FEATURE:
Groovelines
The Beach Boys – Sloop John B
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WE will celebrate…
sixty years of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds on 16th May. It is one of the most important albums of that decade. The quality of the music and the context of Pet Sounds. A hugely influential album, it found the band pushing the studio and bringing all this innovation into their music. A step on from what they had done before. Even if bands like The Beatles were similarly inventive in the studio, you feel the two bands were pushing one another in this friendly competition. However, The Beach Boys’ compositions, production style and techniques inspired waves of artists and can be heard in modern music. I will discuss the album more fully prior to its sixtieth anniversary. However, I want to focus on the album’s second single. Released on 21st March, 1966, it is one of The Beach Boys’ most enduring songs. A standout from this masterpiece album. Recorded between 12th July and 29th December, 1965, it was produced by Brian Wilson. Sloop John B is a Bahamian Folk song from Nassau. It is fascinating how The Beach Boys took the song and adapted it. Different to previous versions and incarnation, the single reached number two in the U.S. Like God Only Knows and Wouldn’t It Be Nice, another case of Brian Wilson’s production and arranging brilliance. Perhaps less orchestral and stirring than some of Pet Sounds’ most-adored tracks, I think that Sloop John B is fascinating. I wanted to write about this track as it was a big commercial success but there is some division. This feature from last year recalled the fiftieth anniversary rendition of Sloop John B by Al Jardine (The Beach Boys members brought the song to Brian Wilson) and the late Brian Wilson. There was some debate as to whether Sloop John B fits on Pet Sounds or stands out for the wrong reasons:
“The video, directed by the band’s publicist Derek Taylor, was filmed at Brian Wilson’s LA home. Brian’s brother and bandmate, Dennis Wilson, was the cameraman. Some critics argue that “Sloop John B” should not have been included on Pet Sounds. They suggest that as a pioneering folk-rock arrangement, the track sits uneasily among the Baroque pop arrangements of what Jim Fusilli describes as reflective love songs, stark confessions, or tentative statements of independence. Others insist the track fits perfectly with the “general feeling of disorientation” that threads through Pet Sounds”.
There is not a lot written about Sloop John B. Unlike God Only Knows or Good Vibration, I guess this single is seen as a minor cut. However, the Financial Times did tell the story and background of Sloop John B in a feature from 2023. I think that it is one of the group’s best songs. Displaying the vocal supremacy and innovation of The Beach Boys:
“In 1935 the folk song collector Alan Lomax flew from Florida to Nassau in the Bahamas. There, assisted by folklorist Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, he set about recording music from the islands, hoping to capture the authentic spirit of Africa that he believed could be found in the songs, “chanteys” and dances of the islanders, particularly the sponge fishers of Cat Island. In John Szwed’s biography of Lomax, The Man Who Recorded the World, he is quoted in a US newspaper at the time as saying: “Negro songs there are probably as nearly like those in Africa as any you can find in the western hemisphere.”
After a few weeks, according to Szwed, Lomax and Barnicle were told to leave as they were suspected of being labour agitators. But they took with them dozens of songs recorded on their portable disc-cutting device. Among them was “I Bid You Goodnight”, later covered by The Grateful Dead, and “Histe Up the John B Sail”. The latter is sung by the Cleveland Simmons Group in an a cappella arrangement with overlapping harmonies, and it is instantly recognisable as the song that became a folk standard, sung by millions of American schoolchildren, and released by The Beach Boys in 1966 as “Sloop John B”.
It tells of a dissolute, ungovernable vessel where bad behaviour and drunkenness are so widespread that our narrator just wants to go home. But where did it originate? This is another of those folk mysteries.
The first mention in official records is of a song called “Hoist the John B Sails”; the sheet music for this, a “two step for piano”, was published in the US in 1903 by EW Prouty, a Massachusetts-based orchestra leader and violinist. Prouty’s band provided music for hotels owned by US oil and railway magnate Henry Flagler, including two in Nassau, which gives us a link to the Bahamas. It’s probable that Prouty arranged an existing melody.
In a 1916 edition of Harper’s Monthly Magazine, the English author and poet Richard Le Gallienne transcribed the song; he also incorporated it in his 1917 novel, Pieces of Eight, in which he writes, “We sang one of the quaint Nassau ditties.” And in his hugely popular 1927 collection of folk songs, The American Songbag, the poet Carl Sandburg included three verses and the chorus”.
The Henry Flagler connection has given rise to suspicions in folk-music circles that the “John B” song is not “authentic”, that it was created for the tourism industry. But it tells a true story. It seems there was a vessel in the 19th century named after one Captain John Bethel, who built it and sailed it until it was wrecked (some versions of the song are named “The Wreck of the John B”), though it’s not known if his boat was the scene of the revelry described”.
