Coot

The coots, ivory billed, squat, awkward and raucous, make a noise like twanging guitar strings (Segovia tuning his guitar), they jerk along... Ghostkeeper

Bollocky Bill

Bollocky Bill, aspiring writer, drawn magically from the groves of the Muses by Poseidon. Ultramarine

The mythical Bollocky Bill – reputed to have been most generously testicled – was commemorated in the bawdy ballad ‘Bollocky Bill the Sailor’, a traditional folk song originally titled ‘Abraham Brown’. ‘Bollocky’ is pronounced and occasionally spelt ‘bollicky’, and may also be a reference to being left-handed or clumsy.

There are several versions of the bawdy song in the Gordon ‘Inferno’ Collection in the US Library of Congress. The first printed version of the song is in the public domain book Immortalia (1927). Later versions feature the eponymous ‘Barnacle Bill’, a fictional character very loosely based on a nineteenth-century San Francisco sailor and Gold Rush miner, William Bernard. There are also known versions in England and Scotland from the early twentieth century.



It is impossible to determine when Lowry first heard the song. The earliest known recording is an expurgated adaptation by Carson Robison and Frank Luther in 1928:



This version was also recorded on May 21, 1930 by Bix Beiderbecke and Hoagy Carmichael with Carson Robison on vocals and released as a Victor 78, V-38139-A and 25371 with another Lowry jazz hero Joe Venuti on the session. This recording, made during the writing of Ultramarine, may have prompted Lowry to adapt the persona of the mythical seaman.

One version of ‘Barnacle Bill’ refers to an exchange between Bill and a ‘fair young maiden’. Each verse opens with inquiries by the maiden, sung by women, or by men in falsetto, and continues with Bill’s profane responses, sung by men:

‘Who’s that knocking at my door? Who’s that knocking at my door?
Who’s that knocking at my door?’ said the fair Young Maiden…
‘It’s me and my crew and we’ve come for a screw!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
‘It’s me and my crew and we’ve come for a screw!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

Alternative responses:
‘It’s only me from over the sea’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
‘It’s only me from over the sea’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

‘Open the door, you pox-ridden whore!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
‘Open the door, you pox-ridden whore!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

‘Open the door, you dirty whore!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
‘Open the door, you dirty whore!’ said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

This version of the song would suit the character of Dana at the point in Ultramarine at which he prepares to lose his virginity in the brothels of Dairen. Dana’s obsession, besides his guilt at the prospect of being unfaithful to his love Janet, is that he will catch syphilis from a prostitute. Another dimension to the introduction of the Bollocky Bill persona is that Lowry considered himself to be clumsy. Lowry endows Dana with the same clumsiness, which is constantly being reinforced by the crew of the ship.

Here is the Bix Beiderbecke version:

In a riverside tavern in Savannah

In a riverside tavern in Savannah. From the n.... section next door the juke box is playing Open the door Richard. We are in the 'Whites' drinking your health in claret (by the bottle & bought retail on the spot.) A note on the reverse of a photograph sent
Conrad Aiken 24 June 1947

The Lowrys visited Savannah in February 1947 while on a bus trip from Miami to New York.

"Open the Door, Richard" is a song first recorded on the Black & White Records label by saxophonistist Jack McVea at the suggestion of A&R man Ralph Bass. In 1947, it was the number-one song on Billboard's "Honor Roll of Hits" and became a runaway pop sensation.




"Open the Door, Richard" started out as a black vaudeville routine. Pigmeat Markham, one of several who performed the routine, attributed it to his mentor Bob Russell. The routine was made famous by Dusty Fletcher on stages like the Apollo Theater in New York and in a short film. Dressed in rags, drunk, and with a ladder as his only prop, Fletcher would repeatedly plunk the ladder down stage center, try to climb it to knock on an imaginary door, then crash sprawling on the floor after a few steps while shouting, half-singing "Open the Door, Richard". After this he would mutter a comic monologue, then try the ladder again and repeat the process, while the audience was imagining what Richard was so occupied doing.

Jack McVea was responsible for the musical riff which became associated with the words "Open the Door, Richard" that became familiar to radio listeners and as many as 14 different recordings were made. Read more on Wikipedia

The appeal of the song for Malc goes without saying! Though it is impossible to ascertain which version Malc heard. It could be anyone of these from 1946/47:

The recording by Count Basie was released by RCA Victor Records as catalog number 20-2127. It first reached the Billboard magazine Best Seller chart on February 7, 1947 and lasted four weeks on the chart, peaking at number one.

The recording by Dusty Fletcher was released by National Records as catalog number 4012. It first reached the Billboard Best Seller chart on January 31, 1947, and lasted five weeks on the chart, peaking at number three.

The recording by The Three Flames was released by Columbia Records as catalog number 37268. It first reached the Billboard Best Seller chart on February 14, 1947, and lasted three weeks on the chart, peaking at number four.

The recording by Louis Jordan was released by Decca Records as catalog number 23841. It first reached the Billboard Best Seller chart on March 7, 1947, and lasted two weeks on the chart, peaking at number seven.

The recording by Jack McVea, recorded in October 1946, was released by Black & White Records as catalog number 792. It first reached the Billboard Best Seller chart on February 14, 1947, and lasted two weeks on the chart, peaking at number seven.[6] As stated above, this was the original recording. Wikipedia

Here are the different versions:

The Original Memphis Five Lovey Lee

Lovey Lee was the nickname of Cosnahan's wife in Lowry's short story 'Elephant and Colosseum'; "and old recording.... that she and Cosnahan used to play when they were first in love."



Phil Napoleon, t / Miff Mole ?, tb / George Bohn, cl, as / Frank Signorelli or Lennie Hayton, p / Ray Bauduc, d / New York, August 16, 1927. Read more about Memphis Five.

Shine and The Titanic

"I was standin' in the window one day," he announced, "when de captain and de mate had a few words, when dat great Titanic struck, sah," he slapped down the ace, "dat cold iceberg. Say back up, Shine, and take another blow, Lunar Caustic

I have to say that Battle’s song about the Titanic is a bonafide piece of American folk lore that is my own discovery taken down right in the mouth of the inferno so we don't have to be beholden to a music company or any anthology of folk songs for it. Though it may exist in another form, if so I’d be interested to find out how it differs. Letter to Robert Giroux 17 January 1952

Lowry's novella Lunar Caustic was based on his time in Bellevue Hospital, New York, at 1st Avenue and 27th Street in Manhattan. At the instigation of his friend, Eric Estorick, Lowry was admitted as a voluntary patient in May or June of 1936 for psychiatric observation (rather than treatment), consequent on delirium tremens; he was there for perhaps ten days.

What Lowry has stumbled upon in hearing Battle's song about the Titanic in Bellvue was a long oral tradition in Black American around the sinking of the Titanic.

The best resource on Shine and the Titanic that I have found is Marilyn Nance's webite

A useful starting point to understand this oral tradition can be found in The Toast of the Titanic Oral Tradition Carries On Legend of Lone African American By Dana Hull, Washington Post, December 20, 1997

Titanic hoopla is upon us: the documentary, the musical, now the movie. Yet buried deep in the mythology of the doomed voyage is the story of Shine, a fictional character who lives on through the folk traditions of the African American community. Legend has it that the only black man on board the Titanic was a laborer called Shine -- "shine" being a derogatory term for blacks. Because he worked below deck, Shine was the first to realize that the Titanic was sinking, and thus was able to escape while more than 1,500 passengers perished in the April 14, 1912, disaster. Most stories about Shine take place in the form of "toasts," an improvisational oral narrative popular in black communities from the 1920s to the early 1960s. A form of street poetry, toasts were usually performed in the male provinces of pool halls and street corners, and were passed on from friend to friend. Often as profane as they were misogynistic, the raplike verses reveal a different perspective of the event that currently is being celebrated in the Hollywood blockbuster starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The Shine toast revels in sharing a smug satisfaction that the Titanic -- a symbol of white European arrogance and affluence -- sank on its maiden voyage. The irony that African Americans were not allowed to make the crossing -- thus sparing their lives -- inspired a wealth of jokes, toasts and ballads. Numerous verses of the various Shine toasts, particularly those that refer to the female anatomy, are not suitable for a family newspaper. But the rhyming verses, which could last for up to 10 minutes, go something like this: Up stepped a black man from the deck below that they called Shine. Hollerin, "Captain! Captain! Don't you know? There's forty feet of water on the boiler room flo'." The captain said, "Go back, you dirty black! We got a thousand pumps to keep this water back." Because Shine exists solely in the oral tradition, verses would vary from teller to teller.

