When that great ship went down
2 min read . Updated: 24 Dec 2015, 06:09 PM IST
PremiumThe sinking of the Titanic quite inexplicably provided the inspiration for countless blues songs
It was almost 20 years ago, but I can still remember the agony I endured when I had to sit though a screening of James Cameron’s Titanic with a friend. Of course, the actual disaster was no joke. More than 1,500 people died when the massive liner sank on its maiden voyage on 15 April 1912. Death, it seems, chose its victims carefully; it was the Third Class passengers that suffered the most losses.
Considering the age when that fateful voyage took place, it is not surprising that there was only one black person amongst the 2,224 passengers and crew. But the sinking of the Titanic was such a momentous event that it captured the imagination of ordinary blacks living in America. Even before the recording industry came to include black performers, there are accounts of travelling musicians singing songs about the sinking of the Titanic. What is interesting are the attitudes and opinions that these songs displayed.
Singing about natural and man-made disasters is not uncommon in African-American music, especially in blues and gospel. There are countless songs about the Great Depression in the 1930s and even before that, the Mississippi floods of 1927 (Charley Patton’s “High Water Everywhere; Memphis Minnie’s “When the Levee Breaks", which was “stolen" by Led Zep). But generally speaking, black artists rarely dealt with experiences that were not their own. In this respect, songs about the Titanic are quite an anomaly.
Some of the earliest known versions of songs about the Titanic were religious in nature. Two of the most famous songs were “God Moves on the Water" and “When That Great Ship Went Down". Both of them allude to an opinion that was quite widespread immediately after the disaster—that it was God’s punishment for man’s hubris in thinking that the Titanic was unsinkable.
“The rich had declared they wouldn’t ride with the poor
So they put the poor below, they was first had to go
Wasn’t it sad when the great ship went down?"
There are also some versions of the tune by white artists, most notably one of the earliest country and hillbilly music stars, Ernest Stoneman. His “The Sinking Of The Titanic", released on Okeh Records in 1924 sold over a million copies.
“Some was drinking, some was playing cards,
Some was in the corner, praying to their God,
Titanic sinking in the deep blue sea,
And the band all playing Nearer My God To Thee."
“Jack Johnson wanted to get on board
Captain he says, ‘I ain’t haulin’ no coal’
Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well
Johnson was controversial—his boxing supremacy incited many riots among white people, who also did not like the fact that the boxer was married to a white woman on two separate occasions. One can almost hear the glee in Leadbelly’s voice when he implies that racial segregation played a part in saving a black man’s life.
The fascination with the Titanic slowly faded away with the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, but there are still stray tunes that indicate that the Titanic as a racial motif had not entirely faded.
“When I jumped in the water
Everybody said, Look at that fool
But when that Titanic ship hit the bottom
I was in Harlem shootin’ pool."
