Prologue
Austin Carter: Hey Ariel.
Ariel Lavery: Hey Austin.
Austin Carter: I’m sure you’re familiar with the idea of work songs, right? Something people sing to help them keep things moving at a certain pace while they’re working.
Ariel Lavery: Yeah, of course! I know that enslaved people sometimes sang songs in the fields and I’ve heard of sailors on boats singing, as well.
Austin Carter: Well, I’m glad you brought up both of those things because what I want to talk about today has roots in both of those traditions. Listen to this.
Walter Brown (singing a cappella):
Every day is a payday here but,
I ain't had nothing in a forty years.
Forty years, gal, forty years,
I ain’t had nothing in forty years.
Come here dog and let’s get your bone,
Tell me what shoulder that you want it on.
Everybody talkin’ ‘bout riding high,
Nobody knows about the roustabouts.
Roustabout, baby, roustabout.
Nobody know about the roustabouts.
Ariel Lavery: Wow. Who is that and what is a roustabout?
Austin Carter: That is a man named Walter Brown who was recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax in the 1970s in Greenville, Mississippi. Brown was a roustabout on the steamboats of the early 20th century, moving all kinds of freight on and off the boats, up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Roustabouts during this time were predominantly younger Black men.
Ariel Lavery: That sounds like a tough job!
Walter Brown: I have taken two cotton hooks, you know what a cotton hook is? And throwed them back over a 500 pound bale of cotton. And had it over on my back and toted it.
Austin Carter: Despite their crucial role in the river shipping industry in the 19th and 20th century, the roustabouts have largely been forgotten except for a few people who have worked to preserve their music and story. And with the end of the steamboat era, the proliferation of trains and the introduction of barges and diesel engines, the roustabouts are kind of a relic of a bygone age.
Ariel Lavery: That’s so interesting. It’s part of a “river culture” you don’t hear about a lot.
(theme music fades in)
Austin Carter: In this episode we’ll ask, “Who were the roustabouts? What does their music tell us about their lives and work? And who were the people who recorded their legacy for future generations?” Today, “The River and the Rousters.”
Ariel Lavery: On, Middle of Everywhere, telling big stories from the small places we call home. I’m Ariel Lavery.
Austin Carter: And I’m Austin Carter.
Scene 1 - The Steamboat Era
Austin Carter: So Ariel, before the railroads, diesel engines, and over-the-road trucking, the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and their tributaries were like a massive highway extending through most of the country. And with the introduction of steam-powered, paddlewheel boats to the U.S. in the early 19th century, a whole industry and culture was born on the rivers.
Ariel Lavery: Yeah. I’ve seen some of the modern boats that are modeled after old paddlewheel boats, but it's a history that I don’t really know a lot about.
Austin Carter: I spoke to a musician and maritime history enthusiast named Charlie Ipcar. And he recounted the origins of steamboats in America.
Charlie Ipcar: In the States, it started with the Hudson River steamboats, the Clermont.
Austin Carter: You may recall from history class that an American engineer named Robert Fulton was credited with developing the Clermont.
Ariel Lavery: No, I think I was asleep that day in history class, sorry. (both laugh) But I’m with you. Keep going!
Austin Carter: Well, it didn’t take long for the use of steamboats to expand.
Charlie Ipcar: They began working their way down the Mississippi River, and that would be in the 1820s. But eventually they, you know, they finally made it all the way down to New Orleans and, and proved that one could navigate this weird winding, ever-winding river called the Mississippi.
Austin Carter: Krystal Watson, who is the Education Coordinator for the River Discovery Center in Paducah, Kentucky told me that before the steamboats, one of the ways people would take their goods downriver was on flatboats.
Krystal Watson: When they would get to their destination, typically the boats were broke apart, they would break them apart. And they would sell the timber or they'd pay their crew they sell their goods, and then you had to find your own way back home. Not a very safe thing to do. Especially if you had to come all the way from New Orleans, you had to do the Natchez Trace. And if you read about that there's just a ton of dangers along the way, you’re like trying to get back home.
Ariel Lavery: Oh man. That’s a long way to go if you’ve come from the upper Ohio or Mississippi rivers!
Austin Carter: Exactly. Whether you were on foot, or trying to get a boat up river, it could take quite a while.
Krystal Watson: So let's say you're coming from down south, it might take you nine months, you know depending on weather current to get back to get back home or get back up north. So it went from a nine month trip to a one month trip when the steamship took hold.
Austin Carter: The steamboats changed everything. But they weren’t without their downsides. Ariel, do you know the basics of how a steam engine works?
