An opera baritone pitches into sea shanties
mainBerlin baritone Jake Muffett has recorded the Four Salt-Water Ballads by Frederick Keel, a rare addition to the shanty repertoire.
But shanties are going viral these days.
Jake says: I purchased a copy of this music over a year ago from a charity shop in Croydon and only very recently realised it was dated 1920 and signed by the composer himself!! A picture of this can be seen on the title page of the video, totally genuine!
This copy was also named by the original owner and I have to thank Christopher Ball for recognising the name to be Topliss Green. Topliss Green was a well known British bass baritone who was primarily active in the 1920’s and 30’s. There are various video recordings of him singing on Youtube, very interesting!
Looks like the Düsseldorf upstairs foyer.
And thanks.
He has hauled Keel back into the limelight!
Jake Muffett in stalwart voice continues a tradition of other fgreat baritones Leonard Warren in sea shanties with the Robert Shaw Chorale, John Brownlee and Beecham in Delius-Whitman’s “Sea Drift”, and Gerald Finley in Stanford’s songs of the fleet and the sea.
Topliss Green is unimprovable, and I’m not forgetting the former Scot postman introduced here of late.
Shanties are call and response work songs. These might well be nautical but they are not shanties.
Sorry but these are not shanties. They are not even real sea songs, but settings of poems by Masefield – a totally different kettle fish. Shanties are work songs, which these clearly are not (even despite Frederick Keels considerable involvement with the Folk-Song Society in his day.) Good to hear some of Keel’s arrangements though. Until now my principal knowledge of him was as the Editor of the Folk-Song Journal.
Do I hear a future Billy Budd?
Pathetic
Sad to see young singers of this noble art lower themselves to following tiktok trends smh
OMG I Love this! So.beguiling – and great to see Topliss Green getting the credit he deserves, a fine dramatic singer of the Golden Age. Could we have some Topliss pics please?