Sally Brown - Sea Shanties

Edited by Azizi Powell

Latest revision - March 23, 2022

This pancocojams post is Part I of a two part series that showcases videos of & lyrics for songs about "Sally Brown" from the Sea Shanty, Ska, and Blues genres.

Part I focuses on "Sally Brown" sea shanties. "Sally Brown" shanties are also given as "Shallow Brown" ("Shiloh" and "Challo").

Part II focuses on "Sally Brown" Ska and Blues songs. Click
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/04/sally-brown-sally-sue-brown-sea-shanty_18.html for Part II of this series.

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PART I: SALLY BROWN [Sea Shanty]

Overview Of Shanties
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_shanty:
"A shanty (also spelled "chantey," "chanty") is a type of work song that was once commonly sung to accompany labor on board large merchant sailing vessels.

Of uncertain etymological origin, the word shanty emerged in the mid-19th century in reference to an appreciably distinct genre of work song, developed especially in American-style merchant vessels that had come to prominence in decades prior to the American Civil War.[1] Shanty songs functioned to economize labor in what had then become larger vessels having smaller crews and operating on stricter schedules.[2] The practice of singing shanties eventually became ubiquitous internationally and throughout the era of wind-driven packet and clipper ships...

Shanties had antecedents in the working chants of British and other national maritime traditions. They were notably influenced by songs of African-Americans, such as those sung whilst manually loading vessels with cotton in ports of the southern United States. Shanty repertoire borrowed from the contemporary popular music enjoyed by sailors, including minstrel music, popular marches, and land-based folk songs, which were adapted to suit musical forms matching the various labor tasks required to operate a sailing ship. Such tasks, which usually required a coordinated group effort in either a pulling or pushing action, included weighing anchor and setting sail."

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OVERVIEW OF "SALLY BROWN" SHANTIES
"Sally Brown" is a Jamaican sea shanty about a mixed race (mulatto; Creole) woman. Like all shanties, there are multiple versions of "Sally Brown". In addition to the song titled "Sally Brown", there are many other shanties that mention "Sally" and "Sally Brown".

The surname (last name) "Brown" may have referred to Sally's mixed race ancestry. Note that the word "shallow" (challow) in the song "Shallow Brown" means a person of mixed race. Read more comments about this in Example #4 below.

LYRICS
The "Sally Brown" chanty is composed of two lined rhyming (or near rhyming) verses that are separated by a fixed line which is repeated at the end of the verse.

Here are three text examples of the "Sally Brown" shanty (posted with no particular order; with editorial comments)

SALLY BROWN (Shanty Version #1)
O, Sally Brown's a bright mulatto,
Way, hay, roll and go!
She drinks rum and chews tobacca,
Spend my money on Sally Brown!

Sally lives in ole Jamaica
Way, hay, roll and go!
Sellin rum and growin tobacca
Spend my money on Sally Brown

Sally lives on the ole plantation
She’s a daughter of the wild goose nation

[Add "Way, hay, roll and go" to the verses as found above]

Sally's teeth are white and pearly
Her eyes are dark and hair is curly*

Sweetest flower in the valley
Is my own, my pretty Sally

I brought her gowns and I brought her laces.
I took her out to all the places.

Well I call her my queen of faces.
I bought her coral beads and laces.

Oh Sally Brown what is the matter?
A pretty gal but I can’t get at her.

Seven long years I courted Sally.
But she always dilly dallied.

Sally Brown she would not marry.
I no longer care to tarry.

She would not have ah tarry sailor.
She would not have ah greasy whaler.

So Sally Brown I took the notion
To sail across the bleeding ocean

I shipped aboard ah Bedford whaler.
When I returned she was courtin a tailor.

So Sally Brown, I’m bound to leave her.
So heave a pall and pall and heave her [?]
-Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVUn_v3jIZA ; Uploaded by hultonclint on Jul 6, 2008 ; transcribed from video by Azizi Powell; Corrections and additions are appreciated.
-snip-
Editor:
"Bright mulatto" probably meant "light skinned mixed race [female].

*I had transcribed this line as "her eyes are dark and curly", but that doesn't make sense. I therefore changed that line to this version. Notice that a similar line is given in the transcription I found online for the example given below as #2.

"She’s a daughter of the wild goose nation" is a floating line found in a number of 19th century African American songs. One possibly meaning for "the wild goose nation" in shanties was a referent for a fictitious Native American nation which included Black people who had run away from slavery and their offspring. 

"The word "bleeding" in the line "bleeding ocean" is a substitute for a curse word.

The "?" is posted after the last line of that song because I'm not sure whether my transcription of that line is correct.

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SALLY BROWN (Shanty Version #2)
1. O, Sally Brown, of New York City,
Way, hay, roll and go!
O, Sally Brown you're very pretty
Spend my money on Sally Brown!

2. O, Sally Brown's a bright mulatto,
Way, hay, roll and go!
She drinks rum and chews tobacco,
Spend my money on Sally Brown!

3. O, Sally Brown's a Creole lady,
Way, hay, roll and go!
She's the mother of a yellow baby,
Spend my money on Sally Brown!

4. Seven long years I courted Sally,
Way, hay, roll and go!
Sweetest girl in all the valley,
Spend my money on Sally Brown!

