Straight from the Tunnel's Mouth

The Boatmen

Sweet Folk and Country SFA 018 (1975)

The Boatmen were Eric Blackburn, John Grace, and Pat Slattery.
Nick Coster, Alison Grace and Joe Stead also feature.

Sleeve Notes :

Introduction
The songs on this record do not pretend to be a comprehensive or complete collection of canal songs. What they do represent, however, is a selection of songs which have entertained canal folk, and more recently, a new enthusiastic section of the public who have recently discovered the waterways of England and their culture.
Like the boats and their working families these songs span the years from Napoleon Bonaparte to the Common Market. Not all of them are boating songs but the theme of the English Canals run through them somewhere.
Until very recently it seemed that the working tradition would be lost amd with it all the raison d'etre of these songs. Today the economic and ecological crises which we face may entail a revival of this environmentally sound and indeed civilised form of bulk transport. Should this be the case we may hope that the tradition represented by this record will continue to flourish.
David R Blagrove