Roger Abrahams, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was one of the few folklorists to record them. "Most versions of the Titanic fit into the same general pattern," he wrote in his 1963 book "Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore From the Streets of Philadelphia." There's a "prologue about the terrible day on which the ship sank; the introduction of Shine, the mythical Negro stoker on board the ship; a description of his argument with the captain about whether the ship was sinking; his jumping into the water and his amazing swimming ability described; the captain's offer of money to save him, which he refuses; the offer of the captain's wife and/or daughter of sexual relations with him, which he likewise refuses; a conversation with the shark and/or whale where he claims to be able to out-swim them (which he apparently does); and a final ironic twist in which it is mentioned that Shine swam so fast that by the time news of the sea tragedy arrived, Shine was already inebriated in some specific location." When the news got around the world that the great Titanic had sunk, Shine was in Harlem on 125th street, damn near drunk. Or: When all them white folks went to Heaven, Shine was in Sugar Ray's Bar drinking Seagram's Seven. "Shine is the clever black," says Bruce Jackson, a professor of American culture at SUNY-Buffalo who traveled around the country recording toasts in the 1960s and '70s. "He's the only one on board smart enough to save his life, and he's the only one strong enough to physically swim to shore."



Other toasts include stories about a barroom brawl involving Stagger Lee, or tales of the Signifying Monkey, an animal fable in which a clever monkey outwits a lion. "There are a number of toasts," Jackson says of his field recordings. "But I heard the most toasts about the Titanic. It made an enormous impact on the popular imagination of the time. People knew in the black community that it was an all-white ship -- it was part of the White Star Line. When it went down, that was not lost on the community." But the sinking of the Titanic was not solely the province of toasts. Numerous musicians, from guitarist Blind Willie Johnson to the New Lost City Ramblers, recorded songs that told the Titanic tale. Some versions, recorded as "God Moves on the Water," were widely circulated in the 1920s and focused on the spiritual aspects of the accident.

The Titanic was a symbol of technological prowess, and some people saw the disaster as divine intervention. It's possible to spend hours listening to Titanic tunes in the majestically dusty archives of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies. Ask archivist Jeff Place for Titanic songs, and he'll pull out album after album: Pink Anderson's Carolina Medicine Show Hokum & Blues, Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, Mance Lipscomb. Others recall singing a song about "When That Great Ship Went Down" at summer camp. The famed blues guitarist Leadbelly also recorded a Titanic song. His lyrics included the common folklore that Jack Johnson, the black man who was world heavyweight boxing champion at the time, was denied passage on the boat. Jack Johnson wanted to get on board Captain, he said, "I ain't hauling no coal" Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well. "There are a lot of songs about the Titanic, in part because the story itself is so dramatic," says Anthony Seeger, curator of the Folkways Recordings archives. "Versions of songs about the Titanic have been done with rock, gospel and blues. The clarity in which class distinctions were made on the voyage really resonated in folk culture, and by singing about it Americans were able to comment on their feelings." As Leadbelly sang it: When he heard that mighty shock, Mighta seen that man doin' the Eagle Rock Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well.

There are many variations on the lyrics. Bruce Jackson in Get Your Ass in the Water [pp.189-90] details one version:

