"Canada-I-O" is a traditional Canadian and English folk ballad. It is believed to have been written between 1813 and 1838
When her love goes to sea, a lady dresses as a sailor and joins (his or another's) ship's crew. When she is discovered, (the crew/her lover) determine to drown her. The captain saves her and they marry.
The song first showed up (as "Kennady I-O") on a ballad-sheet dated between 1813 and 1838 and collected by Walter Newton Henry Harding in his Book Collector 11 (see Broadside Ballads Online from Bodleian Libraries)
More sheets in the Harding collection, concerning this song:
In form, it is related to the Scots song "Caledonia"—versions of which were collected by Gavin Greig—although exactly which song came first is one of those ‘chicken and egg’ questions that so frequently beset folkmusic studies.
Harry, a retired cowman, had learned "Canadee-I-O" from his father, a Downsland shepherd.
Recorded September 5, 1963 by Peter Kennedy in Balcombe, Sussex.
This recording was included in 2012 on the Topic anthology of songs by Southern English singers, "You Never Heard So Sweet (The Voice of the People Volume 21)"
Another recording made by Mike Yates (with Harry Upton singing) in 1974 was included in 1975 on the Topic collection of traditional songs from Sussex, "Sussex Harvest".
In 2001 Penguin Eggs was voted to 2nd place in the "Best Folk Album of all Time" by listeners of the Mike Harding show on BBC Radio 2. The opening track on this album, "Canadee-I-O" was also recorded by Bob Dylan and included on his 1992 album Good as I Been to You. Some critics have accused Dylan of stealing Jones' arrangements for this song without credit or offer of royalties. Others disagree, and believe the arrangements to be different. Another school of thought is that the arranger's copyright on recordings of traditional songs is little more than a legal fiction, allowing artists to receive mechanical royalty payments that would otherwise be kept by their recording labels.
There is no connection in plot, however, and any common lyrics are probably the result of cross-fertilization.
MacEdward Leach in his 1965 songbook "Folk Ballads and Songs of the Lower Labrador Coast" has a report though, that "Canaday-I-O" was written in 1854 by Ephraim Braley from Charleston, Maine, using "Kennady I-O"/ "Canadee-I-O" as a pattern.
"The Buffalo Skinners" ("The Hills of Mexico") is a traditional American folk song. It tells the story of an 1873 buffalo hunt on the southern plains.
According to Fannie Eckstorm, 1873 is correct, as the year that professional buffalo hunters from Dodge City first entered the northern part of the Texas panhandle.
It is thought to be based on the song "Canaday-I-O"
In 1914 Fannie Eckstorm met John Lomax at one of his lectures and pointed out to him that "Buffalo Skinners" was "only a variant of "Canaday-I-O", an older local ballad about a group of lumberjacks and their exhausting trip to Canada. She mentions this event in het book Minstrelsy of Maine.
The editor of the 1925 songbook "Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks", Robert Palmer Gray, was given a fragment of the old song by Mrs. Fannie H. Eckstorm of Brewer, Maine, in 1914.
And thus in his book Palmer Gray also mentions the link between "Canaday-I-O" and "Buffalo Skinners".
As you can read above that old song was given to Mrs Eckstorm by Mr. J. Eldredge from Edinburgh (Howland) Maine, twenty years or more prior to 1914. It was then regarded as an old song, and Mrs. Eckstorm remembers having heard a verse or two of it in her childhood. She places the date of the ballad at about 1855. On the basis of these facts it could not be much later than 1859.
Henry W. Shoemaker in his 1919 book North Pennsylvania Minstrelsy, gives a somewhat fuller text, as sung by Leary Miller, Lick Run, Clinton County in 1901. It is song #31 ( "The Jolly Lumbermen") on page 76-78 of that book. The last line of each verse reads "On Colley's Run, I-Oh". And that's the link with another song from the same songcluster (SEE further on in this post)
Only in the twenties Eckstorm managed to get hold of a
complete text. It was sent to her by one Annie Marston who "had learned it in
her youth in Penobscot County". This set of lyrics was first printed in 1927 in her collection Minstrelsy of Maine
This song is evidently the original of "The Buffalo Skinners" in Lomax's Cowboy Songs. Internal evidence places that ballad at about 1873. There was very little, if any, killing of buffalo for hides after 1876. In 1880 the buffalo were almost extinct.
