Gandy dancer
Encyclopedia
Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad
workers who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines.
The specific application of the term varies from one source to another. In some texts, the term is described as specific to those workers who built the track. One text states that "layers of railroad track are hardly ever called gandy dancers," asserting, rather, that the job of the gandy dancer refers to "track examiners
", ascribing their responsibilities as "checking ties, bolts, track, and roadbed for necessary repairs." However, most sources refer to gandy dancers as the men who did the difficult physical work of track maintenance under the direction of an overseer.
There are various theories about the derivation of the term, but most refer to the "dancing" movements of the workers using a specially manufactured 5 feet (1.52 m) "lining" bar (which may have come to be called a "gandy") as a lever
to keep the tracks in alignment.
The British equivalent of the term gandy dancer is "navvy
" from "navigator", originally builders of canals or "inland navigations". In the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, Mexican and Mexican-American track workers were colloquially "traquero
s".
Others have suggested that the term gandy dancer was coined to describe the movements of the workers themselves, i.e., the constant "dancing" motion of the track workers as they lunged against their tools in unison to nudge the rails, often timed by a chant; as they carried rails; or, speculatively, as they waddled like ganders
while running on the railroad ties.
Some have identified a "Gandy Shovel Company" or, variously, "Gandy Manufacturing Company" or "Gandy Tool Company" reputed to have existed in Chicago as the possible source of the tools from which gandy dancers took their name. Some sources even list the goods manufactured by the company, i.e., "tamping bars, claw bars, picks, and shovels." Others have cast doubt on the existence of such a company.
(sleepers outside the U.S.) and the mass of the crushed rock (ballast
) beneath them, each pass of a train around a curve would, through centripetal force
and vibration, produce a tiny shift in the tracks. If allowed to accumulate, such shifts could eventually cause a derailment
; work crews had to pry them back into place routinely.
For each stroke, a worker would lift his lining bar and force it into the ballast to create a fulcrum, then throw himself forward using the bar to check his full weight (making the "huh" sound recorded in the lyrics below) so the bar would push the rail toward the inside of the curve.
The process is explained at the Encyclopedia Alabama folklore section:
"Each workman carried a lining bar, a straight pry bar with a sharp end. The thicker bottom end was square-shafted (to fit against the rail) and shaped to a chisel point (to dig down into the gravel underneath the rail); the lighter top end was rounded (for better gripping). When lining track, each man would face one of the rails and work the chisel end of his lining bar down at an angle into the ballast under it. Then all would take a step toward their rail and pull up and forward on their pry bars to lever the track—rails, crossties and all—over and through the ballast."
Even with repeated impacts from the work crew of eight, ten, or more, any progress made in shifting the track would not become visible until after a large number of repetitions. When leveling the track, workmen jacked up the track at its low spots and pushed ballast under the raised ties with square-ended picks, often leaning shoulder-to-shoulder in pairs.
As maintenance of way workers, gandy dancers used special sledge hammers called spike maul
s to drive spikes, shovels or ballast forks to move track ballast
, large clamps called "rail dogs" to carry rails, and ballast tamper
bars or picks to adjust the ballast. The same ground crews also performed the other aspects of track maintenance, such as removing weeds, unloading ties and rails, and replacing worn rails and rotten ties. The work was extremely difficult and the pay was low, but it was one of the only jobs available for southern black men and newly arriving immigrants at that time.
about the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW), Robert W. Bruere explained the economic circumstances that sometimes drove gandy dancers and other itinerant workers to join that organization:
Bruere concluded, "[t]his is a small but characteristic example of a vast system of human exploitation that has been developed by the powerful suction of our headlong industrial expansion..."
asks the question, "What is a "gandy dancer"?" Using the exact words from the publication:
Michael Quinion
identified the first known (printed) use of the term gandy dancer as 1918.
A story published in the August 1931 edition of Boys' Life
, a monthly magazine published by the Boy Scouts of America
for boys 6 to 18, mentions the term "gandy". In the story, "Eddie Parker", about 17 or 18 years old and characterized as the all-American type, takes on a job as a worker in a railway section crew. His new co-workers are all Italian immigrants, or, as referred to in the story, "snipes". The "snipes" are characterized as lazy, stupid, and lovers of garlic, olive oil, and Italian music - certainly very prejudicial by today's standards, but an illuminating look into America's past. As the story goes, Eddie figures a way to get the "lazy" Italians to work at pumping the hand car (used to get to and from the section the crew would be working on that day) by using their love of music. He explains that he "hooked a grind organ (hurdy gurdy
) onto the under frame and attached the handle to the axle crank..,[and] whenever the axel turns the handle has to follow it". Interestingly, in this story the workers are referred to as section crew workers, but the hand-car is referred to as a "gandy".
