Roll and Go: Songs of American Sailormen
Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, [1924]. Hardcover. 118 pages. Hardcover, in good condition, bound in gray cloth with gray paper-covered boards. Lacking the jacket, and with general overall wear and rubbing to covers, though paper labels on spine and front board are fairly well preserved and quite legible. Binding weakened at title page, but still hanging on; all pages have an L-shaped dampstain along the inner five inches of the lower edge and up the lower three inches of the gutter; all nine black-and-white plates are present, but two are neatly detached; light tanning to all pages. Item #611
Examples and analysis of the music and lyrics of sailors' songs. This copy is inscribed by the author in black ink on the front free endpaper, "For/Albert F. Sweetser/with Christmas greetings--/Joanna C. Colcord./December, 1924." According to the Maine Folklife Center at the University of Maine and the Waterboro, Maine, Public Library, the author, born in 1882 in the South Seas aboard a ship captained by her father, spent most of her childhood on China voyages and began in 1922 to collect American sea songs, a task that resulted in the book Roll and Go, which was reissued in 1938 as Songs of American Sailormen. Introduction by the author's brother, the poet, journalist and sea-fiction writer Lincoln Colcord, who was also born aboard a ship to China.
Price: $95.00