Trisha Shetty (Editor)

The Titanic (song)

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Written
  
1915 or 1916

Genre
  
American folk music

Published
  
1927

Writer(s)
  
William and Versey Smith

"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 most known for being sung in the United States at summer camp. "The Titanic" is about the sinking of the RMS Titanic which sank on April 15, 1912 after striking an iceberg.

Contents

History

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

Variants

The canonical version of the song has the chorus:

In most variants, although not the earliest, 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: "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."

Parody Verses

A large number of parody verses exist, either added following the serious lyrics, or sung instead of the usual verses; for example, replacing the line "husbands and wives, little children lost their lives" with "uncles and aunts, little children lost their pants."

Recordings

  • William and Versey Smith on Anthology of American Folk Music, Smithsonian Folkways 1952
  • Lead Belly on The Titanic (Volume 4)
  • Sissy Spacek on Coal Miner's Daughter: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack 1980 (Not this song - completely different.)
  • 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
  • Ruthie Foster on Let It Burn (2012)
  • Ernest Stoneman on The Face That Never Returned / The Sinking of the Titanic (singles) 1924

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

    Traditionally, the University of California Marching Band performs the song during its march up to Memorial Stadium from Sproul Plaza on the Berkeley campus.

    The Romantic song is commonly sung at many Boy Scout and Girl Scout camps, and other children's camps with numerous more hilarious verses added on.

    Works Cited

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

    • References

    The Titanic (song) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA