Song of the Day 2/7: The Beach Boys, “Sloop John B”

Seems like a good time for a vacation in the Bahamas, doesn’t it? Drunken first mate, cook with the fits, even, in the original version, a captain with a greedy pig — at least it’ll be warm.

The origins of this sea shanty are unknown, though apparently there is or was a wreck in Nassau Harbor with the corresponding name. Richard Le Gallienne was the first to transcribe the tune, in Harper’s magazine in 1916, as “The John B. Sails.” It had five verses, but the happy-go-lucky mood of the last two didn’t fit the dire circumstances outlined in the first three, or the repeated lament of the chorus, or the final line — that it was the worst trip since the narrator had been born. When Carl Sandburg included it in his collection of folksongs, “The American Songbag,” in 1927, the last two verses were gone, and the last line went with them.

The first known recording of the tune was made by Alan Lomax in 1935. Now both the captain and first mate got drunk, and some verses are sung in such a thick Bahamian accent — Cat and Andros islands are remote even today — that the lyrics are indecipherable.

The climactic line wasn’t there when the Weavers recorded it in 1950 as “(The Wreck of the) John B” with a cheesy Latin arrangement and painfully enunciated island patois. The lyrics have other subtle changes — for instance, “Mr.” John Stone has been promoted to sheriff.

Other recordings, under various titles and with other lyrical variations, soon followed. Blind Blake included a verse about the sad fate of his new pants in the version he recorded with the Royal Victoria Hotel Calypsos in 1952. He demoted John Stone to civilian status, restored one of Le Gallienne’s dropped verses, and maintained both the captain and first mate got drunk before breaking into the people’s trunk, but still just wants to go home at the end.

The most influential treatment proved to be the one on the Kingston Trio’s debut LP in 1958, which rode the growing wave of interest in folk music. They reappointed John Stone as sheriff. The consumption of the narrator’s corn has now been pinned on the cook, who apparently framed the captain’s pig — with these shifting stories, you can see why this case was never adjudicated — and he’s back to calling this trip the worst since birth.

The covers, with various lyrical bowdlerizations, kept coming by the dozen — Johnny Cash, Lonnie Donegan, Dick Dale, Jimmie Rodgers among them — but it took Al Jardine to turn it into a hit. Yes, it was Brian Wilson who arranged the vocals and produced the recording, but it was Jardine, the Beach Boys’ folk influence, who brought it to him in the first place — and, when he first played it for Wilson on piano, added a couple of passing chords to its basic three-chord structure because, he said, he knew it wouldn’t interest Wilson otherwise.

Wilson also tinkered with the lyrics (the mate has now broken into the captain’s trunk, and the cook himself eats the grits) and, most notoriously, modified the climactic line — now it’s the worst trip “I’ve ever been on.” This either is or isn’t a nod to acid culture — no clear evidence seems to exist.

The tune was the first single from “Pet Sounds” and one of the group’s best-selling ever, topping out at No. 3 on the Hot 100 and topping the charts in several countries around the world.