Down With the Old Canoe

This song can be heard here or via the youtube video, below:

Performances

The Dixon Brothers (Dorsey and Howard Dixon)

Lyrics

It was twenty five years ago,
When the wings of death came low,
And spread out on the ocean far and wide.
A great ship sailed away
With her passengers so gay,
To never, never reach the other side.

[Chorus]
Sailing out to win her fame,
The Titanic was her name.
When she had sailed five hundred miles from shore,
Many passengers and her crew,
Went down with that old canoe.
They all went down to never ride no more.

This great ship was built by man,
This is why she could not stand.
She could not sink was the cry from one and all.
But an iceberg ripped her side,
And he cut down all her pride.
They bound the hand of God was in it all.

Your Titanic sails today,
On my sea or far away,
But Jesus Christ can take you safely through.
Just obey his great command,
Know for sure you’ll save the land,
You’ll never go down with that old canoe.

When you think that you are wise,
Then you need not be surprised,
If the hand of God should stop you on life’s sea.
If you go on in your sin,
You will find out in the end,
That you are just as foolish as can be.

Source: Dixon Brothers, The. 1938. “Down With the Old Canoe.” On People Take Warning: Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs, 1913-1938, disc 1, Man vs. Machine. Fontana Distribution TSQ1875, 2012, compact disc.

by Dorsey Dixon

Dorsey Dixon (1897-1968) was a millworker, songwriter, and country musician from the American South. He grew up hearing traditional music all around him and learned a number of traditional songs from family and friends. He learned violin from a local schoolteacher, and he later taught himself to play guitar. He composed his first song in 1929. It started as a poem about a disastrous 1923 South Carolina schoolhouse fire, but his mother and brother noted that the words could be set to a popular tune, “Life’s Railway to Heaven.” With his family’s encouragement, he began writing poems about his life’s experiences and setting them to traditional or traditionally-inspired tunes. He wrote many songs about tragedies.

He was also inspired by his work experiences. He left school after grade 4 and entered the local textile mill, where his father also worked, and subsequently worked at a number of different mills in South and North Carolina, as well as on the railway, during the turbulent 1920s and 1930s. He wrote several strike songs that led to his later discovery by folklorists interested in occupational songs.

After meeting itinerant country musician Jimmie Tarlton, Dorsey and his brother changed their violin and guitar duo. Dorsey developed a flat-picking style and his brother, Howard, started playing Hawaiian guitar. Their new sound resulted in growing local fame, eventually getting them noticed by a talent scout for a Charlotte radio station. They became regular performers on the J.W. Fincher’s Crazy Water Crystals Saturday Night Jamboree in 1934, and they recorded commercially for RCA for the first time in 1936. Over the next two years, six recording sessions resulted in 55 song recordings.

Unfortunately, Dorsey’s prowess as a songwriter meant that many more famous musicians recorded his songs and overshadowed him so that he earned little money from his own recordings. Jimmie Tarlton recorded “Weaver’s Life” in 1932, Fisher Hendley recorded “Weave Room Blues” in 1937, and “Intoxicated Rat” was covered by a number of artists. Most famously, Roy Acuff’s hit “Wreck on the Highway” was actually one of Dorsey’s compositions, originally entitled “I Didn’t Hear Anybody Pray” and recorded by the Dixon brothers in 1938.

Without a viable musical career, he continued working in mills. However, an invitation to the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, resulting from his discovery by folklorists in 1962 (including Archie Green, Ed Kahn, and Gene Earle), briefly revived his music career. Unfortunately, he had to stop performing in 1964 after he suffered the first of several heart attacks. He died in 1968.

Source:

Denatale, Douglas. 1979-1996. Dorsey Dixon, 1897-1968. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, ed. William S. Powell. University of North Carolina Press. Available online from the website, Documenting the American South.