas noted that “the professional gamblers with their faro
and monte tables lived off the miners, and nothing effectively
hampered their games in Barkerville until in 1868 a
magistrate’s order prohibited them from operating in any room
attached to a public saloon”—thus this mock elegy to the game.
A gambler could afford a clean “paper collar” in contrast to
the miner’s muddy, sweaty rags. To “freeze me out” in the
fifth verse means to outbluff.
Know Ye
The Land? – words from a manuscript in the Provincial
Archives, tune adapted by Phil Thomas from an 1835 hymn. This
song is surely one of the most graphic and bitter musical
tributes to the Cariboo gold rush. “Trusting to jaw” (short
for “jawbone”) means selling on credit. Matthew Baillie Begbie
was the first judge of the new colony of British Columbia from
1858 and through the Cariboo gold rush.
Teaming
Up The Cariboo Road – a reworking of the Tin Pan
Alley minstrel song “Climbing up the Golden Stairs”. The Henry
Currie referred to in the song drove freight wagons on the
Ashcroft-Barkerville road. The “ball at Clinton” refers to a
great mid-winter get-together where the song was no doubt
heard.
Klondike! – from the singing of Capt. Charles Cates,
Vancouver, 1959, and learned from his father. The song was
popular in the English music halls of the time. Moodyville was
the location of Sue Moody’s sawmill in what is now North
Vancouver.
Logging Songs
Way Up
The Ucletaw – from the singing of Ed Dalby, Campbell
River, 1959, with the first stanza by Phil Thomas. “Ucletaw”
is the Yuculta Rapids, up the coast from Vancouver. Loggers
supplied their own blankets. Pitchbacks are Douglas fir, so
called because the bottom of the tree collects pitch. The
early loggers stood on springboards, often several meters
above the ground, so they could chop above the pitch. The song
is preceded by the sounds of a two-man saw at work and shouts
of “…ber!” and “down the hill!” drawn from Robert Swanson’s
aural archives.
The
Greenhorn Song – by Dick Pollard of Argenta, BC who
logged in “that Duncan country”, the area north of Kootenay
Lake, before the Duncan Dam was built. High lead logging is a
method of getting felled trees out of the tangle of a cut
block. A “spar tree” (a tall, strong tree from which all limbs
are chopped) is rigged with blocks and cables. The cables are
connected to an engine, steam- or diesel-driven. From the
cables hang sixteen-foot choker cables, which the chokerman
hooks around the logs. The whistle punk signals the
donkey-puncher, who throws the engine into gear. The cable
lifts the “choked” logs off the ground and hauls them in to
the “cold deck” at the base of the spar tree. The donkey
engine sounds here are again drawn from Bob Swanson’s
archives.
The Oda
G. – by Stanley G. Triggs (and on his Folkways album
“Shanties & Forecastle Songs of the Northwest” FG 3569). Stan
worked on tugboats (including this one) in the 1960’s.
Railway Songs
Drill Ye
Tarriers Drill! – there are many versions of this
song throughout North America, referring to many different
railways. Many of the workers who built the railway were
Irish. The work was hard and dangerous, and the conditions in
the BC mountains so vile that some workers risked their lives
trying to escape down the Fraser Canyon. Premature explosions
were common.
The
Kettle Valley Line – about the railway running from
Hope, BC to Lethbridge, Alberta. Ean Hay made the song from
the experiences of his father at the end of the First World
War. From the 1880’s to the 1930’s, it was common practice for
workers to travel throughout North America in this way,
looking for work. “Railway bulls” (railway police) often
kicked men off the trains and threw them into “the local stir”
(jail).
The PGE
Song – another railway song, about the Pacific Great
Eastern (later called BC Rail) which runs from Vancouver to
Prince George This song was made by Keith Crowe, who worked on
the Dease Lake extension of the PGE at Summit Lake in 1949.
The railway was begun in 1912 and was not finished by 1949, so
people provided new words for its initials – “Past God’s
Endurance”, “Please Go Easy”, “Prince George Eventually” and
the like. The expression “When the PGE goes through” became a
byword for interminable procrastination.
Song List
Young British
Rancher 2:26
The
Truckdriver’s Song (M.K. Papov) 2:04
Taku Miners 2:54
Stormalong 1:31
Song of the
Sockeye (Cumbers & Thomas) 3:55
Gold Rush Songs
I’m a Young Man
from Canada 3:36
Old Faro 2:20
Know Ye the
Land? 3:15
Teaming up the
Cariboo Road 1:51
Klondike! 1:32
Logging Songs
Way Up the
Ucletaw 2:00
The Greenhorn
Song (Pollard) 3:01
The Oda G.
(Stanley G. Triggs) 2:48
Railway Songs
Drill Ye
Tarriers Drill! 1:52
The Kettle
Valley Line (Ean Hay) 2:31
The PGE Song
(Keith Crowe) 2:19
Banjo and
harmonies – Bob Webb
Piano – Murray
Shoolbraid
Concertina – Bob
Webb and Rika Ruebsaat
Viola – Keith
Malcolm
Guitar - Rika
Ruebsaat
Recorded in 1979
by Hal Beckett at Entmoot Studios. Remixed and “Know Ye the
Land?” recorded in 2003 by Jim Woodyard at Creation Studios.
Cover photo of
fishing boats in Bella Coola by Nola Johnston.
The second
edition of Phil Thomas’ Songs of the Pacific Northwest,
with additional songs, will be published in 2005.
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