Blow the Man Down
I’m a deepwater sailor back from Hong Kong
Give me some whisky, I’ll sing you a song
Blow the man down
I was out walking down Paradise street
A fat policemen I happened to meet
Says he, ‘You’re a blackballer. I see your hair,
And those red topped seaboots that I see you wear’
‘You’ve sailed in some packet that flies the blackball,
You’ve robbed some poor Dutchman of boots clothes and all’
‘O mister, O mister you do me great wrong,
I’m just a sailor back from Hong Kong’
I spat in his face I gave him some jaw
While he screams young feller you’re breaking the law
A typhoon of fury roars within me
How long will people like him not let us be
They gave me six months boys in old Walton town
For booting and kicking and blowing him down
Now all you young fellers who follow the sea
Put your vents on the wind and just listen to me
I’ll give you a warning afore we belay
Avoid fat policemen you’ll find that it pays
© 2024 JG Songs
I’d recently got a copy of Shanties from the Seven Seas by Stan Hugill which is the book of shanties. I was messing around in DADGAD tuning and came up with the opening riff. I opened up the book for inspiration and it fell open at Blow the Man Down, of which there are many, many versions. The version I was looking at was shorter and simpler than the rest and singing it seemed to fit.
As it progressed, I knew I wanted an outburst musically and felt that adding a couple of lines of my own (the typhoon/how long lines) to convey the sense of injustice at the prejudice would add to the shanty. This gave me the central part of the song. I set to recording it and came up with the backing vocals inspired by thinking of them as a group of the singers crewmen (or his inner demons) egging him on. It all fell together in about 10 minutes.
