Joanna Colcord – Roll And Go – Songs of American Sailormen
The book by Joanna Colcord – Roll And Go – Songs of American Sailormen is a cornerstone of the American heritage of the sea shanties. The author herself was born at sea. Her father Lincoln Colcord was a captain of a merchant fleet ship for over two decades. Joanna Colcord describes a huge amount of shanties not only from the musical point of view but also from the side of the work for which the shanties were used.
Colcord’s book is, next to William Doerflinger’s “Shantymen and Shantyboys” and the works of Frederick Pease Harlow, the most important authentic source of shanties and information on shanties.
An interesting fact for Polish fans of shanties is that Joanna Colcord’s book was one of the main source texts of the works, of one of the two most popular shanty bands in Poland: “Cztery Refy”. According to the story of Simon Spalding, in the 1980s, at the request of Jerzy Rogacki, Simon Spalding, using a photocopier (Xero), copied the work of Joanna C Colcord at the Mystic Seaport Museum, one for Jerzy Rogacki and the other for himself. Jerzy Rogacki received a parcel from “America”, containing a valuable photocopy of this wonderful book.
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Related to the Roll And Go – Songs of American Sailormen
The Atlantic Monthly – July (1858)