Steamboat Whistle Blues: Remembering John Hartford on the Illinois River By John Hartford

Oh, I started out to be a towboat man
But I never got the hang of a ratchet bar
Goin up a deckin' in the Illinois trade
With coal dust in my ear

Got stuck in the ice on Christmas Eve
And froze my ass, it's true
Just a-shiverin' and a-shakin' with a down South case
Of those steamboat whistle blues*

More than a few icy, miserable days in January of '76 I cursed the name of John Hartford. After all, it was his fault I signed on in the bleak midwinter as a deckhand on the Thompson, an Illinois River towboat that pushed barges from Havana to Joliet and back. Like John, I didn't get the hang of a ratchet bar, and the grizzled vets - the real towboatmen - had no patience for a college kid. ("I mean, I don't mind helpin' a man learn his job, but why waste time with some effin' college kid who's just gonna be here for a few summers, and if he's so smart why can't he figure it out on his own?")

Truth is, John Hartford got the hang of a ratchet bar:
For every day I work on the Illinois River
Get a half a day off with pay,
Oh towboat making up barges
On them long, hot summer's days**

But if I'd listened to him more carefully, I would have heard that the romance of the river was not in the towboats and the barges. It was in the steamboats that John worked on, piloted, played, and sang on, sang about, wrote about, and sketched elegantly in his illustrator's hand (he studied art for a year at Washington University). He fell in love with steamboats as a fourth grader in St. Louis, and his ardor never waned.

Hartford, who died of cancer last June at age sixty-three, is best remembered as the author of "Gentle on My Mind," one of the most widely covered songs in pop-music history. The Sixties' megabit, whose free-love theme and free-flowing lyric was emblematic of its time, led to stints as a writer and performer on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Show and the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.

But Hartford turned his back on Hollywood and returned to Nashville. And though he lived the rest of his life there, he ultimately turned his back on the Nashville music establishment as well in favor of his eccentric brand of bluegrass and a passion for old-time fiddling. Through it all, his love ol river lore and riverboats flowed through his music.

Though he wrote and recorded many river songs, the best remembered appear on his 1976 Grammy-winning album Mark Twang, a rich lode of references to Illinois rivers, towns, and riverboats.

Now the Julia Belle Swain is a women's-lib boat
The first I ever knew
It's got girls in the pilothouse and girls on deck
And a lady in the engine room.
Now Donna, she's got her license
And Cindy's learnin' to steer
And little Julie keeps Moon out of trouble
By wanderin off everywhere
By wanderin' off everywhere * * *

"Cindy, that's me," said Cindy Sinclair, who grew up in Petersburg and remained close to Hartford throughout his life, moving to Nashville at his suggestion and building a music-business career with his encouragement. She did learn to steer, taking turns piloting the Peoria-based Julia Belle with Hartford on long trips from Illinois to the steamboat's winter home in Chattanooga.

"It was an all-volunteer crew," she said. "It took about ten days to make that trip down the Illinois to the Mississippi, down the Mississippi to the Ohio, down the Ohio to the Tennessee, and on to Chattanooga. It was just like going back in time. John loved those trips."

And he loved the Julia Belle, a steamboat designed in the classic tradition and built in 1971 by naval architect Dennis Trone. Trone was also a Petersburg native, and his daughter was Sinclair's high school classmate, fellow musician, and ticket to the world of steamboats. Captain Trone still lives in Petersburg when he isn't piloting a new boat, the Twilight, on the Mississippi between Le Claire, Iowa, and Galena. He was captain of the Julia Belle when Hartford earned his pilot's license there in the early Seventies, and they remained lifelong friends.

But Hartford's closest Illinois friend may have been the Julia Belle herself. "John took detailed notes when he was piloting the Julia Belle, writing down his observations about the river," said Sinclair. "In his last days I would sit with him for hours and read to him from his log books."

When the Julia Belle comes to Peoria
Yon know that summer's here
And up on the Illinois River,
That's the very best time of the year

Those Steamboat Days in August,
Like a hazy, lazy dream
I wanna be at the foot of Main Street
When the Julia Belle raises steam,
When the Julia Belle raises steam***

Peoria's Steamboat Days are in June now, and the Julia Belle has left Illinois for a home in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. And — too soon — John Hartford is gone. As I think of that, I'm reminded of a line from his lament about the relocation to suburbia of country music's mother church, the Grand Ole Opry:

Another good tiling has done gone on, done gone on.****

Mark Mathewson, director of legal publishing for the Illinois State Bar Association, is a weekend musician and cohost of Bluegrass Breakdown on WUIS radio in Springfield.

* From "Steamboat Whistle Blues," by John Hartford; ** From "Long Hot Summer Days," by John Hartford; *** From "The Julia Belle Swain," by John Hartford; **** From "They'Gonna Tear Down the Grand Ole Opry," by John Hartford

ILLINOIS HERITAGE 29