Description

Ivan H. Walton was a pioneering folklorist who collected the songs and stories of aging sailors living along the shores of the Great Lakes in the 1930s. His collection is unique in the annals of Great Lakes folklore. It began as a search for songs but broadened into a collection of weather signs, shipboard beliefs, greenhorn tales, and stories of the intense rivalry between sailors and the steamboat men who replaced them. Edited by Joe Grimm, Songquest: The Journals of Great Lakes Folklorist Ivan H. Walton is a selection from the daily journals Walton wrote during his travels as a folklore collector.

It is clear that Walton, a professor of English at the University of Michigan, both admired the sailors of the Great Lakes for what they had done during their working years and worried about them as they entered the twilight of their lives. Walton went beyond the songs he set out to find and captured the pitch and roll of the Great Lakes alive with white-winged schooners. His writings provide a clear picture of the colorful individuals he met and interviewed—captains, cabin boys, tugmen, chandlers, boardinghouse owners, dredgers, and light keepers. Walton also documented the methods he used and recorded his personal thoughts about his nomadic life and the events going on around him during the 1930s, including the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election, and the end of Prohibition.

Songquest is a companion volume to Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors (Wayne State University Press, 2002), which contains the lyrics from more than a hundred of Walton’s collected songs, as well as musical scores, sketches, and a compact disc of field recordings.

Published by Wayne State University Press

Author(s)

Joe Grimm is recruiting and development editor at the Detroit Free Press. He is editor of Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors (Wayne State University Press, 2002) and author of Michigan Voices: Our State’s History in the Words of the People Who Lived It (Wayne State University Press, 1987).

Other Books by Joe Grimm: Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors, Bringing the News,

Other Books by Ivan H. Walton: Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors,

Reviews

“Continuing his quest to preserve and share Great Lakes maritime culture that began with Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors, Joe Grimm has compiled Ivan H. Walton’s daily journal entries and sketches into a fun and insightful book.”

— Michigan History Magazine

"Edited by Joe Grimm, Songquest is a fascinating selection from the daily journals Walton wrote during his travels. His writings provide a clear picture of the colorful individuals he met and interviewed. For anyone interested in the lore of the Great Lakes, these journal entries bring to life an era on the Great Lakes long gone into the history books."

— Great Lakes Seaway Review

"Guided by the thoughts and journals of Ivan Walton, Joe Grimm's interpretation gives insight into what drove a man to discover and cherish a selection of 'sailor songs' that were carried in the throats of a dying generation of Great Lakes sailors."

— John Polacsek, curator of marine history, Dossin Great Lakes Museum

“Ivan Walton was a pioneer collector whose collection of Great Lakes sailors’ traditions is a valuable treasure and enduring legacy of maritime culture. The Ivan Walton Collection, which consists of much more than songs and ledgers, is vast and seemingly overwhelmed Walton, who could not organize and publish the book he so much wanted to write. . . . Joe Grimm’s edited works of Walton’s data are an important resource . . . and provide access to the general public. In addition, [Songquest] provides essential contextual information about the songs and singers in Windjammers while the songs in Windjammers illustrate Walton’s discourse in Songquest. Together the two are invaluable.”

— Yvonne Lockwood, curator of folklife, Michigan State University Museum