The eighth a May was a hell of a day.
I don't know, but my folks say.
The news reached the little seaport town
that the old Titanic was finally goin' down.
Say now there was a fella on board they called Shine,
he was jet black and he change anybody's mind.
Shine came up from the bottom deck below,
said, "Captain, water's runnin' all in the firebox doors,
and I believe to my soul
this big motherfucker's fixin' to overflow."
Captain says, "Shine," says, "you go back down,
I got forty horsepower to keep the water pumped down."
Shine went down and came up with a teacup in his hand,
he said, "Look here, captain, say, I'm a scared man.
I'd rather be out on that iceberg goin' around and 'round
than to be on this big motherfucker when it's goin' down."
Shine jumped overboard and he began to swim,
with ninety-nine millionaires lookin' at him.
Shine swimmed on down by the Elbow Bend,
there he met the devil and all a his friends.
Big man from Wall Street came on the second deck.
In his hand he held a book of checks.
He said, "Shine, Shine, if you save poor me,"
say, "I'll make you as rich as any black man can be."
Shine said, "You don't like my color and you down on my race,
get your ass overboard and give these sharks a chase."
Say, the captain's daughter came out on the second deck
with her drawers in her hand and brassiere around her neck.
She said, "Shine, Shine, if you save poor me,"
say, "I'll give you all this ass your eyes can see."
Shine said, "There's fish in the ocean, there's whales in the sea,
get your ass overboard and swim like me."
Now Shine was swimmin' and screamin' and yellin',
his ass was kickin' water like a motor boat propeller.
Shine was doin' ninety, he begin to choke,
fell on his back and he begin to float.
Big motherfucker from Wall Street told the sharks,
"I'm a big motherfucker from Wall Street, you got to let me be."
Sharks say, "Here in this water, your ass belongs to me."
Shark told Shine, say, "A bit of your ass be a wonderful taste."
Shine say, "Man, it sure be a motherfucken race."
Now when the news finally got around
that the old Titanic had finally gone down,
there was Shine on Main Street damn near drunk
telling everybody how the Titanic sunk.
A bitch said, "Shine," say, "daddy," say, "why didn't you drown?"
He said, "I had a cork in my ass, baby, and I couldn't go down."

Read another version on Louisiana Voices

Read other insights here:

Arbeitspapiere / Working Papers Nr. 81 by Matthias Krings: Black Titanic. African-American and African appropriations of the White Star liner

The African American Toast Tradition

Bruce Jackson: African-American 'Toast' Poems

But what might Battle's toast have sounded like? Here is a version by Dolemite aka Rudy Rae Moore which may have been near to what Lowry heard in Bellevue:



One irony that I discovered is that a black person did perish on the Titanic -
Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche. But where there any black crew members?

One of the best collections into how the fate of the liner was documented by musicians can be found below:

http://oldweirdamerica.wordpress.com

You can listen to nearly 60 tracks on the above site.

Sievx - Malcolm

A mystery band to me who have an instrumental on Youtube called Malcolm:

SOIS PATIENT CAR LE LOUP - Catherine Delaunay, John Greaves

Here is a short piece SOIS PATIENT CAR LE LOUP - Catherine Delaunay, John Greaves after Malc's poem 'Pacific is a feeble symbol of death':



See other poems on Youtube:

No Time To Stop And Think

I have just come across one of Malc's poems put to music by the Consumirantes:

Música: Juan José Rueda
Voz: Eva Paéz
Bajo: Miguel Ángel del Arco
Piano: Juan José Rueda

NO TIME TO STOP AND THINK

The only hope is the next drink.
If you like, you take a walk.
No time to stop and think,
The only hope is the next drink.
Useless trembling on the brink,
Worse than useless all this talk.
The only hope is the next drink.
If you like, you take a walk.

"Carry Me Back to Old Virginny"

Nicole and Barban dance to a jazz version of "Carry me back to Old Virginny" while Dick goes on drinking. The Cinema of Malcolm Lowry: 'Tender Is the Night' Ed. Miguel Mota & Paul Tiessen

"Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" is a song which was written by James A. Bland (1854 – 1911), an African American minstrel who wrote over 700 folk songs. Written in 1878, soon after the American Civil War, when many of the newly freed slaves were struggling to find work, the song has become controversial in modern times. Read more on Wikipedia



Carry me back to old Virginny,
There's where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,
There's where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There's where the old darke'ys heart am long'd to go,
There's where I labored so hard for old massa,
Day after day in the field of yellow corn,
No place on earth do I love more sincerely
Than old Virginny, the state where I was born.

CHORUS

Carry me back to old Virginny,
There's where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,
There's where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There's where this old darkey's heart am long'd to go.