Rhythm was necessary both to synchronize the manual labor, and to maintain the morale of workers. Work songs and hollers sung in a call-and-response format were used to coordinate the various aspects of all rail maintenance; slower speech-like "dogging" calls to direct the picking up and manipulating of the steel rails and unloading, hauling and stacking of the ties, and more rhythmic songs for spiking and lining (aligning) the rails and tamping the bed of ballast beneath them. In 1939 John Lomax
recorded a number of railroad songs which contain an example of an "unloading steel rails" call, and it is available at the American Memory site. The Lead Belly song "Take This Hammer" (available on YouTube
) may be based on railroad chants.
Anne Kimzey of the Alabama Center For Traditional Culture writes: "All-black gandy dancer crews used songs and chants as tools to help accomplish specific tasks and to send coded messages to each other so as not to be understood by the foreman and others. The lead singer, or caller, would chant to his crew, for example, to realign a rail to a certain position. His purpose was to uplift his crew, both physically and emotionally, while seeing to the coordination of the work at hand. It took a skilled, sensitive caller to raise the right chant to fit the task at hand and the mood of the men. Using tonal boundaries and melodic style typical of the blues
, each caller had his own signature. The effectiveness of a caller to move his men has been likened to how a preacher can move a congregation." Typical songs featured a two-line, four-beat couplet to which members of the gang would tap their lining bars against the rails until the men were in perfect time and then the caller would call for a hard pull on the third beat of a four-beat chant. Veteran section gangs lining track, especially with an audience, often embellished their work with a one-handed flourish and with one foot stepping out and back on beats four, one, and two, between the two-armed pulls on the lining bars on beat three. Here is a vintage gandy dancer video which demonstrates the singing, the dancing-like rhythm, the lining tool, and a very large crew (note that the ballast has been removed, perhaps allowing a much greater movement of the track than most sources mention): http://www.sc.edu/csam/media/rv_high_railroad_work_song.ram
It had been many years since modern machinery had replaced section crews, so Holtzberg spoke with older or retired roadmasters who might remember the callers, or know where they might be living. She managed to locate a number of callers and interviewed them in their homes. However, the men found it difficult to call track in their living room as opposed to being out on the track with the sound of rapping lining bars to call against. They met at a nearby railroad club that was rebuilding a depot museum. In this familiar environment the men quickly began to remember the old calls, and especially so when a train passed by blowing its whistle. Holtzberg recalls the words of John Cole, at 82 the oldest of the men:
The film was completed in 1994 and is available at the website folkstreams.net. The trailer for the film is available at YouTube.
traditions brought from Africa and sea shanties
, and more recently from cotton-chopping songs, blues, and African-American church music. A good caller could go on all day without ever repeating a call. The caller needed to know the best calls to suit a particular crew or occasion. Sometimes calls with a religious theme were used and other times calls that would evoke sexual imaginary were in order. An example:
More examples of lining songs from the documentary Gandy Dancers:
Retired gandy dancer John Cole explained spike driving songs in the documentary Gandy Dancers.
In 1996 two former callers, John Henry Mealing and Cornelius Wright, received National Heritage Fellowship
awards as "Master Folk and Traditional Artists" for their demonstrations of this form of African-American folk art.
in 1951, but with gandy dancers as actual dancers at a railroad workers' ball. Laine sang it with a chorus of dancers in the 1955 comedy film Bring Your Smile Along
.
Singer/political activist Bruce "Utah" Phillips
, in Moose Turd Pie, told a tall tale
of working as a gandy dancer in the American southwest. Phillips ascribed the source of the workers' shovels to the possibly mythical Gandy Shovel Company of Chicago.
Gandy Dancer is the name of a seafood restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan
. The building originally housed the Michigan Central
depot.
The Gandy Dancer Trail is a 98-mile recreational trail
that follows the old Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie railroad grade from St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, through a bit of eastern Minnesota and terminating in Superior Wisconsin.
Rail transport
Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods by way of wheeled vehicles running on rail tracks. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles merely run on a prepared surface, rail vehicles are also directionally guided by the tracks they run on...
workers who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines.
