THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,080) Parliament — “The Silent Boatman”
This “beautiful dirge” (Mark Montgomery French, https://www.uppitymusic.com/2005/06/parliament-osmium-1970.html) at the end of Parliament’s (see #249, 308, 723) first album is one of the uber funk band’s most atyptical and heartfelt songs. It originated as a Gaelic folk song hundreds of years ago that was rewritten by Ruth Copeland, George Clinton’s white British folk/funk singer/songwriter collaborator as a protest against racism and inequality. Grace Birnstengel writes that “if there’s more weight than usual in the closing one-two of spiritual-minded sincerity — the Jesus-invoking environmentalism of “Livin’ The Life” and the afterlife reflections of “The Silent Boatman” (the only P-Funk cut to feature bagpipes!) — they’re strong early indicators that Clinton and company had more to them than just party jams and psychedelic freakouts.” (https://www.stereogum.com/1822964/p-funk-albums-from-worst-to-best/lists/attachment/osmium/)
“I’m waiting for the silent boatman, To ferry me across the unknown waters, I wonder if in death, man at last can love man … there’s no money, power or fame, No third or second class, the fare is all the same”
goldta70schick24 says:
I just cant listen to this song without crying my eyes out. So deeply touching and I swear i can picture the sun streaming through the misty clouds over the waters…with a plain old boat…taking the soul onward to Jesus. Just so beautiful and it really makes you stop and think about whats really important and makes you pull away from all the evil and corruption of this fallen world. Sorry to sound overdramatic…this song just really moves me deeply.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CK8KPh167g
Algenonprice: “Almost 50 years on from when I first heard this, it has remains one of my favourite records of all time. It is so[ c]ompletely different with a gorgeous melody, amazing lyrics and a weird ethereal production/arrangement.” (https://www.45cat.com/record/inv513)
Bob Stanley explains that:
“The Silent Boatman”, a haunted, mesmerising rewrite of The Skye Boat Song*, was all Ruth’s. [She recalls that] “I was watching an old movie about the Roman Empire. One of the characters said “I’m waiting for the silent boatman to carry me across the unknown waters”, meaning death of course. So I wrote down the line. Later I wrote a poem to go with it. I was affected by the racism in Detroit and what black people had to go through just to have the same rights as whites in their own country. The house I rented with a friend was on the border of the black neighbourhood and the white and we had to dodge bullets from both sides! I could relate to the unfairness of the class system coming from a family of coal and steel workers. When I wrote, “all men descend into earth at the very same depth” – six feet that is – I was trying in my naïve way to write a protest song with the message that death is the great leveller. When we came up one song short for the album, I played The Silent Boatman on guitar for Brian and Eddie Holland and they liked it – much to my surprise and delight, because it was the first song I wrote by myself.”
https://recordcollectormag.com/articles/music-visit-ruth-copeland-diana-ross-poetess
Buckley Mayfield adds:
Parliament saved the best for last with “The Silent Boatman.” Another Ruth Copeland composition (she also co-produced the LP, by the way), “The Silent Boatman” is one of the most beautiful and moving songs in all creation. A slowly building, majestic ballad aswirl in Bernie Worrell’s organ and glockenspiel, it’s a poignant tale lamenting inequality and strife on Earth and redemption in the afterlife. When the bagpipes come in, you feel as if you’re being swept up in a highly improbable dream in which Parliament become the most persuasive religious sect ever to enter a studio. Going way against type, “The Silent Boatman” might be the closest Clinton & company ever got to godliness. Ruth Copeland was their secret weapon, although she never again recorded another proper album with the group.
https://jivetimerecords.com/2016/08/parliament-osmium-invictus-1970/
As to Parliament, Mark Montgomery French writes that:
According to George Clinton, the five-man ex-doo-wop group Parliament performed polite music you could play for your mother, while their five-man backing band Funkadelic was the group that would scare your mother into cardiac arrest. The fact that all ten people were in the same band was simply a matter of convenience. In 1970, even though Funkadelic was already signed to the Detroit-based Westbound label, Clinton signed Parliament to the Detroit-based Invictus label and delivered Osmium. Parliament had released several smoothed-out hit singles in the previous years, so the raw and roughneck Osmium had the effect of discovering that your seemingly normal parents were actually two-headed Martian warlords. . . .