Carry me back to old Virginny,
There let me live 'till I wither and decay,
Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wandered,
There's where this old darke'ys life will pass away.
Massa and missis have long gone before me,
Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore,
There we'll be happy and free from all sorrow,
There's where we'll meet and we'll never part no more.

Read more about the song here

Here is a jazz version of the song from Benny Carter:

Just A Dirty Old Tramp

I was recently up in the English Lake District, when I came across the above sheet music in a book sale in the John Ruskin Museum in Coniston.



I was taken by the picture of the "tramp steamer" above being similar to the Pyrrhus which Lowry sailed on to the Far East in 1927. Lowry always referred to the Pyrrhus as a tramp steamer when actual fact she was a fairly new well kept vessel owned by a responsible shipping company who prided itself on their crews and ships - the Blue Funnel Line.

I have tried to track down the song but to no avail. Instead here are the lyrics:

Down by the river I wandered one day,
Watching the steamers go by,
I saw an old sailor and I heard him say,
With a twinkle in his eye,

Chorus
Just a dirty old tramp,
Sailing o'er the blue,
Bringing home the bacon,
For me and for you,
Just a dirty old tramp,
Sailing o'er the foam.

Watch her rock and roll in',
As she's head in' for home,
Plowing the mighty ocean,
Brave skipper and your crew,
You've won our deep devotion,
And our hearts go out to you.

Just a dirty old tramp,
Making for the shore,
Up the Thames she's sailing,
With her cargo once more.

Just a dirty old more.

The words sort of fit Lowry's voyage - he did return to London instead of Birkenhead where the voyage originated.

The song was written by Box, Cox, Noel and Pelosi and published in 1940 by Lasalle Ltd, 47 Compton Street, London.

Harry Weldon

My missus’s tightly bound, she’s all tightly bound Ultramarine

The early letters of Lowry have several references to music hall stars such as Stanley Lupino and Milton Hayes. We can only presume from the detail of the letters that Lowry was aware of these stars because he had seen them either on trips to local theatres or when he was on holiday on the Isle of Man or Devon. Lowry mentions several local theatres with music hall traditions in his works including the Argyle and Hippodrome Theatres in Birkenhead and the Olympia in Liverpool.



The above song is an unidentified one performed by Harry Weldon at the Derby Castle theatre in Douglas on the Isle of Man. This reference probably relates to a Lowry family holiday made in 1923 to the island.



Harry Weldon was a big star in music hall and variety, and first appeared in London in 1900, coining the catchphrase “S’No Use!” and creating a popular song from it. Harry Weldon initially came to fame as part of Fred Karno's Company when he played opposite Charlie Chaplin in the sketch "The Football Match". Harry Weldon then used the character of Stiffy, the Goal Keeper, as the mainstay of his solo act. Other characters developed including his boxing skit "The White Hope”. Apparently he cut a very strange figure with his centre-parted wig, eccentric clothes, eyes that always seemed to be shut and a voice of whistling sibilance. He had a unique style, and frequently used the conductor of the orchestra as an extra part in his performance. Harry Weldon's conversational style and his use of the absurd may have appealed to the young Lowry. He worked until he died in 1930 aged forty-nine.

Here is one of his performances:



You can hear some of his recording on a CD called The White Hope



You can hear one of Weldon's songs ''The Policeman' on a podcast here

You can see Harry's daughter Maisie performing impressions of her father below:

MAISIE WELDON (on sleeve as WELDOM) (issue title RIGHT TURN)

My Sweet Hortense

A gramophone was going somewhere, playing My Sweet Hortense. The street was mainly unlighted, but there were dim lamps in some of the windows. Girls called to us as we passed by. Ultramarine

Lowry refers to the popular song My Sweet Hortense in Ultramarine as Dana trawls his way through the red light district of Dairen.

The other day I met a jay his name was Hezekiah
I had to grin to hear him chin about his hearts desire
I said I bet your little pet is just a real vampire
He answered hey there pal she ain't that kinda gal.