Ariel Lavery: Yeah, kinda, I mean I know how the mechanics work.
Austin Carter: Well, it’s pretty simple. You have a firebox that burns coal or timber, and a boiler that holds water. As the boiler is heated, it makes steam, and the pressure from the steam moves a piston that in turn moves some other parts, yada yada yada, and things move!
(both laugh)
Ariel Lavery: Right, got it!
Austin Carter: Unfortunately, the early steamboats had one nasty habit.
Krystal Watson: Early on, they would explode. They would get too hot. The steamers, the boilers would get too hot and they would explode. They were wooden.
Ariel Lavery: Yikes! (laughs) That seems…a little inconvenient!
Austin Carter: Yeah, absolutely. Fire, pressure, wood, altogether a dangerous combination if unrestrained. So in the early days of steamboats, you were doing well if a boat lasted for a few years. And not to joke around about it too much because obviously, many people died in these accidents. But the ability to travel up and downriver, so much more quickly, created a huge boom for the shipping industry. And in turn, people were needed to load and unload the boats of all this freight. So, in come the roustabouts.
(bluesy music fades in)
Scene 2 - Life on the River
Walter Brown: I've been all up and down this place right here. I've been all up and down. I’ve been from here to Cairo, Illinois and from Cairo, Illinois back to New Orleans.
Austin Carter: That’s Walter Brown again, our former roustabout, talking from Greenville, Mississippi about traveling up and down the Mississippi River. And that somewhat transient lifestyle might have been one of the appeals of being a rouster. But as Krystal explained, it was a tough job.
Krystal Watson: If you've seen some of the pictures or read any of the firsthand accounts, I mean, these men were usually in pairs carrying carrying 500 pounds of cotton bale on their back or up to where they can get to the hooks to bring them on board the boat. They were doing a lot of this stuff, by hand.
Austin Carter: And even when some boats were still using enslaved laborers, which would have been not uncommon before the Civil War, there was a unique advantage, in spite of the terrible condition of slavery, to being a roustabout.
Krystal Watson: So let's say like your regular part of your trip, you know, you would get payment, and that payment will go to an agent, or if your person who owned you would say okay, they're allowed to collect their pay, right. But if they worked on Sundays, which was typically an off day, some, not all, would get to keep that money. So that will be something so they could use that money to a, you know, buy things they wanted, they could use that money to send to family, they could use that money to help purchase freedom for others. I mean, so that gave them a little bit more mobility.
Austin Carter: And even up until the early 20th century when Walter Brown and his friend Arthur were roustabouts, they looked fondly on some parts of the lifestyle.
Walter Brown and Arthur: I was eating and sleeping. Didn't have to pay no rent. Didn't have to pay no (boat deal) or nothing and go into the kitchen get anything you want to eat.
Austin Carter: But Ariel, one of the most interesting and important parts of the history of the rousters, are their songs.
Ariel Lavery: Oh yeah. We heard a short bit earlier and I’m really curious about that!
Austin Carter: There were many songs sung on the riverboats but the work songs were coordinated to the motions of the rousters and what they would call “rocking the load,” as Arthur and Walter explained.
Walter Brown and Arthur: See, the skipping, when you rock it and skip it that gives a relief. When you do that if you're just straight toting it it's more heavy, but you got to work it back and forth and skip it, see that gives you relief. He used to ask me, he said “Partner,” he said, “do you think it's too heavy? If you do we gonna put it down.” I said “No.” I said “We're not gonna put it down.” He said “Then we’ve got to rock it round and round.” And we’d carry it on the dock. We didn’t care what it weighed!
Austin Carter: Charlie, our nautical music authority, explained how those types of activities change the style and tempo of maritime music.
Charlie Ipcar: There were sea shanties that are very quick, like when you're hauling a sail up, it's 1-2-3-4. And very fast. If it's a song that has to do with, with rolling cotton down the gangway, and and along the levee, those are probably more like 1-2-1-2-1-2 kind of things.
Austin Carter: You can hear this in Walter’s chant from earlier and I’ll replay a bit here so you can feel the rhythm a bit.
Walter Brown (singing a cappella):
Come here dog and let’s get your bone,
Tell me what shoulder that you want it on.
Everybody talkin’ ‘bout riding high.
Nobody know about the roustabouts.
Roustabout, baby, roustabout.
Nobody know about the roustabouts.
Ariel Lavery: (humming the tune Walter Brown sang) Oh, sorry, I was really feeling that. What do the lyrics mean though?
