Cedar Key’s very own ballad
When we first visited Cedar Key, Florida, it was as weekend getaway 60-plus miles to the Northeast. In fact, we were new transplants to G’ville from Boston in a promotion / relocation that ultimately did not pan out.
I had been made National Sales Manager of a small manufacturing firm and after 18 months or so of sparring with the owner over policy, he won and we made the very scary and, might I say, courageous decision to move to the Island City we had come to love, and do whatever it took to survive. We have had a great number of occupations that I never would have imagined, but that is a story too long and complicated to tell here.
I finagled the position of manager of The Cedars Lounge, a Dock Street bar that had been inactive for some time due to the illness of the owner. We re-opened on Labor Day Weekend of 1988. By the third weekend in October, the annual “Seafood Festival” came around and I felt required to engage a picker to entertain the influx of expected customers. Shelton Irwin was my first musical hire. It was also the first time I heard “Tin Roof Shanties.”
Now, for a name you may not find on You Tube, may I credit the composer -
John Star was a hard coat finish plasterer and quite respected at his trade. Like many of us, (me included), he played some guitar and sang for tips and drinks around town. Legend has it that he wrote the rough draft of the lyrics for “Tin Roof Shanties” on the back of a cocktail napkin in the Seabreeze Restaurant bar. Whether John had any melody in mind is debatable - my bet is he had - but his friend Shelton Irwin is credited with help in arranging the song as it is played today.
A note about how it is played today -
I was somewhat amazed to discover that “Tin Roof Shanties” is actually available on You Tube as performed by Bertie Higgins. Bertie enjoys a deserved reputation as a Florida troubadour and I mean to cast no aspersions when I point out that he has taken some liberties with what I believe to be the original lyrics. For example, one line in the original lyrics references “Jigger’s Bird Dog.” The Bird Dog is a flat-bottomed skiff, usually 20 some feet, with a forward-mounted outboard motor in a well and tunnel arrangement allowing it to operate in very shallow waters as found in the creeks and channels where the mullet and redfish schooled. Bertie obviously decided that this reference was too esoteric for his commercial recording and substituted some vague fishing line filler. Again, no disrespect…
Another departure is the use of “The early bird” to designate some non-specific but industrious fisherman instead of “Early Bird” who is Earl “Early Bird” Brown who pulled his line of crab traps and was “the pride of the Island!” Also, in the original, “Jigger struck a hole and caught a load.” I know who Jigger is (or was) and can see his face before me, but I never knew his real name.
Perhaps now is as good a time as any to post the lyrics as I remember them:
Tin Roof Shanties dot the coastline of our home,
It’s been that way for years, no one lives in fear,
Some people find our ways a little slow,
It’ a fact we don’t resent, in fact we’re quite content,
And the stories at our tables are not lies,
Perhaps exaggerated for humor’s sake or mine
(Chorus)
It’s a shame one day the modern ways will overrun our shore
The progress of the concrete’s bound to change our island world,
And people when they pass won’t take the time to say “Hello”’
But not as long as tin roof shanties dot the coastline of our home,
Early Bird’s already pulled his line,
When it comes to crabbin’ he’s the pride of the Island,
Jigger struck a hole and caught a load,
You ought to see the redfish in his old bird dog,
And the old dock master’s leaning on his cane
Thinking ‘bout a heritage that’s fading away…
(Chorus)
The redfish in the bird dog should probably have been mullet, but we’ll allow John his artistic interpretation.
Anyhow - This is a song that has to be perpetuated. Bertie’s version is fine, but the images that accompany the You Tube video look more like third world ghettos than the Island we love. Shelton or John would be the best primary sources of information. Alas, Shelton is jamming with the Sky Band and the last time John rolled through town the L&M was still open. (Yet another nostalgic subject for later on…)
Our best hope, other than my sincere but artistically mediocre renditions whenever I get the chance, is David Besley’s intention to record it professionally. Dave and his cousin Ed Pickett performing as The Seiners, (now, NorthStar), were among a select few acts that I had on a regular weekend rotation during my tenure at The Cedars Lounge. Maybe John Shubert and Brady Green will sit in. Maybe Jim Carrick.
Maybe they’ll include a third verse that I wrote recently during a walk around the Island -
Mangroves stand their watch along our shore,
Along with moss-draped oak trees, for a hundred years or more,
New folks claim to have a better way,
(Hey), If life was good in Boston, how come you didn’t stay?
The changes come no matter what we do,
So I’m counting on the memories that are shared by me and you…
(Chorus)
It’s a shame one day the modern ways will overrun our shore
The progress of the concrete’s bound to change our island world,
And people when they pass won’t take the time to say “Hello”’
But not as long as Tin Roof Shanties dot the coastline of our home,
Not as long as Tin Roof Shanties dot the coastline of our home…
(Author’s note - This piece was intended for non-Cedar Key readers. You may have found a couple of references gratuitous - a fact I don’t resent…)
Bob Cooper - Never a Native, just a 30-year newcomer…
CLICK HERE FOR YOUTUBE - Bertie Higgins / Tin Roof Shanties
*******
