"Windjammers brings forgotten sailor songs and melodies, so common a century ago, into perspective and allows the reader to contemplate how national and regional topics affected life on the Great Lakes."
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See details...Windjammers
Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors
By Ivan H. Walton and Joe Grimm
Published 2002
Size: 7 X 10, Pages: 268
Subjects: Regional Studies: Maritime History
Series: Great Lakes Books Series
Cloth - 9780814329962
(Out-Of-Print)
Paper - 9780814329979
Price: $28.95L
Description
Awards
- 2003 Michigan Notable Book Awards
- 2002 Center for Great Lakes Culture Book Awards – Best Non-Fiction Book
White-winged schooners once dominated commerce and culture on the Great Lakes, and songs relieved the hours on board, but that way of life and its music ended when steam-driven mechanical boats swept schooners from the inland seas. Recognizing in the late 1930s, almost too late, that this rich oral tradition was going to the grave along with the last generation of schoonermen, Ivan H. Walton undertook a quest to save the songs of the Great Lakes sailors. Racing time and its ravages, he searched out ancient mariners in lakefront hospitals, hangouts, and watering holes. Walton reconstructed songs from one of the most colorful periods in American history, discovering melodies and lyrics to more than a hundred songs. With its stories, lyrics, musical scores by folksinger/historian Lee Murdock, and accompanying CD, Windjammers ensures that sailing chanteys that have not been heard for over one hundred years can be heard again and again far into the future.
Published by Wayne State University Press
Author(s)
Other Books by Joe Grimm: Songquest: The Journals of Great Lakes Folklorist Ivan H. Walton, Bringing the News,
Other Books by Ivan H. Walton: Songquest: The Journals of Great Lakes Folklorist Ivan H. Walton,
Reviews
"Windjammers marries the daunting field-collecting of Ivan Walton, the meticulous research of the 'landlubber' Joe Grimm, and the musical scores of Lee Murdock to produce a new perspective of Great Lakes sailor life. . . . This is a fresh perspective of historical 'ditties' that never made Billboard's Top Ten List, yet were popular among the freshwater sailors for half a century. Windjammers brings forgotten sailor songs and melodies, so common a century ago, into perspective and allows the reader to contemplate how national and regional topics affected life on the Great Lakes."
— John F. Polacsek, Curator of Marine History, Dossin Great Lakes Museum