Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents s sound file of a version of the chanty (shanty) "Johnny Come Down To Hilo".
This post also presents a long excerpt from bluegrassmessengers.com on the chanty "Johnny Come Down To Hilo."
The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, folkloric, and educational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to the unknown composers of chanties (shanties) and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and all those who are associated with the video that is embedded in this post.
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This post is part of an ongoing pancocojams series on African Americans and West Indians chanties (shanties). Click the tags given below for previous posts and subsequent posts on this subject.
PAGE EXCERPT
From http://bluegrassmessengers.com/johnny-come-down-to-hilo--version-17-shallow-brown-2.aspx
"Shallow Brown 2- Version 17
Shallow Brown 2/Johnny Come Down to Hilo
Old-Time Breakdown and sea shanty; Widely known
ARTIST: From Mudcat- recorded by The Boarding Party;
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes DATE: From mid- 1800’s,
RELATED TO: "Uncle Ned" (floating lyrics); “Hog-eye” (lyrics) "Shallo Brown," “John Come Down de Holler;” “Can’t Ye Hilo;” “Hilo Boys, Hilo;” “Hilo Johnny Brown;” “Hullabaloo Belay.”
RECORDING INFO
[…]
OTHER NAMES: “Johnny Walk Along to Hilo;” “Johnny's Gone to Hilo;” "Tommy's Gone to Hilo;" "Tom's Gone to Hilo;" "Johnny's Gone to Hilo"
SOURCES: Doerflinger, p. 72, "Johnny Walk Along to Hilo" (1 text, 1 tune) Lomax-ABFS, pp. 483-485, "Johnny Come Down to Hilo" (1 text, 1 tune) Chase, p. 157, "Johnny's Gone to Hilo" (1 text, 1 tune); American Ballads and Folk Songs, MacMillan, Bk (1934), p.483; Shanty's from the Seven Seas by Stan Hugill;
NOTES: The "Johnny Come Down to Hilo" songs related in name, text and/or tune are a mix of minstrel lyrics and sea shanty lyrics much like the “Hog-Eye Man.” "Johnny Come Down to Hilo" is related to the “Shallow Brown” versions including, “Hullabaloo Belay.” The earliest minstrel versions appear to come from the mid 1800’s African-American song- “Johnny Come Down de Hollow.” The earliest publications from the 1800’s include a broadside “Johnny Come Down to Hilo” and “John Come Down de Holler” by Dan Emmett.
"Johnny come down de hollow" is quoted in William Cullen Bryant, CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA--FROM THE LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER (BARNWELL DISTRICT, South Carolina, March 29, 1843) In Roger D. Abrahams, Singing the Master: The Emergence of African-American Culture in the Plantation South (1992; Penguin, 1993), this song is in quotations from Bryant's Letter and William Wells Brown, M.D., My Southern Home, or the South and Its People (Boston, A.G. Brown and Co.. 1880) [pp. 224 and 249 respectively].
From Hans Nathan, Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (U of Oklahoma Pr, 1962, 1977, pp. 241-242): Though the versification reveals Emmett's hand, numerous lines and images were nevertheless lifted, according to professional custom, from earlier minstrel songs. Appearing alongside passages from English folk texts and such urban colloquialism as "o.k." are many bits from the workaday reality of the slave, as well as such expressions as "going home," "traveling a rocky road," and "joining the union," which, though stripped of their religious meaning, derive from Negro spirituals. The following song, which was sung in the early forties by colored plantation hands in South Carolina as they shucked corn, is a good example:
Johnny come down de hollow. Oh, hollow!
Johnny come down de hollow. Oh, hollow!
De trader-man got me. Oh, hollow!
De speculator bought me. Oh, hollow!
I'm sold for silver dollars. Oh, hollow!
Boys, go catch de pony. Oh, hollow!
Bring him round de corner. Oh, hollow!
I'm goin' away to Georgia. Oh, hollow!
Boys, good-bye forever. Oh, hollow!*
Emmett remembered almost all of these lines when he composed his walk-arounds. The opening he borrowed literally for his "John Come down de Hollow," and the rest he paralleled, in practically the same sequence, in his "Road to Georgia" and its alternate text version "Road to Richmond" as follows: "De trader-man tink me nice" ("De speculator tink me nice"), "De white folks sell me for half price" (later: "We'll fotch a thousand dollars down"), and "Under way, under way Ho! we are on de way to Georgia." [*Quoted in Norris Yates, "Four Plantation Songs Noted by William Cullen Bryant," Southern Folklore Quarterly (December, 1951)]
Quoted from Francis Fedric, Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky; or, Fifty Years of Slavery in the Southern States of America (1863): [Page 47] In the autumn, about the 1st of November, the slaves commence gathering the Indian-corn, pulling it off the stalk, and throwing it into heaps. Then it is carted home, and thrown into heaps sixty or seventy yards long, seven or eight feet high, and about six or seven feet wide. Some of the masters make their slaves shuck the corn. All the slaves stand on one side of the heap, and throw the ears over, which [Page 48] are then cribbed. This is the time when the whole country far and wide resounds with the corn-songs. When they commence shucking the corn, the master will say, "Ain't you going to sing any to-night?" The slaves say, "Yers, Sir." One slave will begin:--
"Fare you well, Miss Lucy.