https://www.uppitymusic.com/2005/06/parliament-osmium-1970.html
Derek See gives some history:
George Clinton began his group of slick doo wop vocalists as the Parliaments in the late ’50’s, eventually morphing into an incredible Detroit soul band that hit big with “Testify” in 1967, and released some other incredible singles along the way . . . . Around 1968, Clinton somehow lost rights to the the name “Parliaments”, just around the time things were getting very FREAKY and hence the birth of Funkadelic (the same singers and more or less the same musicians who played in the latter day Parliaments). In 1970, George somehow got the rights to the name back, and released an LP (Osmium) [see #249, 308] as Parliament (no “s” this time) and a few singles. . . . The single and album didn’t sell, and the Parliament name was retired until 1974, where George used the Parliament moniker to explore a more commercial (but never boring) brand of sci-fi funk.
http://dereksdaily45.blogspot.com/2009/05/parliament-red-hot-mama.html?m=1
1,081) Ruth Copeland — “The Silent Boatman”
Who was Ruth Copeland? Amy Hanson tells us:
A blues folksinger born in Durham, England, Ruth Copeland first came to attention after marrying Jeffrey Bowen, a staff producer at Motown. When Bowen followed songwriters Holland-Dozier-Holland over to their own Invictus label in 1970, Copeland was one of his first signings as she joined the fledgling vocal group New Play to become the label’s first white performer. Collaborating with Edith Wayne and future P-Funk producer Ron Dunbar, Copeland wrote “Music Box,” New Play’s debut single, and the second ever Invictus release. However, the group broke up soon after its release and Copeland began planning for a solo career. She also struck up an unlikely partnership with George Clinton and became a massively influential force on Parliament’s debut album, 1971’s Osmium. Not only did she co-produce the sessions, she also wrote what remain two of the most bizarre (and decidedly unfunky) songs in that band’s entire repertoire, the haunting “Little Old Country Boy” and “The Silent Boatman.” Two further songs, “Come In Out of the Rain” (co-written with Clinton) and “Breakdown” (with Clinton and Clyde Wilson) appeared as Parliament singles in 1971 and 1972. Copeland’s partnership with Clinton naturally flowed into her solo career. Viewed today as a virtual twin of Osmium, her Self Portrait debut featured contributions from Eddie Hazel, Lucius Ross, Bernie Worrell, Billy “Bass” Nelson, Tiki Fulwood, and Clinton himself, while the co-writes included a new version of the epic “The Silent Boatman. Late 1971 brought the release of Copeland’s second album . . . recorded with many of the same musicians as its predecessor, only now they were her own band. In an odd twist, Hazell, Worrell, Fulwood, and Nelson had all quit Parliament/Funkadelic, but remained together to back Copeland, first in the studio and then on tour as she promoted the album. The tour was a success; the shows were solid and the audiences receptive. . . . Touring as support to Sly Stone, she took to introducing her band as Funkadelic — much to the headliner’s annoyance. The last straw came when she allowed the band to take one of her encores. Stone insisted she either leave the tour or lose the band. She lost the band. Following her solo success in 1971 and 1972, Copeland faded from the spotlight.
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ruth-copeland-mn0000173522
Bob Stanley adds:
[Ruth] was taken to Invictus by her boyfriend, Motown producer Jeffrey Bowen, where she was entrusted with the potentially life-changing job of writing the lyric for the as-yet untitled “Band Of Gold” – Ruth wrote a chorus about missing her dog back in County Durham, Invictus frowned, and Holland-Dozier-Holland finished the job themselves. . . . [S]he grew up in the steel town of Consett, where “there was a dance every Saturday night at the Co-op Hall. They brought in real good bands. That’s where I went most weekends, until I joined a band called Eddie & The Intruders. . . . We played all the social clubs in the area, as well as pubs. I was 17 at the time.” Ruth’s sister had already moved to the States . . . . “I left for the US at 18 and started sitting in at clubs in Detroit as soon as I got there.[“] . . . She signed a deal with Invictus in 1969. “Their plan was to create another Diana Ross – only white this time.
https://recordcollectormag.com/articles/music-visit-ruth-copeland-diana-ross-poetess
* Wikipedia tells us that:
“The Skye Boat Song” is a late 19th-century Scottish song adaptation of a Gaelic song composed c.1782 by William Ross entitled Cuachag nan Craobh (“Cuckoo of the Tree”). In the original song, the composer laments to a cuckoo that his unrequited love, Lady Marion Ross, is rejecting him. The 19th century English lyrics instead evoked the journey of Prince Charles Edward Stuart (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”) from Benbecula to the Isle of Skye as he evaded capture by government soldiers after his defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skye_Boat_Song
Here is Paul Robeson’s version:
Here is Roger Whittaker:
And here is Tom Jones! —
Sir Harold Boulton, 2nd Baronet composed the new lyrics to Ross’s song which had been heard by Anne Campbell MacLeod in the 1870s, and the line “Over the Sea to Skye” is now a cornerstone of the tourism industry on the Isle of Skye.
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