Austin Carter: Well, one of the many things rousters might haul would be railroad ties or timber. If you carried them on the same shoulder every time that side would get tired, so you’d want to switch it up. That’s why he says, “get your bone and tell me what shoulder you want it on,” as there would be a man by the pile helping to load the rousters up.
Ariel Lavery: That’s pretty cool.
Austin Carter: Yeah. And Charlie has a different favorite line that had to do with the rouster’s work.
Charlie Ipcar: I liked the line about the routers saying to the captain, you know, “Captain Oh Captain Be so kind take all the cotton leave the seed behind,” because they're talking about those heavy bags of seed which you can't roll you have to have them on your shoulders and the cotton you know you got your team you can, you can roll it up and down the levee.
Austin Carter: What about you Ariel? Would you rather roll a 500 lb bale of cotton or tote a 120 lb bag of seed on your shoulder?
Ariel Lavery: Hmmm. Would neither have been an option?
(Austin laughs)
(slide guitar music fades in)
Scene 3 - The Rouster’s Legacy
Krystal Watson: I got called downstairs, because a visitor had a question. And when I got downstairs, I was like, “Yes, ma'am. How can I help you?” And, and it was a younger, Black woman. And she goes, “You know, I've been through your museum, and I just want to know, where are our stories?” And, you know, just to make sure, I was understanding like, female, you know, African American, like, what stories and, and she was talking about, you know, Black persons on the river. And I was like, “That is an excellent question.”
Austin Carter: That’s Krystal again from Paducah’s River Discovery Center, sharing an experience that happened to her there recently. But Ariel, it’s kind of something I wondered about too.
Ariel Lavery: Yeah. A lot of things come to mind for me when they think of steamboats and the rivers. Mark Twain, southern gentlemen and ladies, and really the 1800s in general, but the stories of Black workers who were so crucial to the industry, they don’t get much attention.
Austin Carter: Exactly. And because of some of the racial and social bias of history and historians of years past, there are a lot of holes.
Krystal Watson: But those stories, as we've talked before, are not easy to come by. And even the historians that did actually get to talk to some of these people who did this job as roustabouts, black persons who did this job as roustabouts, those certain questions weren't asked. I mean, sometimes even like, we only get their first name, not their last name. We don't know what boats they worked on. We don't know. You know, we don't, we didn't, we weren't there, we're able to ask specific questions. And unfortunately, they're gone now. Most of them that we know of are gone now. And we can't ask those questions.
Ariel Lavery: So what can we do to revive some of this history? Or has it just been lost forever?
Austin Carter: Well, there probably aren’t many, if any people still living who were roustabouts at the end of the steamboat era in the 1920s and 30s. But, as Krystal highlighted, there is a value to the family stories and histories that have been passed down.
Krystal Watson: If anybody knows someone who did that job, a older person who did that job, and they would like to talk to you or me or whoever, you know, we would love to hear their story. We'd love to know what their perspective was on that job, especially during that time period.
Austin Carter: Though we’ve got some other examples of songs we’ve talked about, most of what is documented about roustabout music, is the product of one woman’s studies. In the 1930s a well-educated and well-to-do woman from Paducah named Mary Wheeler, set out to document a tradition that was familiar to her from living near the Ohio River for most of her life. But that tradition was quickly disappearing. She was pursuing her master’s degree and to craft her thesis she began visiting the homes of former roustabouts, who were very old at the time, to collect songs.
Ariel Lavery: That’s really interesting, and quite amazing. Was her thesis preserved anywhere?
Austin Carter: Well she completed it and her studies were published in two volumes, the first called Roustabout Songs, and the second was, Steamboatin’ Days. While they were well received in the folk music and academic community, much like the roustabouts themselves, as time went on they kind of faded to the background. But there are a few folks out there who are trying to keep the songs and stories alive.
Ariel Lavery: It seems pretty fortunate that we have those two books.
Austin Carter: Yeah, though some of the language she uses is antiquated and some have also criticized the use of African American vernacular dialect in her transcriptions, she is still one of the few people who have looked critically at the music and culture surrounding the roustabouts. She was interviewed in the 1970s for an oral history project and she felt the former roustabouts and chambermaids she talked to appreciated someone asking about this important part of their lives. And despite how difficult it was at times they had a special affinity for the river and those days.
Mary Wheeler: They seemed to want to be there. And it was just part of their lives. The river was the thing that they loved. And that was their life. They knew it was a hard life, and it was, but I think they loved the river.
Austin Carter: One of the challenges with the roustabouts songs is something Mary admitted herself when she first transcribed them.
Ariel Lavery: What’s that?
