When I first heard Nina Simone sing this, and for a long time afterwards, I thought she was singing about a “Sea Lion Woman.” Some time later I found out that the song title, which appeared as the B-side of Mississippi Goddam, is actually See-Line Woman.

Yet I now discover that it’s an old playground song from the Deep South with origins as a 19th century seaport song about prostitutes lining the dock to greet mariners returning to port… creating a “sea line” (or “see line”) advertising their services to the sailors.

In a major change of emphasis it was first recorded in the 1930s, as a field recording, by Christine and Katherine Shipp – the daughters of a black church minister in MIssissippi.

And that early version was​ recorded as Sea Lion Woman.

When Nina Simone recorded it, on the B-side of her first protest song Mississippi Goddam in 1964, she rearranged the song with those syncopated handclaps and percussion, and renamed it See-Line Woman.

It’s also been covered by groups as diverse as The Easybeats in 1967 – a groovy psychedelic version – and Irish band Hothouse Flowers 20 years later, while Feist later recorded her own faithful version in 2007 as Sealion, while there have been dance remixes, including Masters At Work‘s version for the Verve/Remixed compilation of 2002.