There are a couple of other articles to bring in before wrapping up. This interesting blog post argues how Sloop John B might be the ultimate summer song from a group almost defined at one point by their beach and summer-themed songs. You do listen to Sloop John B and are transported. At this time of year, when we all look forward to warmer weather, there is escapism listening to a Pet Sounds classic:
“The song “Sloop John B” is the ultimate Summer classic by The Beach Boys. It was guitarist/vocalist Al Jardine’s idea resulting from the love of The Kingston Trio. Back in the days when I thought myself hipper than I was, I considered the Trio to be comparable to the Pat Boone of folk music. I couldn’t have been less hip to what they were about. Here’s a quick bit of history. The first popular Folk Music period of the 1940s was rooted in the old folk tradition that included songs originally from the ‘people.’ This being the case the most authentic folk songs were the ones passed along by the oral tradition without an author. It was all about the story.
When the Folk Music Movement came to an abrupt end due to McCarthyism, the most popular group of the era, The Weavers, was banned from the concert circuit. So, Pete Seeger, in his wisdom and desire to be heard, found he could play at public schools of all kinds including elementary, high school and colleges. From 1953 until 1958, the folk songs championed by The Weavers were not heard except in live performances in schools around America. Enter the Folk Music Revival of the 1950s and 60s. The Kingston Trio with Carolyn Hester, Harry Belafonte, and the second Jimmie Rodgers attracted millions of listeners as they sang songs banned from the airwaves in 1953. The fans of the Kingston Trio included Beach Boy, Al Jardine, Steve Goodman, Marty Balin, Paul Katner of Jefferson Airplane, Timothy B Schmit of The Eagles, Jimmy Buffet, Lindsey Buckingham, Richie Furay and Stephen Stills of The Buffalo Springfield.
When Al Jardine brought “Sloop John B” to Beach Boys leader, Brian Wilson, it had been recorded by The Weavers and The Kingston Trio. While Wilson was not a fan of folk music, Jardine helped Wilson bring the song to life with The Beach Boys’ unique arrangement including lyrical changes. Brian and Al turned the song into a Top Five hit song in the U.S. and the U.K. It is now a classic rock song that frequently brings standing ovations and singalongs when performed by The Beach Boys over their six-decade career”.
Just prior to round up, this review is one of few I could find. Although there was critical praise in 1966, there has not been enough retrospection. It is a shame, as Sloop John B is included in Pet Sounds and is one of the standout tracks. On 21st March, it will be sixty years since The Beach Boys released the second single from their most acclaimed album. The third single, Wouldn't It Be Nice/God Only Knows was released after Pet Sounds came out:
“I picked a Beach Boys tape called ‘Summer Dreams’. It contained all the big pop hits, certainly all the cheesy ones like Help Me Rhonda, Surfin Safari, Little Deuce Coupe, Fun Fun Fun, California Girls. I loved the acapella-ness of Barbara Ann. I could tell Good Vibrations was a bit different and weird. Toward the end of the tape were songs that were a little harder to get into for such young ears because they didn’t have the immediacy and happiness of the pop hits. Songs I love now like Heroes & Villains. I used to fast-forward those, or know where they’d line up with the song on the reverse side (because fast-forwarding used up more battery on my Walkman). So, when it got to a certain point I could turn it over and listen to Surfin’ USA again on Side A.
The song that has stood the test of time for me though – is Sloop John B. Is there are better pop song on earth? Such restraint and subtlety is displayed in the first section of the song with Brian’s vocals, up until about 1.01 when the counter harmonies and Mike Love’s lead vocals come in; from there it’s an exercise in harmony building. My favourite section kicks in at 1.49 where the instrumentation falls away, giving the aural spotlight to these delicious cascading harmonies the Beach Boys made their inimitable trademark – ‘home, let me go home; hoist up the John B sails’. Sweet like (wild) honey.
Then there’s this beautiful (unexpected) double speed tempo change at 2.20, concluding with a countless-harmony-layered coda. Such a rich mere 3 minute canvas, so expertly curated, as only the Beach Boys could”.
I am going to round off in a bit. Sloop John B was backed with You’re So Good to Me. Its U.S. release date was 21st March 1966. It came out on 15th April, 1966 in the U.K. A lot of debate still exists around the purity of the song. Given its roots and how it was this Caribbean Folk track, should it have remained pure? Brian Wilson took the song and turned it into this lush Pop masterpiece with flutes, gorgeous harmonies and ambition. No other artist of that time would have seen the potential in this rather modest (but great) song and turn it into what it became. That is why I think Sloop John B warrants more attention and writing. As we lost Brian Wilson last June, it is so important that work like Pet Sounds and Sloop John B is given this new praise and inspection. I think that songs from Pet Sounds should get new videos. Other Beach Boys songs did fairly recently. Including God Only Knows and I Get Around. It would be interesting seeing what someone does with Sloop John B, as it is a song that still sounds mind-blowing…
SIXTY years later.