Oh! oh! oh! my sweet Hortense She ain't good lookin' but she's got good sense
Before I kiss Hortense I always buy a nickles worth of peppermints
Rain makes flowers pretty I hear I hope it pours on her for a year
That would be immense Yer never met a gal like sweet Hortense
Oh! oh! oh! my sweet Hortense She ain't good lookin' but she's got good sense
Before I kiss Hortense I always buy a nickles worth of peppermints

And by the way I'd like to say he took 'er to the preacher
The preacher said come right ahead Im mighty glad to meet yer
He whispered Hez the good book says that you're a lucky creature
And when he kissed the bride we're even Hezie cried.

Oh! oh! oh! my sweet Hortense She ain't good lookin' but she's got good sense
Before I kiss Hortense I always buy a nickles worth of peppermints
She's got dandy teeth in her mouth one points north and the other points south
Say they're both immense Yer never met a gal like sweet Hortense
Oh! oh! oh! my sweet Hortense She ain't good lookin' but she's got good sense
Before I kiss Hortense I always buy a nickles worth of peppermints

The lyrics were written by Joe Young & Sam Lewis with music by Walter Donaldson

Victor Vorzanger's Famous Broadway Band, Stanley C. Holt's Quintette, Jack Hylton, Fred Douglas, The Vocalion Dance Orchestra, Fred Whitehouse amongst countless others recorded the song. Therefore it is impossible to determine what version Lowry was referring to in Ultramarine.

I haven't been able to find any recordings to date of the song so I have decided to post a song by Victor Vorzanger's Famous Broadway Band to perhaps give an idea of what it may have sounded like:



I couldn't resist thinking what Fred Douglas may have made of the song which may have appealed to Malc:

Dead Man Blues

"Yes, I like you too. Can you read the name of this tune on the score?" "Dead Man Blues." "Well, we're nice and close now. Dead Man Blues, a highflying hit. Good God! I had that tune on the gramophone in my digs at Cambridge- on Parlophone”

The band started in again on the Dead Man Blues. The Scandinavian sailors and their women started to sing something. ... I've got those Dead Man Blues, yes sir!" I crooned, looking down at Olga and drowning in her eyes. Ultramarine






Lowry’s use of the song Dead Man Blues is multi-fold; the song is a funeral march and a paen to being drunk to instil sinister overtones to Dana's encounter with the White Russian prostitute Olga in the brothels of Dairen drawing upon the associations with death and drunkenness. Dana is certainly drunk but he may be facing death from syphilis if he has sex with Olga. The song is both a warning and portent to the future.

Lowry would have probably been familiar with the either the 1926 recording of the song featuring the vocals of Edmonia Henderson with Jelly Roll Morton on piano or the more famous version above. What is intriguing is his reference to the Parlophone version he mentions in Ultramarine. We know that he collected jazz records during his time at Cambridge University but we do not have any details of his collection. Beginning in about 1929 or 1930, the U.K. Parlophone imprint started a series of American jazz records on their "Rhythm Style Series". Culled from the American Okeh label, featuring artists such as Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Frankie Trumbauer and Duke Ellington and other major artists who recorded for Okeh. These records were usually "split-coupled" (the top and bottom side of each record was usually by different artists and did not correspond with the original American coupling). The "Second New Rhythm-Style" series replaced the first series in about 1931, and there was a separate series for each year from 1934 through 1941, as well as some miscellany series.



The Victor recording features: Jelly Roll Morton, piano; George Mitchell, cornet; Kid Ory, trombone; Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, and Darnell Howard, clarinet; Johnny St. Cyr, banjo; John Lindsay, bass; Andrew Hilaire, drums. Morton and St. Cyr act out a vaudeville scene, with distinct minstrel undertones, to prepare us for a New Orleans funeral.

Morton: What's that I hear at twelve o'clock in the day-time? Church bells ringing?
St. Cyr: Oh, man, you don't hear no church bells ringing twelve o'clock in the day.
Morton: Don't tell me--somebody must be dead!
St. Cyr: Ain't nobody dead. Somebody must be dead drunk.
Morton: Don't tell me, I think there's a fyoo-neral!
St. Cyr: Well, looky here! I believe I do hear a funeral! I believe I hear that tram-bone blowin'!

A trombone glissando introduces a sombre march, played by the band in block-chord texture. In a slow tempo, they play the opening strain of the traditional hymn "Flee as a Bird to the Mountain," representing the procession to the cemetery.



