[On October 26, 1825, the Erie Canal officially opened. So this week, I’ll honor the 200th anniversary of that huge & hugely important project by highlighting a handful of figures connected to it, leading up to a special weekend tribute to my favorite current civil engineer!]
On a few ways the silly “Erie Canal Song” helps us think about the communal role of folk music.
My wife informs me that she never once sung “Low Bridge, Everybody Down” (also known as the “Erie Canal Song,” “Fifteen Years on the Erie Canal,” and “Mule Named Sal,” among other sobriquets) in school, so maybe my experience here isn’t typical. But all I know is that, as an elementary schoolkid in early 1980s Virginia, I sang that song with my peers enough times that my memories of the experience are still emblazoned on my mind these forty-plus years later (maybe that’s based on just one time singing it, but I sure hope not because I’d really like to save that room for other singular memories if so). And in any case, it’s pretty striking that Tin Pan Alley songwriter Thomas S. Allen’s little ditty about an Erie Canal barge worker and his trusty mule Sal, apparently originally composed in 1905, first recorded by Billy Murray in 1912, and published by Allen and F.B. Haviland Publishing Company in 1913, was still going strong nearly three quarters of a century later and many hundreds of miles away from that titular throughway.
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One interesting thing about that timing of the song’s creation is that it came right as the Erie Canal was about to be replaced by the New York State Barge Canal, on which construction began in 1905; similarly, mule barges would be replaced on that new canal by engine-powered one. The song’s original chorus, which features the repeated line “Fifteen years on the Erie Canal” (over the decades it has been gradually changed to “Fifteen miles” instead, and I believe that’s what I sang as a kid) drives home the passage of time, and the early line “We’d better look ‘round for a job old gal” suggests that the speaker knows what has or at least soon will come with that passing time. But at the same time, much of the song is written in the present tense, including that other repeated chorus phrase “low bridge, everybody down,” bringing the audience into the work world of the speaker and Sal. I’d say both of those layers reflect key communal roles for folk music: representing work worlds and experiences, especially for audiences who might not otherwise be aware of them; and expressing nostalgia for bygone folkways, especially right as they’re passing.
The song’s original final verse and chorus add another layer, though: “You’ll soon hear them sing everything about my gal, fifteen years on the Erie Canal/It’s a darned fool ditty ‘bout my darned fool Sal, fifteen years on the Erie Canal/Oh every band will play it soon, darned fool words and darned fool tune!/You’ll hear it sung everywhere you go, from Mexico to Buffalo//Low bridge, everybody down, low bridge, I’ve got the finest mule in town/She’s a perfect, perfect lady, and she blushes like a gal/If she hears you sing about her and the Erie Canal.” I really like this meta-textual addition to the song, as well as Allen’s confident (and accurate) assurance that his song will soon be sung everywhere (although I don’t believe we got to this verse in our classroom version). And I really like thinking about Sal both aware of and being pleased by the fact that she’s the subject of that widespread singing. But those aren’t just delightful little additions, they’re also a compelling moment of self-reflection about how and why we both write and sing folk songs—and as young Ben can attest, when they’re good we sing them for much longer than fifteen years.
Special post this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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