Found in Franz Lee Rickaby’s "Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy," a collection of lumberjack songs from Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin that were popular in 1870-1900, the Golden Age of American lumbering, the haunting "The Little Auplaine" speaks to the dangers of the Upper Midwest’s early industries. One of the only shanty-boy songs whose original authorship is known (W.N. Allen, also known as “Shan T. Boy,” who wrote it sometime in the 1870s), Johnson’s arrangement uses an altered version sung to Rickaby by M.C. Dean of Virginia, MN. Allen’s version is in a major key, includes differences in the melody, and spells the title “The Little Eau Pleine.”