Lowry's choice of a song is ironic in that Jelly Roll Morton began his career in the brothels of New Orleans. Lowry was probably unaware of that fact though he may have known that jazz was associated with brothels in the same way as he has the jazz band playing in Ultramarine. The band may have been White Russian like Olga. You can read an interesting account of White Russian jazz on Strange Cities blog. Later, Jelly Roll Morton recorded an archive of the music he played in the brothels as well as telling stories to archivist Alan Lomax which have been preserved in the Library of Congress. You can read more about the archive on Wasted Space.

When I first read Ultramarine, I was unaware that Lowry had actually based the novel in Dairen in Manchuria. This discovery has meant that it is now possible to understand the background of the novel.

I recently came across this entry on PB Works which appears to have been written sometime in the 1930s:

With over 20,000 of them in the city, the White Russians form the second largest foreign community in Shanghai, after the Japanese. Originally from Russia, they belong to the upper and middle classes, dispersed and often deprived by events after the Great War. Survivors of the trenches returned to the Revolution and the subsequent civil war. They had to make a choice between Communism and loyalty to the Tsar. Those who stood with the Tsar were known as White (as opposed to Red) Russians, and were forced to flee the country after the Bolshevik victory. The nobility who spoke a foreign language and, crucially, had a foreign bank account, went to Europe. Those not so fortunate trekked across Siberia to the eastern port of Vladivostok, on the Sea of Japan.

The difficulties encountered by the men means that many of the women find themselves forced to earn money to support themselves and their families. The better-off White Russian women bring a touch of style and glamour to the city, running dress salons and beauty parlours. Madame Garnet runs the most expensive dress shop in town, on the ground floor of the Cathay Hotel. For the poorer women, with shop and office work unavailable due to Eurasian and Chinese competition, pretty much the only option left is to take up ‘taxi dancing’ – the quintessential image of White Russian women in Shanghai. Every evening they sit around in the city’s dance halls waiting for a man to buy a book of dance tickets and spend one on them. Some use their jobs to become prostitutes or acquire foreign husbands, while others merely return home in the morning to care for elderly loved ones. The Russian dance hostesses are beautiful, haughty, unstable, desperate and fascinating to many, greedy and deceitful in the eyes of others. The best Russian hostesses work at the Del Monte, a grand place with a large garden, a wide veranda and rooms upstairs. Others work in somewhat seedier inns around town. The bars do not pay the girls a wage but expect them to pick up customers, agree a price and then go elsewhere. On some evenings the management announce a floor show, which frankly are probably only marginally more enjoyed by the patrons than the embarrassed girls. Read full article on PB Works

I finish the post with Edmonia Henderson's version of the song which I find haunting and perhaps more in keeping with what Lowry was describing in Ultramarine:

Blow The Man Down

Recently, I have been doing considerable research on musical references in Lowry's work, in order to play some of the songs he mentions his work at a night called Lowry's Lounge on October 29th 2010.

One song that I will be playing is the above version of the sea shanty "Blow The Man Down" which Lowry refers to in his novel Ultramarine.

The above version was originally on a 1957 EP called 'The Singing Sailor', a collection of sea shanties by A L Lloyd. It is the only one by Harry H. Corbett on there. Most of the other tracks are available now though on a 2004 CDcalled 'Sailors Songs and Sea Shanties'. This particular track is also available on a CD called 'Blow The Man Down' released in 1993.

Thanks to Bryan Biggs for turning me onto this version.

The Whiffenpoof Song

Malcolm Lowry refers twice to the above song in his film script for the Scott Fitzgerald novel Tender Is the Night.

The first time is when Dick Divers the hero of Tender Is the Night returns to his hotel bedroom:

Exhausted, he lies down on the bed, burying his face in his hands. Instantly dissolves into a terrible nightmare that lasts about five seconds, during which we hear a snatch of the whiffenpoof song.... The Cinema of Malcolm Lowry "Tender Is the Night" Edited by Miguel Mota and Paul Tiessen.

Later, the song reoccurs on the sound track to the proposed film during Dick's drunken binge in Rome.

