Yikes. He sounds like he wants to be Tina Turner.
Good grief! Do you tell the folk from Cairo, IL that they are pronouncing the name of their city wrong?
That is assuming he purchased it, pirates still consider themselves sailors.
If you read the lyrics closely, the sailor man only was in Harbor Town once, on a summer’s day.
He met Brandy, wooed her (probably had sex) and left her a locket to remember him. He hasn’t been back since. All the other sailor men like Brandy, but she’s pining away for a guy that is never coming back.
Whether he has girls in lots of towns with lots of lockets, we can’t discern from the lyrics.
When the singer says he was a honest man, sure. His stories about the sea were true, and when he said “no harbor was his home”, that was true. it may even be true he loved Brandy. He loves a lot of women. But she’s still kidding herself. She’ll be sixty, still single, still waiting.
“you ever feel that kind of love that comes once in a lifetime?”
“Dozens of times.”
A tradition I strive to maintain.
Yeah, the Randy thing has been confirmed. But there are some interesting urban legends. One is that Brandy was based on the story of Mary Ellis. It would be cool if true, alas it is not.
Even in the very unlikely circumstance that this is a song about yo-ho-ho actual friggin’ pirate, that would still be an extremely expensive gift for a barmaid he’s explicitly never intending to see again.
“Whisky and rye” actually sounds pretty good! Better than “whisky and beer” or “whisky and rum.”
As I recall, residents of Cairo, IL, refer to their city as “KAY-ro.”
i thought nantucket and whaling times.
I respectfully disagree. This line makes it seem like it wasn’t a one time event.
Brandy used to watch his eyes when he told his sailor stories
I suppose that it could be but I think that would be the minority opinion.
It’s not bad. The good old boys were drinking it when I drove my Chevy to the levee.
He could have come to the bar over several nights while his ship was docked in the harbor. Doesn’t mean that he came back after it sailed.
There, you see! A timeless combination!
I figured the song took place a long time ago but I think that’s true of any maritime song that isn’t tropical or military or fishing, etc. I’m definitely imaging ropes and sails and plenty of danger.
Milwaukee has a waterfront border with Lake Michigan and it has an East Side.
I lived there for a time in the '80s. I can understand why locals call it the East Side.
I always thought of it as 1960’s. Any big ports could have fit. Long Beach and San Pedro came to mind for me. We had the navy base plus fishing fleets and the merchant marine coming in daily. The song has special meaning to me. I almost married a stripper in one of those bars and nearly 60 years later we reconnected with the same results as the first time.
You missed something there. The whole stanza reads:
Yeah, Brandy used to watch his eyes
When he told his sailor’s story
She could feel the ocean fall and rise
She saw its ragin’ glory
But he had always told the truth
Lord, he was an honest man
And Brandy does her best to understand
My take FWIW is that she “saw” those things through his story-telling. He has sailed through storms. He has sailed across large slow waves: up and down over and over and over and … . I doubt the “ocean’s rise and fall” refers to tides.
She was so into him that his stories seemed real to her. She’s never personally experienced any of that and this gives no hint to where the harbor is. Just that he has sailed the open oceans someplace sometime in his career. I agree it’s unlikely he was a US / Canadian Great Laker. But plenty of ports on the Med service ships that travel beyond the Med.
The implication being that he’s been Bilbao baggin’ a long list of vulnerable women?
Hm. An erstwhile Lord of the Rings, indeed.
That’s my impression of the lyrics also.
Oh come on she allowed herself to be seduced by this sailor she the aloof one beyond the grasp all the other guys. It’s in the lyrics just posted. Let’s go Brandi!
off topic, but as long as we’re talking about nostalgic songs:
Does anybody remember when we used to have an annual thread about Billie Joe? Every year. Starting of course, on the third of June.
etc. ,
etc.