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