Throughout the first World War amateur composer by night and clerk by day Chet Donaldson coveted the boats that glided in and out of the New York harbor. Watching them from his Manhattan high-rise office, he longed to escape the grind of U.S. society and sail to the magical land of France, the rosy image of which not even the news of trenches, mud, and blood, could discolor. Too broke in spite of his full-time employment to land a seat on a passenger liner, Donaldson hatched a scheme to stow away onto a commercial vessel and sail away to the Old World. One fateful day in January of 1919, after he had handed his landlady his keys, gathered his meager belongings, hauled them in a trunk to work, and slapped his resignation on his boss’s desk, the New York City Harbor Strike shut down the ports, thwarting his plans for glorious exodus. Instead of marching back and asking his employer to reinstate him, Donaldson decided never to give up and to wait for his literal ship to come in. In the following months he was periodically seen pacing the harbor, trying to float out to a ship on his trunk, sleeping under parked vehicles or abandoned dinghies, or humming to himself and crawling music into a little book. By the time the ports opened again in March of that year, Donaldson had disappeared, leaving nothing but his trunk and his soggy little notebook. Luckily for the annals of music history, a dock worker recovered the notes and the song “As I Go Forth Into Dreams” ended up in the Ideal Home Music Library collection. Legend has it that if you listen closely to the final chord of the song, you can hear Donaldson moaning the Marseilles.

Vocals: Michael Johnson
Piano: Jenny Conlee

Recorded in 2007/2008 In Jenny Conlee’s living room and at Reclinerland HQ in Portland, OR. Mixed and mastered by Michael Johnson and Scott Garred.