5. Seven long years she wouldn't marry,
Way, hay, roll and go!
And I no longer cared to tarry,
Spend my money on Sally Brown!

6. So I courted Sal, her only daughter,
Way, hay, roll and go!
For her I sail upon the water,
Spend my money on Sally Brown!

7. Sally's teeth are white and pearly,
Way, hay, roll and go!
Her eyes are blue, her hair is curly,
Spend my money on Sally Brown!

8. Now my troubles are all over,
Way, hay, roll and go!
Sally's married to a dirty soldier,
Spend my money on Sally Brown!
- Source: http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/sea-shanty/Sally_Brown.htm

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SALLY BROWN (Shanty Version #3)
Sally Brown she's a nice young lady,
Way, hay, we roll an' go.
We roll all night
And we roll all day
Spend my money on Sally Brown.

Shipped on board off a Liverpool liner
Way, hay, we roll an' go.
We roll all night
And we roll all day
Spend my money on Sally Brown.

Mother doesnt like a tarry sailor
Way, hay, we roll an' go.
We roll all night
And we roll all day
Spend my money on Sally Brown.

She wants her to marry a one legged captain
Way, hay, we roll an' go.
We roll all night
And we roll all day
Spend my money on Sally Brown.

Sally Brown she’s a bright lady
Way, hay, we roll an' go.
She drinks stock rum
And she chews tobacco
Way, hay, we roll an' go.
We roll all night
And we roll all day
Spend my money on Sally Brown.

We roll all night
And we roll all day
Spend my money on Sally Brown
http://www.justsomelyrics.com/358471/Teddy-Thompson-Sally-Brown-Lyrics

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SHALLOW BROWN (Shanty Version #4)
Shallow Brown
O, I'm going to leave you
Shallow, O Shallow Brown
O, I'm going to leave you
Shallow, O Shallow Brown

Ship on board a whaler
O, Shallow Brown (2X)

Bound away for St George's

Love you well, Juliana

Massa going to sell me

Sell me to the Yankee

Sell me for the dollar

Great big Spanish dollar

The spelling could be anything from Challo, Shallow & Shiloh. Hugill points to this as West Indian in origin, saying Challo is West Indian for half caste & that this song passed through the cotton ports of the south as a cotton screwing chant. I'd add on to that, (aside form this version possibly being of the older versions) that some of the cotton plantations ran their own ships & supplied them with their own slave crews when the land work was slow. These ships traded in all North Alantic & Caribbean ports & that the hope of some was to jump ship in Haiti or England or go whaling or sailoring elsewhere, rather than be slave hands to be resold as needed.
-posted by Barry Finn; http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=7955#48336; 06 Dec 98 - 08:53 PM

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UPDATE: 9/30/2014
Here's a quote from Mark Cohen [07 Oct 02 - 03:02 AM] that was posted in the mudcat thread whose link is given above:
[written in response to the question a guest blogger asked "was Shallow Brown: a real person?"]

"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."

There may be more information in the "related threads" link at the top of the page, but I was too lazy to check them.

So, I guess the songs are referring to a generic character rather than a historical person. But I'm sure that if you created a biography of Shallow Brown and started passing it around shanty sings, it would soon become the received truth!

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FEATURED VIDEOS
Video #1: Sally Brown (Roll 'n' Go) (A) [161-164]v(128-132)



Uploaded by hultonclint on Jul 6, 2008

With scenes from Kingston Harbour, from Kingston and Port Royal.

This capstan chantey is presumed to come from Jamaica. Sally Brown must have become a folkloric character beyond chanteys there, since Cuban-born Jamaican singer Laurel Aitken sang a different song about "Sally Brown" in a ska style.

Interesting how many modern versions of this have sort of neutralized it, removing racial or ethnic markers. Too bad this also removes the Jamaica setting and some of the depth of meaning of what is going on here in this chantey. Funny also how "Spend my money ON Sally Brown" often becomes "Spend my money ALONG WITH Sally Brown," again removing an possible unsavoriness...

Hugill writes that there are many bawdy verses to this, but he of course does not give them!

Doerflinger dates the age of this chantey to at least the 1830s, citing a reference by author Marryat in 1839 to having heard it sung in a Western Ocean packet ship at the windlass.

One can hear this chantey used in the 1946 film adaptation of Dickens' "Great Expectations."

Also found in:
LA Smith 1888, Sharp 1914 (note possible rendering of minor 3rds for blue notes), Doerflinger 1951

Please check out the whole chanteys project playlist, at
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=58B55DD66F22060C
-snip-
Italics added by me to highlight this portion of that summary. I fully concur with hultonclint's comments about the color blind revisions in contemporary versions of this song.

Click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVKGnJ1thlI "Sally Brown - Planxty" for a video of a group singing "Sally Brown, she's a nice lady" and "spend my money along with Sally Brown"

The Laurel Aitken song "Sally Brown" is featured in Part II of this series.

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Video #2: Paul Clayton "Sally Brown" From LP. "Sailing And Whaling Songs Of The 19th Century" 1954



Uploaded by szantanas on Nov 8, 2009

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RELATED LINK
http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=7955 "Shalo Brown"

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My thanks to the unknown composers of these songs and to the folklorists who collected their lyrics. Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. Thanks also to the performers, and video uploaders of this song.

Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

Visitor comments are welcome.