Article

The Jones Boys

Published Online February 7, 2006

Last Edited December 12, 2013

'The Jones Boys'. The story of the futile efforts of the Jones boys to make their 'goshdarn sawmill pay'. The song is well known in New Brunswick, partly because it was the favourite of the newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook, who grew up in the lumbering district of Miramichi.

'The Jones Boys'

'The Jones Boys'. The story of the futile efforts of the Jones boys to make their 'goshdarn sawmill pay'. The song is well known in New Brunswick, partly because it was the favourite of the newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook, who grew up in the lumbering district of Miramichi. When he gave a set of quarter-hour chimes to the University of New Brunswick, he had them programmed to play 'The Jones Boys'. According to the US musicologist Norman Cazden the traditional tune possibly is related to the second half of 'Turkey in the Straw'. The tune is used in the first movement of Kelsey Jones' Miramichi Ballad (1954). It is published in Fowke's Penguin Book of Canadian Folksongs (Harmondsworth, England, 1973) and in Singing Our History (Toronto 1984) by Fowke and Alan Mills, and has been recorded by Folkways (Songs of the Maritimes, FW-8744).