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Sea Chanteys

Sea Chanteys (ESP 1085)

Sea Chanteys
Louis Killen

ESP-Disk ESP 1085 (LP, USA, 1973)
Zyx Music ESP 1085-2 (CD, Germany, 1994)

 Sea Chanteys (Zyx ESP 1085-2)

Recorded at the Dick Charles Studio in New York City, May 22, 1968;
Produced by Pat Sky;
Album design by Dennis Pohl

Musicians

Louis Killen, vocals, concertina

Tracks

Side 1Side 2
  1. Row Billy Row (2.42)
  2. Good Ale (2.05)
  3. Pleasant and Delightful (3.09)
  4. Lord Franklin (2.39)
  5. The Sheffield Apprentice (4.27)
  6. Shoals of Herring (3.35)
  1. Bold Jack Donahue (2.48)
  2. Bold Jack Donahue Story (2.27)
  3. The Week Before Easter (2.36)
  4. The Blacksmith (2.42)
  5. The Blind Cow Caught Fire (2.35)

All tracks trad. except
Track 6 Ewan MacColl

Review

The only album on which British folksinger/historian Louis Killen is credited as “Lou”, 1968's Sea Chanteys is also his sole recording for the eclectic underground label ESP-Disk. Recorded in a one-day session on May 22, 1968, during the brief period Killen lived in New York City, Sea Chanteys is the first of many collections of sea and sailing songs he would record over the next several decades. All traditional songs except for Shoals of Herring, an original by Killen's early mentor Ewan MacColl, these songs are performed completely solo and a cappella in the traditional style. Although Killen is a noted folk music scholar, there's nothing academic about these performances, which are performed with lusty vitality and, at times, antic humor. The closing The Blind Cow Caught Fire is one of the funniest songs in Killen's repertoire, a shaggy-dog tale of sailors taking refuge in the basement of a pub that's burning to the ground so that they can drink the place dry before it's destroyed. The song, like much of the rest of the album, dispels the common myth that traditional British folk music is a wan and humorless music performed by people who take themselves far too seriously. Sea Chanteys proves that nothing could be further from the truth.

Stewart Mason, All Music Guide