Heck yeah; once it was baled up, cargo moved on the rivers and across the sea -- and guess who did the loading. There was a lot of musical crosstalk between the shanties of the American era and black work songs. Listen to Hog Eye Man or Shallow Brown and you can hear it completely -- those shanties would not exist without their African-American roots. Even the Margot Evans has some of the late-era mechanism references (let the Bullgine run); the donkey engine is prominent in several work songs and several shanties.
One of my favourite versions! It is a common myth that such great African-American blues legends as Leadbelly and Robert Johnson (plus others) only sang 'The Blues'. They also covered what we might call 'folk' songs. This was the music that was all around them and did earn them hard cash!
I cringed so much at this. This was horrible! His voice is too weak and pitchy. On top of that this is a complete insult to the original sea shanty he stole this from.
this is so DIFFERENT from the familiar modality of Leadbelly! I would not think that after fifty years of listening carefully to Leadbelly, he could surprise me with this thing so totally unlike his familiar NON SEA CHANTEY self! What a genius!
There no hard lines back then between blues, country, folk, sea chanties, spirituals. It was the marketing folks that drew those hard lines, and not that long ago. The seventies, mabey. And music has been the worse for it.