The specific application of the term varies from one source to another. In some texts, the term is described as specific to those workers who built the track. One text states that "layers of railroad track are hardly ever called gandy dancers," asserting, rather, that the job of the gandy dancer refers to "track examiners
Rail inspection
Rail inspection is the practice of examining rail tracks for flaws that could lead to catastrophic failures. According to the United States Federal Railroad Administration Office of Safety Analysis, track defects are the second leading cause of accidents on railways in the United States. The...
", ascribing their responsibilities as "checking ties, bolts, track, and roadbed for necessary repairs." However, most sources refer to gandy dancers as the men who did the difficult physical work of track maintenance under the direction of an overseer.
There are various theories about the derivation of the term, but most refer to the "dancing" movements of the workers using a specially manufactured 5 feet (1.52 m) "lining" bar (which may have come to be called a "gandy") as a lever
Lever
In physics, a lever is a rigid object that is used with an appropriate fulcrum or pivot point to either multiply the mechanical force that can be applied to another object or resistance force , or multiply the distance and speed at which the opposite end of the rigid object travels.This leverage...
to keep the tracks in alignment.
The British equivalent of the term gandy dancer is "navvy
Navvy
Navvy is a shorter form of navigator or navigational engineer and is particularly applied to describe the manual labourers working on major civil engineering projects...
" from "navigator", originally builders of canals or "inland navigations". In the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, Mexican and Mexican-American track workers were colloquially "traquero
Traquero
A traquero is a railroad track worker, especially a Mexican or Mexican American railroad track worker . The word derives from "traque", Spanglish for "track".While the U.S...
s".
Etymology
It appears that no one knows for certain where the term originated. A majority of early railway workers were Irish, so an Irish or Gaelic derivation for the English term seems possible. Some associate the word "gandy" with the sound of the Gaelic word "cinnte", which may be translated as "constant". Another possible meaning for the word cinnte, if this is the proper origin, is "certainty," i.e., the importance of the work to prevent trains from derailing, suggesting that the workers must do their "dance" in "constant rain or withering heat".Others have suggested that the term gandy dancer was coined to describe the movements of the workers themselves, i.e., the constant "dancing" motion of the track workers as they lunged against their tools in unison to nudge the rails, often timed by a chant; as they carried rails; or, speculatively, as they waddled like ganders
Goose
The word goose is the English name for a group of waterfowl, belonging to the family Anatidae. This family also includes swans, most of which are larger than true geese, and ducks, which are smaller....
while running on the railroad ties.
Some have identified a "Gandy Shovel Company" or, variously, "Gandy Manufacturing Company" or "Gandy Tool Company" reputed to have existed in Chicago as the possible source of the tools from which gandy dancers took their name. Some sources even list the goods manufactured by the company, i.e., "tamping bars, claw bars, picks, and shovels." Others have cast doubt on the existence of such a company.
History
Though rail tracks were held in place by wooden tiesRailroad tie
A railroad tie/railway tie , or railway sleeper is a rectangular item used to support the rails in railroad tracks...
(sleepers outside the U.S.) and the mass of the crushed rock (ballast
Track ballast
Track ballast forms the trackbed upon which railway sleepers or railroad ties are laid. It is packed between, below, and around the ties. It is used to facilitate drainage of water, to distribute the load from the railroad ties, and also to keep down vegetation that might interfere with the track...
) beneath them, each pass of a train around a curve would, through centripetal force
Centripetal force
Centripetal force is a force that makes a body follow a curved path: it is always directed orthogonal to the velocity of the body, toward the instantaneous center of curvature of the path. The mathematical description was derived in 1659 by Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens...
and vibration, produce a tiny shift in the tracks. If allowed to accumulate, such shifts could eventually cause a derailment
Derailment
A derailment is an accident on a railway or tramway in which a rail vehicle, or part or all of a train, leaves the tracks on which it is travelling, with consequent damage and in many cases injury and/or death....
; work crews had to pry them back into place routinely.
For each stroke, a worker would lift his lining bar and force it into the ballast to create a fulcrum, then throw himself forward using the bar to check his full weight (making the "huh" sound recorded in the lyrics below) so the bar would push the rail toward the inside of the curve.
The process is explained at the Encyclopedia Alabama folklore section:
"Each workman carried a lining bar, a straight pry bar with a sharp end. The thicker bottom end was square-shafted (to fit against the rail) and shaped to a chisel point (to dig down into the gravel underneath the rail); the lighter top end was rounded (for better gripping). When lining track, each man would face one of the rails and work the chisel end of his lining bar down at an angle into the ballast under it. Then all would take a step toward their rail and pull up and forward on their pry bars to lever the track—rails, crossties and all—over and through the ballast."
