I turned the TV on, and caught the last few minutes of A Taste Of Honey (1961). Some children were singing The Big Ship Sails Through The Alley Alley O. Wow. I think it was kindergarten when we sang that song. I remember going to… an amusement park? when I was about five, and there was a booth where you could record a record. I sang the song onto the vinyl. I haven’t heard the song since, though it comes to mind once in a while.
What was the movie that included the song fragment: ‘My girl’s a corker / she’s a New Yorker / I’d do most anything to keep her in style’?
No idea. Just caught the end of it.
Here ya go.
http://harrier.net/songbook/manual/mygirl.html
and
Thanks, TL. I’ve found the kids’ song on other online folk resources too.
But the first line, solo female voice, featured several times, over non-related visuals, (maybe a riverside/dockside scene?) in a movie. Don’t know why it stuck in my mind, but it did. Can’t remember any more about the movie, but it threw a switch of some kind in my mind.
So I appeal to the TM’s!
The song was originally about the Manchester Ship Canal, opened in 1894.
It’s sung in the background towards the end of Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs, about the famous Manchester artist L.S. Lowry:
Something obvious just struck me about The Big Ship Sails through the Alley Alley O.
Originally it must have been “The big ship sails through the canal-y-aly-o”. The canal being the Manchester Ship Canal.
But it’s not easy to sing, especially by small children, so the first syllable was dropped, and ‘canal-y’ became ‘aly’, which then came to be spelled ‘alley’.
I have no idea why why all the online versions seem to associated with pirates.
I too naturally assumed it had something to do with the Manchester Ship Canal, but as with anything folkloric, it might have built on or be an adaptation of something older