"Buffalo Skinners" was first published by Jack Thorp in his Songs of the Cowboys (1908, as "Buffalo Range", pp. 31-33). He only included a text but not a tune:
"The Buffalo Skinners" then appeared in 1910 in John Lomax's "Cowboy Songs, and Other Frontier Ballads". The song tells of crew of men hired in Jacksboro, Texas to go buffalo hunting north of the Pease River.
But then there's the rumour that "Buffalo Skinners" was derived from John B Freeman's "The Buffalo Song", which he seemingly wrote in 1877 while on a buffalo range in Fort Griffin.
In the summer of 1941 J Frank Dobie talked about it with John B Freeman and wrote down the results in his 1943 book "Backwoods To Border".
As we see the town and the year ( Fort Griffin in '83) mentioned in Woody's version differs from the "Buffalo Skinners" version notated by Lomax (Jacksboro in '73).
In fact Woody's version might be an amalgation of Lomax's "Buffalo Skinners" and another variant published by W.P. Webb in 1923 as "Boggus Creek".
In "Boggus Creek" a group of cowboys are hired in '83 at the now abandoned cowtown at Fort Griffin, Texas, to work cattle in New Mexico.
In early September 1938 Alan Lomax spent a day recording in Traverse City. Acting on a tip that Lautner’s Place on Union Street was a hangout for sailors and lumberjacks, he recorded seven discs of lumbermen songs and Irish songs in the tavern.
Lomax's recording of "Michigan‐I‐O" that year is interesting for a number of reasons.
This song is based on the popular lumberman's song "Colley's Run I-O"(or"The Jolly Lumbermen") and uses the same tune.
It’s also closely related to the regional song "Canaday‐I‐O" and it stops just short of the dire ending in western epic in the same song family, "The Buffalo Skinners". In that song, the cowboys who are tricked and robbed of their wages leave the company man’s “bones to bleach on the range of the buffalo.”
Similarly, "Michigan‐I‐O" chronicles the miserable disparity between the luxuries that the company agents promise prospective workers and the dreadful living conditions in the camps. In the song, the workers retaliate against the bosses and wreak their pent‐up frustrations at being robbed, cheated, and oppressed, a theme common enough in folk songs. It must have appealed not only to Lomax’s interest in song families, but also to his progressive political sensibilities.
In this recording of "Michigan I‐O", the 82‐year old Lester Wells, described in Alan's field notes as “another tough and intelligent oldster” sings a rousing version of the song he learned in the lumber camps during the 1880s.
“Michigan‐I‐O”, performed by Lester Wells, Traverse City, MI, Sept. 3, 1938. Alan Lomax Collection of Michigan and Wisconsin Recordings (AFC 1939/007, AFS 2303b), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress [4:16]
(c) Bob Dylan (1961) / (1967) (as "Trail of the Buffalo")
Bob's first known performance of this song was recorded in the East Orange, New Jersey home of Bob and Sidsel Gleason in early 1961. The tape was made by the Gleason’s son Kevin. This 1961 version was directly derived from Woody Guthrie's version.
Come 'round you old time cowboys and listen to my song
Please do not grow weary, i'll not detain you long
Concernin' some young cowboys who did agree to go
Spend the summer pleasantly on the trail of the buffalo.
Well, i found myself in Griffin in the year of '83
When a well known famous drover come a-walkin' up to me
Sayin', "How'd you do, young cowboy, how'd you like to go
Spend the summer pleasantly on the trail of the buffalo?''
Well, me bein' out of work right then to this drover I did say
"This goin' out on the buffalo range depends upon your pay
But if you pay good wages, transportation to and fro
Think i might go with you on the hunt of the buffalo.''
"Yes, i'll pay good wages an' transportation too
If you'll agree to work for me until the season's through
But if you do get homesick an' try to run away
You'll starve to death on the prairie and also lose your pay.''
Well, with all this flatterin' talking, he signed up quite a train
Some ten or twelve in number, some able-bodied men
Our trip it was a pleasant one as we hit the westward road
Until we head old Boggy Creek in old New Mexico.
