I’ve posted some informal lessons on YouTube that show syncopation and other techniques that you can use to make an old-time tune your own. The video uses Julianne Johnson in aDADE and is aimed at intermediate players who are comfortable with drop-thumbing and plucks. It assumes you already know the basic tune.
Part 1: The A melody (covers “easing” into a note, syncopation, M-skips)
Part 2: The B melody (covers plucks and more M-skips)
Julianne Johnson with syncopation: Twice slowly and then at normal speed
The version from Tom, Brad & Alice’s Holly Ding CD, with some, er, experimental percussion (darbuka, a Middle Eastern goblet-shaped drum). Recorded when I hadn’t played darbuka for 8 years so it’s a little rough.
The banjo is tuned eDGDE but is capoed at the 3rd fret to be in tune with the drum. I capo at the second fret to get into eDGDE, so moving the capo to the 3rd fret makes the open strings fD#G#D#F. The “Sail Away” part of the melody (high part) starts on the open first string: open first, first at the 3rd fret, open first again, third string at the 4th fret.
This is a very different “Sail Away Ladies” that Tommy Jarrell said he learned from a Civil War veteran in 1916 or ’17. I’ve also heard the tune on The Young Fogies, played by the Plank Road String Band.
I love the lyrics that Tom, Brad, and Alice found in “Negro Folk Rhymes” and put to this tune:
Never you mind what the rich folks say
May the Mighty bless you, sail away
A common Swedish walking tune, played as a processional at weddings and such. I have sweet memories of this tune from the days when Folklore Village was a one-room schoolhouse lit by candles.
Banjo Meets World 
