Gandy Dancers and Grizzly Bears

Some years ago Master Chorus Eastside performed an original narrated show, created by a couple of the members and myself, in celebration of the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and I needed a song about a grizzly.

Grizzly encounters made quite an impression on the Corps of Discovery and a song seemed in order, but I couldn’t find a thing.  I finally found a folksong collection put together by one of the great collectors of American folk music, Alan Lomax, and in it unearthed a very simple melody, almost like a children’s song, but so simple and seemingly limited in scope that I didn’t know how I could shape it into a performable piece.

There was no information about it other than the cryptic notation, “Southern folksong.”  As far as I knew there were no grizzlies in the South, so it was a puzzle, but I didn’t give it much thought.  I needed a grizzly number! I continued to ponder the piece’s possibilities, and one day, unexpectedly, the entire structure sprang into my mind, and I knew exactly how to arrange it.  I used lots of unstable diminished 7^th chords against a honky-tonk piano, and each verse changed key, rising higher and higher and galloping faster and faster as the wabblin’, squablin’, huffin’ and puffin’ long-haired bear drew closer and closer, until we scream (on a diminished 7^th chord!) in fright at the end.  We sang it (and will do so again in our June 30 concert) as if we were playfully scaring kids around a campfire in the woods at night, and the audience usually responds with a “whoop” and a chuckle at the end. 

Over time the real story behind Grizzly Bear gradually unfolded.  It saw birth as a prison work song that originated in the Texas system, possibly as far back as the 1930s, a system populated mainly by black prisoners, at least some unfairly incarcerated.  And it is almost undoubtedly about the kind of bear that spends most of its time on two legs instead of four!  Maybe a tough prison warden named Carl “Beartrack” McAdams, or maybe a tough prison guard named Joe “the Bear” Oliver, no one knows for sure.  It’s been recorded in various versions, most notably a riveting one by Harry Belafonte.  My arrangement includes only the fairly innocent verses in the folksong book because those were all I knew.  Notice the menacing verses in Belafonte’s version!

But my favorite is one recently dug up by the author of last week’s blog of a prison crew chopping trees, with some commentary by Lomax himself.  It is mesmerizing in its rhythmic drive, authenticity and grittiness.

These are fascinating snapshots of the way folk song adapts as it moves through a culture, and an example of the invaluable contributions made by African Americans to our music.  This is borne out by the subject of last week’s blog, the railroad work song Sis Joe.  Below is a clip of a railroad crew in action with a lining bar, and they have the most poetic name, Gandy dancers, named after the manufacturer of their tools and by the dance-like fluidity of their movements.  Like the prisoners in the above clip they use the rhythm to magnify their strength, preserve their stamina, and lighten their hearts.

Watching these men coordinate their movements through song sends chills along my spine: it is so earthy, so strong, so rooted in triumph over difficulties, so utterly the stuff of life.

The sum is greater than the parts, in more ways than one, and our culture would be much the poorer without this heritage.

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside

The Mystery of Sis Joe: Ghost Workers on the Railroad

One of Master Chorus Eastside’s altos became quite intrigued by a number we are rehearsing, so she decided to do some research into the colorful railroad language it employs, and then wrote the following blog entry.  She has a witty and imaginative turn of mind and a ready way with words, and I always love what she writes.  I think you will too!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside

♫

 Sacramento~Sis Joe is a song which will be on the program of MCE’s Independence Day concert on June 30, 2013.

We can establish historically and folk-lorically that “Sis Joe” is the name of a train.

 We hear the voices of the passengers who are headed for the gold fields of California to make their fortunes. What a great time to be alive! Those were the days of the good old time—1849!—when an enterprising American could stake a claim and dig up chunks of gold “as heavy as a brick”!

There is another set of voices in this mysterious song. The words are in English, but the language is a foreign one to us today. What do you make of these words?

All right now boys, let me tell you about Sis Joe,

This time Sis Joe!

On the M & O, 

Track heavy, but she will go,

On the Mud Line,

Jack the rabbit, 

Take a lining bar, 

For to line this track, 

Take a mule on the sand,

Take a jack, get a man!

In some versions of this song, the words are arranged in rhyming couplets:

Take a mule, take a jack,

Take a lining bar, for to line this track,

On the mud line, on the sand,

On the mud line, get a man,

Jack the rabbit, on the M & O, 

Track heavy, but she will go.

I have learned to depend on the kindness of the World Wide Web in solving mysteries. Not much escapes the breadth and depth of information available to us on the Internet. I began my research expecting to find a clear, definitive translation of these words. All I found was other researchers seeking the meaning of these enigmatic phrases.

There were a few clues here and there—definitions of the separate words. Some words had multiple definitions and there was more speculation than certainty in the information provided. The trail of clues led to the ultimate source of information--a book by John and Alan Lomax, who collected and compiled two volumes of American ballads and folk songs in 1941, often making recordings of singers and taking detailed notes. “Sis Joe” appears on page 262 of their Our Singing Country: A Second Volume of American Ballads and Folk Songs.

Here is my “free” translation of these ghost voices from the past. Most “experts” agree that these voices are singing about working on the railroad. Outdoors, that is, with hand tools and man power.