The Whiffenpoofs were a Yale University singing group, founded in 1909 and named after the imaginary beast. Dick Divers would have known the song as he was an alumini of Yale.

According to Whiffenpoof historian James M. Howard:

"It was Goat Fowler who suggested we call ourselves The Whiffenpoofs. He had been tickled by the patter of one of the characters in a Victor Herbert musical comedy called "Little Nemo" which recently been running on Broadway. In a scene in which there was great boasting of terrific exploits in big game hunting and fishing, comedian Joseph Cawthorne told a fantastic tale of how he had caught a Whiffenpoof fish. It seems that Cawthorn had coined the word some years before when he and a fellow actor were amusing themselves by making up nonsense verses. One they particularly liked began: "A drivaling grilyal yandled its flail, One day by a Whiffenpoof's grave." Cawthorn recalled the verse in making up his patter for "Little Nemo" and put it into his act.

Whether the word meant fish, flesh or fowl was irrelevant to our purpose when we chose it as our name. "Whiffenpoof" fitted in with our mood of free and exuberant fancy and it was adopted with enthusiasm." Read more on Wikipedia

The group admired a musical setting of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "Gentlemen-Rankers," that was performed by another Yale singing group, and adapted its lyrics to create The Whiffenpoof Song.

You can read a full history of the group on the Whiffenpoof Alumini pages.

This is one of the many songs that I will be featuring at the The Lowry Lounge on 29th October 2010.

The Whiffenpoofs are still active and have a Facebook page.



The song later became a hit for Rudy Valle in 1927:

The Only, Only One For Me

Lowry mentions the above song in a letter to Carol Brown in June 1926. There is a suggestion that the version he is referring to was recorded by the Savoy Orpheans. I have been unable to find such a recording. It is possible that the song, which was a hit in its day, was only played on the Savoy Orpheans radio show.

I believe the original song to have been recorded by Gene Austin in 1924.The lyrics were written by Bud Green - Music by James V. Monaco & Harry Warren with a ukulele arrangment by Dick Konter.Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a copy of the song by Gene Austin to post. However, I did find a copy by Cliff Edwards from 1924:



I did discover that Josephine Baker also recorded The Only, Only One For Me which I am waiting to hear and I will post the song as soon as it arrives. In the meantime, while searching for the song, I came across these an exceptional pieces of video of Josephine Baker which was new to me called The Plantation - Les Revue Des Revues from 1927.

Gabrielle, an ambitious but innocent would-be young chorine, trumps a music hall publicity stunt to become the new Parisian nightclub Cinderella. But this lighter-than-champagne-bubbles story is only a pretext for La Revue des Revues white-hot, non-stop precession of outrageously and scantily attired exotic dancers, showgirls and acrobats. But its Josephine Baker, "the high priestess of primitivism" (J. Hoberman - Village Voice), who triumphs in two show stopping numbers in which "her clownish backfield-in-motion Charleston shimmy is unlike anything else in the movie and perhaps unlike anything anyone ever did.

Ukulele Madness

I don't know what Malc would have made off all these videos featuring his favourite instrument.

The above video features the Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain with their take on Isaac Hayes's Shaft played live at Cambridge Folk Festival in 2007.



Cliff Edwards who I featured earlier this year on the blog, was a guest on Arthur Godfrey's radio show in 1943. Godfrey is credited with inventing the baritone ukulele. Edwards was in his forties at the time of this recording. More Cliff Edwards below with the Irving Berlin song Remember with some great ukulele related photos from the 1920's:



Above George Formby in the film Trouble Brewing singing Fanlight Fanny





Above we have Eddie Thomas & Carl Scott My Ohio Home and Tomorrow from November 21, 1928. I came across the above on Ukulelia which is a good jumping off point for all things ukulele.

But just to show the madness of it all let's finish on this last piece of You Tube video:

Stefan Grossman and John Renbourn Under The Volcano

Under the Volcano is the name of a Kicking Mule guitar album recorded by Stefan Grossman and John Renbourn in 1979. It was re-released on CD in 1998.

Rock & Hyde Under The Volcano

Under the Volcano is the 1987 Capitol/EMI album that Bob Rock and Paul Hyde of the Payola$ released under the alternative band name Rock and Hyde.