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As you'd expect from a topical song, this is very, very old - dating to the 1920s, to the formative years of Country Music. This version was recorded in the 1930s by the father of Country Music, the great Roy Acuff. And so the song was written only 15 years or so after the event.
The Great Ship Titanic (Songwriter: Ernest Stoneman)
It was on one Monday morning about one o'clock
When that great Titanic began to reel and rock
People began to scream and cry
Saying, oh! Lord, were bound to die
It was sad when that great ship went down.
It was sad when that great ship went down
It was sad when that great ship went down
husbands and their wives,
Little children lost their lives
It was sad when that great ship went down.
When building that great ship, they said what they would do
They said that they could build a ship that water could not go thru
God with power in his hand, showed the world it could not stand
It was sad when that great ship went down.
It was sad when that great ship went down
It was sad when that great ship went down
husbands and their wives,
Little children lost their lives
It was sad when that great ship went down.
When that great ship left England, she was making for the shores
When the rich declared, they would not ride with the poor
So they put the poor below and they were the first to go
It was sad when that great ship went down.
So that's where it came from. As a thoughtless youngster at camp in the 1960s we sang a version that went..
ReplyDelete"Oh it was sad, so sad."
"It was sad when the great ship went down, to the bottom of the--
"Uncles and Aunts, little babies lost their pants--"
"It was sad when the great ship went down".
Just a silly song then, no connection with actual tragic events 50 plus years earlier.
Tacitus
Blues musician Blind Willie Johnson wrote a song about the Titanic disaster, too: God Moves On the Water.
ReplyDeleteHey, I remember this song!... sort of. I learned a version of it back in elementary school, only it went like this.
ReplyDeleteOh they built the ship Titanic
To sail the ocean blue.
They said it was a ship
That the water would not get through.
But on it's maiden voyage,
An iceberg hit that ship.
It was sad when that great ship went down.
Same refrain though, and I remember that our teacher got royally pissed when we sang "Uncle's and Aunts, little children lost their pants." instead of the "proper" lyrics.
I'd never heard that - must have gone to different summer camps. ;-)
ReplyDelete