ALL. John come down de hollow."
[…]
THE NAME- HILO: Here's what Stan Hugill has to say about it from Shanty's from the Seven Seas: "...we will now run through those worksongs woven aroung the word 'Hilo'. Hilo is a port in the Hawaiian group, and, although occasionally shellbacks may have been referring to this locality, usually it was a port in South America of which they were singing--the Peruvian nitrate port of Ilo. But in some of these Hilo shanties it was not a port, either in Hawaii or Peru, to which they were referring. Sometimes the word was a substitute for a 'do', a 'jamboree', or even a 'dance'. And in some cases the word was used as a verb--to 'hilo' somebody or something. In this sense its origin and derivation is a mystery. Furthermore, since shanties were not composed in the normal manner, by putting them down, it is on paper quite possible many of these 'hilos' are nothing more than 'high-low', as Miss Colcord has it in her version of We'll Ranzo Ray. Take your pick!"
Stan includes several Shallow Brown shanties as a "detour" in this chapter, indicating there is a definite relation. He also has this to say about the song in question, Johnny Come Down to Hilo, which accords with what has been said previously [politically incorrect phraseology not edited]:
"Now we come to the last of our Hilo series, one well known nowadays, thanks to Terry's making it popular in schools, and so on. This is Johnny, Come Down to Hilo... The tune is Irish in origin and the wording is a mixture of Negro catch-phrases, of lines from African-American minstrel ditties, and odd bits from other shanties, e.g. Poor Old Man and The Gal With the Blue Dress... The normal use of Johnny, Come Down to Hilo was at the capstan when a steady march round was needed."
According to Hugill, Shallow and Shiloh are far more likely to be corruptions of Challow, which was a description of negros, and refers to the colour of skin. Challow = Sallow= salloh, salow, salo, etc. Used as a description of light yellow or dirty-grayish. "A man may be high colored or sallowe colored and yet not blacke;" usage goes back to the 16th century. It’s also possible that Hilo is just an expression with no real meaning: Hollow= Hilo= Shallow= Shiloh.
Tommy's gone, what shall I do?
Away, you Hilo
Oh, Tommy's gone and I'll go too
Tom's gone to Hilo
HILO! HILO!
William Rino sold Henry Silvers--
Hilo! Hilo!
Sold him to de Georgy trader--
Hilo! Hilo!
His wife se cried, and children bawled--
Hilo! Hilo!
Sold him to de Georgy trader--
Hilo! Hilo!
--J.D. Long, Pictures of Salvery, Philadelphia, 1857, p. 198.
SOLD OFF TO GEORGY
Farewell, fellow servants! O-ho! O-ho!
I'm gwine away to leabe you; O-ho! O-ho!
I'm gwine to leabe de ole county; O-ho! O-ho!
I'm sold off to Georgy! O-ho! O-ho!
Farewell, old plantation, O-ho! O-ho!
Farewell, de old quarter, O-ho! O-ho!
Un daddy, un mammy; O-ho! O-ho!
Un marster, un missus! O-ho! O-ho!
My dear wife un one chile, O-ho! O-ho!
My poor heart is breaking; O-ho! O-ho!
No more shall I see you, O-ho! O-ho!
Oh! No more foreber! O-ho! O-ho!
The response on the part of the rowers, O-ho!, easily changes to "Weel-ho!," "Yoe! Yoee!," "Shilo," "Hollow!," "Hilo!" noted in other songs. This song appears in many guises in various references. "Sold off to Georgy" (or other far south plantation region) seems to have been a constant fear of slaves working in the more liberal coastal Carolinas. Aye! Ayee!, is another of the chorused responses in a rowing song (This one has to be called a chantey!):
We are going down to Georgia, boys, Aye! Aye!
To see the pretty girls, boys; Yoe! Yoe!
We'll give 'em a pint of brandy, boys, Aye! Aye!
An a hearty kiss, besides, boys. Yoe! Yoe!
etc., etc.
"The words were nonsense; anything, in fact, which came into their heads." Heard in 1808, traveling by boat from Purrysburgh to Savannah, GA, by boat. John Lambert, Travels, II, p. 253-54 from Dena Epstein's study of pre-Civil War songs. Others have written of the singing of the Galley slaves on the larger rivers and estuary boats and canoes of the coastal and riverine South. Unfortunately, secular songs were seldom collected. Major attention was given to the spirituals on the part of collectors.
[…]
Shallow Brown: In Stan Hugill's Shanties from the Seven Seas, he says: "[Shallow Brown] started life as a pumping song. It is I feel of West Indian origin, some singers giving the refrain of 'Challo Brown' -- 'Challo' being a West Indian word of Carib extraction meaning a 'half-caste', and heard as far afield as the ports of Chile." Hugill lists four versions of Shallow Brown, not counting other songs featuring that name. He goes on to say,
"At some time or other this Negro song pased through the shanty mart and was used by the cotton hoosiers of Mobile as a cotton-screwing chant. Sometimes the wording would be that of Sally Brown, and 'Oh, Sally Brown' would be substituted for 'Oh, Shallow Brown' in the refrains." He also mentions a fragment called Shiloh Brown, which is "a version of what appears at first glance to be Shallow Brown but which in actual fact is a variant of Tom's Gone to Hilo."…
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