Austin Carter: Well, they are very topically specific to the riverboats and activities of that time and place. So it takes a little explanation or a basis of familiarity to truly understand them. But in the many decades since Mary’s books, a handful of artists have utilized their own talent and styles to try carry these songs forward. I want to play you a little montage of a few different versions of one particularly popular song that Mary Wheeler collected. It’s called John Gilbert, which as you will probably be able to surmise, was the name of a boat.
Conrad Thibault (singing, formal style):
John Gilbert is the boat,
Di-dee o, di-dee o,
John Gilbert is the boat,
Di-dee o, runnin’ in the Cincinnati trade…
Bertha Wheeler Wenzel (singing, formal style):
You see that boat a-comin’,
She’s comin’ round the bend,
And when she gets in,
She’ll be loaded down again.
John Gilbert is the boat,
Di-dee o, di-dee o,
John Gilbert is the boat,
Di-dee o, runnin’ in the Cincinnati trade…
Peggy Seeger (singing, breezy folk style):
You see that boat a-comin’
She’s comin’ round the bend,
Loaded to the bottom
With Louisiana men.
John Gilbert is the boat,
Di-dee o, di-dee o,
John Gilbert is the boat
Di-dee o, runnin’ in the Cincinnati trade…
Wheelhouse Rousters (singing, upbeat folk style):
Lee P. Khan was the head clerk,
Cap’n Duncan was the cap’n,
Billy Evitt was the head mate,
Runnin’ in the Cincinnati trade.
She hauled peanuts and cotton,
She hauled much more,
And when she got to Johnson,
Her work had just begun.
John Gilbert is the boat,
Di-dee o, di-dee o,
John Gilbert is the boat,
Di-dee o, runnin’ in the Cincinnati trade…
Ariel Lavery: That was really neat, hearing all the different styles and tempos and interpretations of that song. And it’s super catchy. So who did we just hear?
Austin Carter: First was Conrad Thibault, from the 1940s. Then Mary Wheeler’s niece, Bertha Wenzel from the 1960s. We also heard Peggy Seeger from 2003, and Paducah’s own Wheelhouse Rousters from 2014.
Ariel Lavery: Even though it doesn’t seem like the rouster’s songs and stories have been widely appreciated, it’s nice to see that there are people who have tried to keep their experiences alive. And it’d be really nice to see more of that!
(swinging music fades in)
Conclusion:
Austin Carter: We all know that history does not record people’s stories equally, and that for many years, people of color were largely overlooked when it came to preserving culture and history. I’d like to think that our modern awareness of this failing has brought on some course correction. The Black men and women who were roustabouts and chambermaids on the Mississippi and Ohio river steamboats of the 19th and early 20th century were the backbone of an entire industry. Though many of their stories have been lost, that only makes it more important to cherish and appreciate the aspects of their lives that were preserved.
Ariel Lavery: And the image I have in my mind of that steamboat culture I think will be forever changed now.
Austin Carter: Well I’m glad. I’m glad this is something we can continue to share. It takes people talking about these parts of history to make them more well known.
Ariel Lavery: Absolutely.
Austin Carter: I’d like to go out on one of the few first person accounts we have from the roustabouts. Here’s Walter Brown with one more of his rouster songs.
Walter Brown (singing a cappella):
Hey Get ready. Get ready to go.
I got a great big load. I got a heavy tow..
Get out of my way, and let my roustabouts by.
They got 1,000 bales of cotton and we got to ride.
We're gonna ride, we're going to Natchez, We're going to Vicksburg.
We're going to Natchez, we're going to Vicksburg.
We’re going to Baton Rouge. We're going to drop right back,
we're going Arkansas City, we're going to Helena.
We’re going on up that (nine line?) but don't get in the way of my roustabout’s line (laughs)
Credit:
You can find all the images in this episode on our website middleofeverywherepod.org or on instagram and facebook at @middleofeverywherepod, @middleofeverywherepod and twitter @rural_stories. If you want to be even more involved in the conversation, sign up for our newsletter so you’ll always be the first to know about new episodes and interesting things going on at WKMS and in our region. Thanks to the Alan Lomax Collection, the Kentucky Oral History Commission, and the McCracken County Public Library for use of their recordings and special collections. This episode of Middle of Everywhere was produced by me, Austin Carter, with editorial help from my co-host, Ariel Lavery. Our editor is Naomi Starobin. Our theme music was composed and recorded by Time On The String sound studio in Paducah, Kentucky. Other scoring was from APM music. Marketing and sponsorship support comes from Dixie Lynn. Middle of Everywhere is a production of WKMS and PRX. This program is made possible, in part, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private organization funded by the American people.