Well, there our pleasures ended an' our troubles they begun
A lightnin' storm did hit us, made the cattle run
I got all full of stickers from cactus that did grow
Outlaws watchin' to pick us off on the hills of the buffalo.
Well, the working season ended but the drover would not pay
He said, "You went drunk too much, you're all in debt to me.''
But the cowboys never did hear of such a thing as a bankrupt law
So we left that drover's bones to bleach on the hills of the buffalo.
Listen here:
Dylan's second version was recorded June/October 1967 while the tape was rolling by accident during the Basement Tapes period. Dylan tries to find the proper key – The Band, unfamiliar with the song, straggles in after a few minutes. After the song winds down, Dylan asks Garth not to waste tape on it.
Pete Seeger At first on American Industrial Ballads (1956, Folkways SW 40058) and then on American Favourite Ballads, Vol. 5 (1962, Folkways SW 40154; this is an abbreviated version with five verses, the lyrics are from Lomax' original "Buffalo Skinners", the melody and accompaniment are closer to Woody Guthrie)
Cisco HoustonSings the Songs of Woody Guthrie (1961, Vanguard VRS 9089) and later on Folk Song and Minstrelsy (1963, Vanguard RL-7624)
Eric Von SchmidtFolk Blues of Eric Von Schmidt (1963, Prestige 7717)
Carl SandburgCowboy Songs and Negro Spirituals (1962, Decca DL 9105)
Jim KweskinRelax Your Mind (1965, Vanguard VSD-79188)
Slim Critchlow Cowboy Songs: The Crooked Trail To Holbrook (1969, Arhoolie 479; includes also "John Garner's Trail Herd" and "The Crooked Trail To Holbrooke"; recorded 1957-63)
In 1905, Charles McCallon Alexander and Reuben Archer Torrey toured the United Kingdom, During the 1905 Torrey-Alexander Mission, Charles Alexander asked Ada Ruth Habershon to write some hymns; within a year, she supplied him with 200, amongst them "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"
Back in the USA, Charles Alexander asked Charles Gabriel to write music to Habershon's hymn.
"Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" was subsequently contained in "Alexander's Gospel Songs" compiled by Charles Alexander and published in 1908 by the Fleming H. Revell Company.
"Will The Circle Be Unbroken" is song # 6 in that book.
On 3rd June 1927 he boarded the SS Caronia in New York, bound for Plymouth. Presumably he completed his intended tour of Scotland and Wales during the summer before going back into the studio in London in August.
In 1928 Rev J.C. Burnett sang a new arrangement of "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" (with a tune very similar to another gospelsong: "Since I Laid My Burden Down") (See Note on the bottom of this post)
In 1935 A.P. Carter would use this same arrangement for "his" "Can The Circle Be Unbroken".
(c) Rev. J.C. Burnett and his Quartet (1928) (as "Will The Circle Be Unbroken")
Dylan also sang the song in 1975 in an allstar band.
Recorded March 23, 1975 K101-FM S.N.A.C.K. Benefit Concert Broadcast, Kezar Stadium, Golden Gate Park San Francisco, CA.
This was a one-day festival in aid of Bill Graham's S.N.A.C.K. (Students Need Athletics, Culture and Kicks) organization. Neil Young, with his regular sidemen Ben Keith and Tim Drummond, performed together with Bob Dylan, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm.
Much later, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band recorded two subsequent albums, Will the Circle Be Unbroken Volume Two (1989) and Will the Circle Be Unbroken Volume III (2002), in an attempt to repeat the process with other historically significant musicians.
The melody for this number is the same tune used for "Since I Laid My Burden Down" (a fixture at New Orleans "jazz" funerals). Two songs concerning death/funerals, one most common in white communities, the other among black folks, each with its own traditional instrumentation and arrangements ~ same tune.
But which song was the first one to use that common tune.
As we can hear in the ORIGINAL version by William McEwan, in the beginning of this post, that version uses a slightly different melody-line.
Around 1928 a version of "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"and "Since I Laid My Burden Down" use the same tune, which, as we saw, was also used by AP Carter in "his" arrangement of "Can The Circle Be Unbroken".
