Generally, I don't like putting popular song or songwriters in pigeonholes. Today, however, I'm writing about someone who must be described as a folk singer simply because there's no better term. More specifically, I'm writing about a certain song by the late Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers.
To many Americans, the term folk music often conjures up visions of rhythm-less guitar strumming and endless choruses of "Kumbaya" around the campfire. However, in most societies folk music is truly the music of the people, providing both inspiration and a sense of identity as it relates stories about people's lives and the work that they do. And although the million-dollars-or-nothing mindset of the American pop music scene seems to be interested only in the blossoming buds on the tree of music, if you keep digging you'll find that one of the deepest roots of that tree is folk music.
Stan Rogers' parents were both from Canada's Maritime Provinces, and Stan took it upon himself to chronicle in song the grandeur of his native land and the dignity of its people. The intense pride he felt for his Canadian heritage illuminates his songs like a candle that lights up a jack o' lantern's smile. Although he died tragically in an airplane fire at the relatively young age of 33, Rogers was well known in folk music circles throughout most of the English-speaking world.
I never saw Rogers in concert, and first became aware of his work through the performance of one of his songs by someone else. With a unique blend of gospel and folk singing traditions and a Texas tenor voice as big as all outdoors, Jim Post is capable of grabbing an audience's attention and focusing it on a specific song pretty much whenever he wants. I think he began performing Rogers' "The Mary Ellen Carter" in about 1980, and to this day it remains one of the most uplifting songs I've ever heard.
The song opens with the chorus:
Rise again, rise again
That her name not be lost to the knowledge of men
Those who loved her best and were with her 'til the end
Will make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again
The first two verses tell the story of a ship's sinking, and the end of the second verse provides us with a flash of insight into how much the ship meant to its five crew members:
The groan she gave as she went down it caused us to proclaim
That the Mary Ellen Carter would rise again
In the next verse, we learn of the bottom-line businessmen who refused to consider salvaging the ship because:
"...insurance paid the loss to us, so let her rest below"
Then they laughed at us and said we had to go
Over the winter the crew members talk of the ship, "some days around the clock," and begin making plans to salvage her in the spring. Two verses relate the difficulty of the task and the hardships they endured while patching the ship in sixty feet of water and preparing to raise her. Finally, we're told:
Tomorrow noon we'll hit the air and then take up the strain
And make the Mary Ellen Carter rise again
The story is pretty much over at this point, but it's also where the song becomes something more. First, we're told of why they went to the effort of saving the sunken ship:
For we couldn't leave her there, you see, to crumble into scale
She'd saved our lives so many times living through the gales
A sentimental reason, perhaps, but it provides us with an appreciation for the ties that bind those who make their living on the sea and the vessels that keep them alive. But the song really connects with me in the last verse, when Rogers spins the story into an allegory for triumph over personal challenge:
And you to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again
The chorus is repeated to close the song, although it too has now been made into something more personal:
Rise again, rise again
Though your heart it be broken and life about to end
No matter what you've lost, be it a home, a love, a friend
Like the Mary Ellen Carter rise again
In a larger sense, the story of "The Mary Ellen Carter" is yet another variation on the theme of death and rebirth from the bountiful ocean. I've always assumed that Rogers was inspired to write this song by knowing or observing people in similar situations, but now that I think about it I'm really not sure. For all I know, it's based on a legend that has been passed down through the generations of his family.
I don't think I was in too much of a down-and-out phase of my life when I first heard "The Mary Ellen Carter," so I sometimes wonder why the song affects me so powerfully. Jim Post is a master at building his performances to climaxes like a revivalist preacher, and for a while there in the early 1980s "The Mary Ellen Carter" was the centerpiece of his show--so I imagine the concert-fevered state of mind I was in when I first heard it has something to do with it. However, I went almost twenty years without hearing the song before purchasing Rogers' recording of it a year or so ago. In all that time I thought of the song countless times, and I still remember the power of Post's rendition and the glow I carried with me for days after first hearing it.
"The Mary Ellen Carter" is a classic example of inspirational folk song. Hearing it still raises my spirits, and "rise again" has become something of a personal mantra whenever times get tough.