Name: Shanghai Red
Duration: 6 min 19 s
Channel: Dean Clark Hall
Description: "Shanghai Red" is a song by Mark Hermann. Shanghai Red was a sailors bar in San Pedro, California. It was a popular hangout for merchant marine seamen before and during WWII.

Shanghai Red

Mark Hermann

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Shanghai Red was a sailors bar in San Pedro, California. It was a popular hangout for merchant marine seamen before and during WWII.

acoustic music folk california folk rock county string mellow mark orange linda 12 troubador balladeer yorba hermann

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Mark Hermann

Mostly 12 string guitar and vocals. A longtime folk singer performing the act that's kept him out of the bigtime for years.

I began my musical career in the 70's, playing trumpet and guitar, and singing. This site contains mostly that act, which has kept me out of the big time all these years. I played full-time professionally for eight years, until I realized I preferred my meals .... you know, .... daily.

Song Info

Genre

Acoustic • Acoustic Folk

Charts

Peak #228

Peak in subgenre #39

Author

Dean Clark Hall

Rights

1999

Uploaded

January 15, 2005

Track Files

MP3

MP3 5.8 MB • 128 kbps • 6:19

Story behind the song

This songwriter is one of my closest and oldest friends.  His father was in the merchant marine before World War II and he wrote the song as something of a tribute to his father, but this is NOT his father's story!
This recording is the demo he asked me to make.
Contact me for more information or to contact the songwriter.  Thanks!

Lyrics

INTRO
I saw San Pedro fall to the wreckin' ball.
And now her history's dead.
Aye, it all turned to chalk,
and to splinters and rock,
The day they took out Shanghai Red.

Verse 1
I have not all my life been a drunkard.
I shipped out when I was thirteen.
Ya see, I longed for that realm between sailor and helm.
The wonder of man and machine.

Verse 2
It was different then on the ships,
and the women were cut from a ... gentler cloth.
And if a man gave ya guff, it was fisticuffs!
Bare knuckles and then ya'd get tossed.

CHORUS
So, we'll brag and we'll boast,
And we'll sing of the coast,
When we all were a little more free.
And we'll drink to the health of the devil himself!
And to God! And the dogs of the sea!

Verse 3
I'm rememberin' me as a cocky AB*.
Quick to fightin' and quicker to gloat.
I had nothin' to fear and a ticket to steer 
any bucket as good as could float.

Verse 4
There was lumber and coffee and straight iron ore.
Coke and bananas and flax.
From Seattle to Wilmington every sailor and longshoreman breakin' their backs!

CHORUS

Verse 5
Every night in my dreams comes a maiden
With eyes of an ebony grace.
And she woos and she coos til it's my britches I lose!
Then she leaves with a laugh in my face.

Verse 6
And the seas are breakin' over the well deck.
And the rudder won't answer the wheel.
Lord, I'm fixin' to dwell in that watery hell,
When the rocks make a bid to the keel.

CHORUS

Verse 7
In a soggy old lobby of a sailors hotel,
now I'm nothing but buckles and creeks.
So, I'm drainin' a fifth with me buckos:
Joe Biff, The Chinaman, and three crazy Greeks.

Verse 8
And you think it will all last forever
When you marry the seafarin' trade.
I was strong.  I was dumb.  
Now I'm no longer young.
And my last honest dollar's been made.

CHORUS

INTRO

* An AB is an Able-Bodied seaman.

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