The Titanic (song) explained

The Titanic
Written:	1915 or 1916
Published:	1927
Genre:	American folk music

"The Titanic" (also known as "It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down" and "Titanic (Husbands and Wives)") is a folk song and children's song. "The Titanic" is about the sinking of RMS Titanic which sank on April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg.

Background

History

The first folk songs about the Titanic disaster appeared within weeks after the disaster.^[1] Recordings of various songs about the disaster date to as early as 1913.^[2]

Variants

The canonical version of the song has the chorus:In most variants, although not the earliest,^[3] the chorus starts with a line "it was sad, so sad, it was sad", and in many versions, the line "to the bottom of the..." appended after the repeat of "went down." Other than the chorus, different versions may contain verses in different order.

There are several regional variations on the song. According to Newman I. White's 1928 book American Negro Folk-Songs, "The Titanic" has been traced back to 1915 or 1916 in Hackleburg, Alabama. Other versions from around 1920 are documented in the Frank C. Brown Collection at Duke University in North Carolina. Early recordings include Ernest Stoneman's "The Titanic" (Okeh 40288) in September 1924 and William and Versey Smith's "When That Great Ship Went Down" in August 1927.

According to Jeff Place, in his notes for the Anthology of American Folk Music:^[4] "African-American musicians, in particular, found it noteworthy and ironic that company policies had kept Blacks from the doomed ship; the sinking was also attributed by some to divine retribution."

Recordings

• William and Versey Smith on Anthology of American Folk Music, Smithsonian Folkways 1952
• Bessie Jones on The Alan Lomax Collection Sampler Rounder 1997
• Woody Guthrie on The Asch Recordings, Vol. 1: This Land Is Your Land, Smithsonian Folkways 1999
• Pert Near Sandstone on "Paradise hop" version called "sad when the great bridge came down" 2011
• Ernest Stoneman on The Face That Never Returned / The Sinking of the Titanic (singles) 1924
• Mance Lipscomb on Texas Songster Volume 2 (You Got to Reap What You Sow) 1964 ^[5]
• Pete Seeger on Headlines and Footnotes: A Collection of Topical Songs, Smithsonian Folkways 1999
• Freakwater on Dancing Underwater, Amoeba Records 1991 / Thrill Jockey 1997
• Tom Glazer on The Ballad of Namu the Killer Whale, United Artists 1965

In popular culture

"The Titanic" was sung by Paul Newman and Brandon de Wilde's characters after a drunken night out, in the 1963 film Hud.

Works cited

• Web site: Habing, B. . The Great Titanic - American Folk Song(romantic song) . September 28, 2008 . Poem of the Week . September 28, 2008 .
• Perkins, A.E. . 1922 . Negro Spirituals from the Far South . Journal of American Folk-Lore . 35, 223.
• Web site: Levang, Rex . It Was Sad When the Great Ship Went Down . Minnesota Public Radio . January 1999 . December 2, 2005 .
• Book: White, Newman I. . American Negro Folk-Songs . Harvard University Press . 1928 .

External links

• http://www.scoutorama.com/song/song_display.cfm?song_id=173 - Lyrics on Scoutorama website.
• http://www.listeningvoice.com/samples/LyricSheetVol1.pdf - Lyrics with "Uncles and aunts, little children lost their pants" variation.
• "The Sinking Of The Titanic" – Music and lyrics.

Notes and References

1. Perkins (1922) notes that: "The Titanic sank on Sunday, April 14, 1912. The following Sunday I saw on a train a blind preacher selling a ballad he had composed on the disaster. The title was 'Didn't that ship go down?'" (cited by Habling 2008)
2. Habing 2008
3. White 1928 (cited by Habing 2008)
4. Place, J., "Supplemental notes on the selections," selection 22, in H. Smith (ed), liner notes, Anthology of American Folk Music, page 50 (1952). (accessed 7 October 2014)
5. Web site: Home. The Arhoolie Foundation. 30 May 2021.