William Main Doerflinger

Growing up, Doerflinger spent his school days on Staten Island and holidays on Long Island Sound where he acquired an interest in the sea. He studied languages at Princeton University and in his leisure time pursued the twin activities of stage magic and folk song collecting. After his third year at Princeton he visited Nova Scotia where he performed magic shows and collected over 60 songs that formed the basis of his 1931 Princeton thesis "Shantymen and Shantyboys",{{cite web|url=http://www.tradsongs.com/wmdoerflinger.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080928013815/http://www.tradsongs.com/wmdoerflinger.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=28 September 2008|title=William Main Doerflinger - Dean of Maritime Song Scholars (archived version)|author=Dan Milner|publisher=www.tradsongs.com|accessdate=16 January 2017}}{{cite web|url=http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp011z40kv31s|title=Princeton University Undergraduate Senior Theses, 1924-2016 Catalog Record Title: Shantymen and Shantyboys Authors: Doerflinger, William Main (English, 1931)|publisher=Princeton University|accessdate=16 January 2017}} later the title of his major published folksong collection. After leaving Princeton he initially gained employment as a social worker, undertook graduate studies at Harvard, contributed book reviews to the Saturday Review of Literature, and eventually found work in publishing, where he spent the remainder of his career, interrupted for a period during the Second World War when he worked in North Africa and Italy with the Office of War Information in the area of in psychological warfare. During his career as an editor for E.P. Dutton and Macmillan Publishing he assisted a wide range of authors including Sir Edmund Hillary, Françoise Sagan and Woody Guthrie{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/31/classified/paid-notice-deaths-doerflinger-william-m.html|title=Paid Notice: Deaths DOERFLINGER, WILLIAM M.|work=The New York Times|date=31 December 2000 |accessdate=16 January 2017}} whose autobiography Bound for Glory was edited/"organized" by Doerflinger's first wife, Joy (Homer), and published in 1943.Robert Santelli, "This Land Is Your Land: Woody Guthrie and the Journey of an American Folk Song" Running Press, 2012 {{ISBN|0762445084}} After his first wife's death in 1946 at the age of only 31,{{cite news|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B06E5DC1038E53ABC4D51DFB667838D659EDE&legacy=true|title=JOY HOMER, AUTHOR, TOOK AID TO CHINA; Daughter of Musicians, Wife of W.M. Doerflinger, Dies at 31 --Ran Japanese Blockade|work=The New York Times|date=25 October 1946 |accessdate=16 January 2017}} he eventually remarried to her sister, the writer Anne Homer, the couple going on to have a further four children,{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/21/obituaries/anne-homer-doerflinger-fiction-writer-87.html|title=Obituary: Anne Homer Doerflinger; Fiction Writer, 87|work=The New York Times|date=21 May 1995 |accessdate=16 January 2017}} among them the historian Thomas Main "Tom" Doerflinger (1952–2015), in addition to a daughter from his first marriage. Other than his collecting trips in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and New England, he collected a number of his songs from residents at Sailors' Snug Harbor on Staten Island, New York, which was set up as a retirement home for destitute sailors.

Doerflinger died at age 90 at his home in New Jersey on December 23, 2000, his second wife predeceased him by 5 years. He is commemorated in The William Main Doerflinger Memorial Sea Shanty Sessions at the Noble Maritime Collection at Snug Harbor{{cite web|url=http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2011/05/the-william-main-doerflinger-memorial-sea-shanty-sessions-at-the-noble-maritime-collection-at-snug-harbor/|title=The William Main Doerflinger Memorial Sea Shanty Sessions at the Noble Maritime Collection at Snug Harbor|date=12 May 2011 |publisher=The Old Salt Blog|accessdate=16 January 2017}}{{cite web|url=http://www.folkjam.org/node/16356/history|title=William Main Doerflinger Memorial Sea Shanty Sessions|publisher=Folkjam|accessdate=16 January 2017}} and a plaque at Staten Island commemorating his contribution to the canon of sea and lumber shanties.{{cite web|url=http://photos.silive.com/advance/2014/05/noble-doerflinger-plaque.html|title=Sea shanty concert dedication at the Noble Maritime Collection|publisher=Staten Island Advance|accessdate=16 January 2017}} A thread containing some reminiscences of Bill Doerflinger (in the context of his song collecting activities) is available on the "Mudcat Cafe" site [http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=28934 here].

Doerflinger authored three books: The Middle Passage (1939, with Roland Barker), a historical novel about the Guinea Coast slave trade; Shantymen and Shantyboys (1951),"Shantymen and Shantyboys: Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman" the Macmillan Company, New York 1951 republished with additions in 1972 as Songs of the Sailorman and Lumberman,"Songs of the Sailorman and Lumberman" Meyer Books, 1990 {{ISBN|0-916638-40-5}} documenting his major musical activity collecting songs from old sailors and lumberjacks between 1930 and 1950 (he recognised from early on that many of the men of coastal New England and Atlantic Canada spent only their summers at sea, and in the winter worked in the forest as lumberjacks, also known as shanty boys), and The Magic Catalogue: A Guide to the Wonderful World of Magic (1977)."Magic Catalogue" Dutton Books 1977 {{ISBN|0876902727}}

His published collection of over 150 maritime and lumberjack songs is acknowledged as a source for the seminal Shanties from the Seven Seas by Stan Hugill"Shanties from the Seven Seas" by Stan Hugill, P420 Routledge, Keegen & Paul 1961 {{OCLC|59001714}} and includes the later well known song "The Leaving of Liverpool", which he collected twice from different singers in New York City, as well as others such as "(Bound for) South Australia" and "Poor Paddy Works on the Railway" which became popular in the folk revival of the 1950s-1960s. A subset of his field recordings from 1942, from a retired seaman "Captain" Patrick Tayluer in particular, were assisted by loan of equipment from the Library of Congress and are deposited there{{cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/audio/?fa=contributor%3Adoerflinger%2C+william+main&c=50&all=true&st=list|title=List of Audio Recordings - Contributor: Doerflinger, William Main|publisher=Library of Congress|accessdate=16 January 2017}} (for some additional information on these recordings see the Wikipedia Leaving of Liverpool page).

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• [https://books.google.com/books?id=oxlbAAAAYAAJ&dq=Doerflinger+Shantymen+and+Shanty+Boys+mcmillan&pg=RA3-PA58 "Princeton Authors: William Main Doerflinger '31"] (Princeton Alumni Weekly, Volume 51, p.22, April 27, 1951) (accessed 16 January 2017)
• [https://www.loc.gov/folklife/news/pdf/FCN_Vol30_3-4optimized.pdf "Sung With Gusto by the Men": A Unique Recording of "The Leaving of Liverpool" in the AFC Archive]. Article by Stephen D. Winick of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress on Doerflinger's collecting of "The Leaving of Liverpool", more on informant Patrick Tayluer who supplied the song, and Doerflinger's interactions with the Library of Congress, in Folklife Center News Volume 30, Nos. 3-4, Summer-Fall 2008 (accessed 19 January 2017)
• Mudcat Cafe thread on [http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=54759 "Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman"] (including song index) (accessed 16 January 2017)

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Category:1910 births

Category:2000 deaths

Category:American folk-song collectors

Category:American magicians

Category:Princeton University alumni

Category:Harvard University alumni