“All right now boys...! “The leader calls the men together, gets their attention and describes where the job will be, what they will be doing, what tools they need and how they will get to the work site.

“Okay guys, we will be working on the Mud Line section of the M & O railroad. We have to line the track so that it is straight and true. Bring your lining bars. It’s going to be heavy work, but we can do it. We have to re-arrange the track—you will be using your jack tool to pull up the stakes. We’re going to jack that rabbit. For you new guys—the “rabbit”—that’s where we pulled a section of rails away from the main line to sidetrack the train onto flat ground. That keeps the train from building up speed on the down grade and having a wreck. Now we have to join the rabbit back to the main line. We are going to all pile into the mule, that little steam locomotive over there, so we can get to the work place. Bring your lining bars, someone bring a jack or two, and we’ll need another man.  Someone go over and rouse up Jim Williams. The passenger train’s due now, and we got to get down there and line that track up straight so it’s just like a knitting needle before the train gets there...”

That’s my version, and if someone knows a better version, well, speak up now, and sing it yourself.

Roberta DeBruler

MCE musical correspondent

Work Songs as Folk Music

Work songs are a fascinating segment of folksong.  Many came about to accompany hard physical group labor, where they helped to coordinate the work and lighten the hearts of the workers.  They are usually simple, repetitive, rhythmic, almost hypnotic in character, as befitted the nature of demanding manual labor.  Sailors sang them, railroad men, lumberjacks, field workers, just about anyone who had to work together as a group, and they are a wonderful source for choral arrangements.

One of Master Chorus Eastside’s singers has been doing a bit of digging into a couple of the numbers in our upcoming Celebrate America concert, and one of them in particular has an intriguing history.  Hoedown, arranged by Norman Luboff, is a real foot-tapper of a barn dance, but its roots lie in another direction: the stultifying cotton fields of the South.

It’s better known to some as Pick a Bale of Cotton, unforgettably sung by Huddie Ledbetter, or Leadbelly as he is known.  He was a blues singer and balladeer in the first half of the twentieth century who sang the traditional songs of his youth, and often transformed them in the process.

He took Pick a Bale of Cotton, a slow-tempo working man’s lament, and changed it into a dance number with a message.  The original (if there is ever an original in folk music!) sadly moaned, “Never will I pick a bale-a-day,” but in the song Leadbelly boasted, “I can pick a bale-a-day,” the triumph of a working man over truly adverse circumstances.

The Luboff choral arrangement picks up the repeated phrase, “Gonna jump down, turn around and pick a bale of cotton, gonna jump down, turn around and pick a bale a day,” and builds an entire category of work out of it: cooking beans, planting peas, doing the things “I oughta,” accompanied by whoops and sniffs, until it turns wickedly fast at the end and declares, “Won’t jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton!”  Doesn’t that ring true with every worker, no matter who they are or what they do, at the end of the day!

Folksong is endlessly adaptable, and these two arrangements essentially convert this simple work tune, probably born in slavery, into a declaration of freedom.  Amazingly, in this YouTube age, I can’t find a video or recording of Luboff’s Hoedown for comparison.  To hear it, find a recording, or come to our concerts on June 30 if you can!  It will make you want to dance—freely!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside

American Folk Music: Window on the American Soul

A nation’s folk music provides a window into its heart and soul.  Its history, its aspirations, its struggles, its work, its play are all found in the music of the folk.  For that is what true folk music is, music created by ordinary people in the midst of getting on with life.

Across the centuries folk around the world have come up with songs to accompany just about anything: singing babies to sleep, working in the fields, dancing, carousing, worshiping, entertaining children and adults, enshrining history, battling enemies, mourning, finding love or leaders; you name it, there is a song to go with it.  Folksong seems to spring spontaneously from the stuff of life.  And because of that, we don’t usually know who wrote it.  But that’s what makes it so very human; just folks making music, not for gain, but because it speaks about their lives.

Because of the rich and diverse cultures that have fed American music, our folksong is particularly varied and colorful.  Just think of it: spirituals, cowboy songs, Appalachian tunes, shape-note hymns, dancing songs, sea shanties, blues and Cajun music; such a kaleidoscope, and all of it a part of our song heritage.  Some of it came with settlers from the Old World, some sprouted out of our own soil, fed by Africans, Hispanics, and Europeans of all stripes.

It’s a fascinating polyglot, and has led to many a wonderful choral arrangement.

Take, for example, one of the most beautiful of sea shanties, Shenendoah.  Sailors sang shanties to accompany their shipboard chores, but this one may have originated on American or Canadian inland waters.  Perhaps that fits the song, for the lovely Shenandoah Valley in Virginia is bordered by both the Potomac and James Rivers.  The word Shenandoah is probably of Native American origin, and some musicologists hear both Irish and African American influences in the tune.  Such an American mixture!

Whatever its origins, it expresses a longing that is universal in the human breast, the longing for home.  Maybe because of that, and maybe because of the beauty of the melody, it has been cherished and passed from singer to singer, taking on varied names and melodic licks as it traveled, for several centuries now.

Here is how composer James Erb captured that sense of longing.  It’s one of the numbers that MCE will sing in upcoming All-American Independence Celebration on June 30.  And we love it!

Dr. Linda Gingrich

Artistic director and conductor

Master Chorus Eastside