Even with repeated impacts from the work crew of eight, ten, or more, any progress made in shifting the track would not become visible until after a large number of repetitions. When leveling the track, workmen jacked up the track at its low spots and pushed ballast under the raised ties with square-ended picks, often leaning shoulder-to-shoulder in pairs.
As maintenance of way workers, gandy dancers used special sledge hammers called spike maul
Spike maul
A Spike Maul is a type of hand tool used to drive railroad spikes in railroad track work.Spike mauls are akin to the sledge hammer, typically weighing from with a long handle.They have an elongated double faced hardened steel head...
s to drive spikes, shovels or ballast forks to move track ballast
Track ballast
Track ballast forms the trackbed upon which railway sleepers or railroad ties are laid. It is packed between, below, and around the ties. It is used to facilitate drainage of water, to distribute the load from the railroad ties, and also to keep down vegetation that might interfere with the track...
, large clamps called "rail dogs" to carry rails, and ballast tamper
Ballast tamper
A ballast tamper or tamping machine is a machine used to pack the track ballast under railway tracks to make the tracks more durable. Prior to the introduction of mechanical tampers, this task was done by manual labour with the help of beaters...
bars or picks to adjust the ballast. The same ground crews also performed the other aspects of track maintenance, such as removing weeds, unloading ties and rails, and replacing worn rails and rotten ties. The work was extremely difficult and the pay was low, but it was one of the only jobs available for southern black men and newly arriving immigrants at that time.
Economic circumstance of maintenance of way employees (1918)
In 1918, in an article for Harper's MagazineHarper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
about the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
(IWW), Robert W. Bruere explained the economic circumstances that sometimes drove gandy dancers and other itinerant workers to join that organization:
The division superintendent of a great Western railroad recently explained to me his reluctant part in the creation of the socially disintegrating conditions out of which the migratory workers and the rebellious propaganda of the I. W. W. have sprung. "The men down East," he said, "the men who have invested their money in our road, measure our administrative efficiency by money return—by net earnings and dividends. Many of our shareholders have never seen the country our road was built to serve; they get their impression of it and of its people, not from living contact with men, but from the impersonal ticker. They judge us by quotations and the balance-sheet. The upshot is that we have to keep expenses cut close as a jailbird's hair. Take such a detail as the maintenance of ways, for example—the upkeep of tracks and road-beds. This work should be going on during the greater part of the year. But to keep costs down, we have crowded it into four months. It is impossible to get the number and quality of men we need by the offer of a four months' job. So we publish advertisements broadcast that read something like this:
-
-
- Men Wanted! High Wages!
- Permanent Employment!
- Men Wanted! High Wages!
-
"We know when we put our money into these advertisements that they are— well, part of a pernicious system of sabotage. We know that we are not going to give permanent employment. But we lure men with false promises, and they come. At the end of four months we lay them off, strangers in a strange country, many of them thousands of miles from their old homes. We wash our hands of them. They come with golden dreams, expecting in many cases to build homes, rear families, become substantial American citizens. After a few weeks, their savings gone, the single men grow restless and start moving; a few weeks more and the married men bid their families good-by. They take to the road hunting for jobs, planning to send for their families when they find steady work. Some of them swing onto the freight-trains and beat their way to the nearest town, are broke when they get there, find the labor market oversupplied, and, as likely as not, are thrown into jail as vagrants. Some of them hit the trail for the woods, the ranches, and the mines. Many of them never find a stable anchorage again; they become hoboHoboA hobo is a term which is often applied to a migratory worker or homeless vagabond, often penniless. The term originated in the Western—probably Northwestern—United States during the last decade of the 19th century. Unlike 'tramps', who work only when they are forced to, and 'bums', who do not...
s, vagabonds, wayfarers—migratory and intermittent workers, outcasts from society and the industrial machine, ripe for the denationalized fellowship of the I. W. W."
Bruere concluded, "[t]his is a small but characteristic example of a vast system of human exploitation that has been developed by the powerful suction of our headlong industrial expansion..."
Early use of term
With so little understanding of the origin of the term it is impossible to know when it came into being. An article in the May 1918 edition of the weekly publication The Outlook (New York)The Outlook (New York)
The Outlook was a weekly magazine, published in New York City.-History:In 1900, the ranking weekly journals of news and opinion were The Independent , The Nation , the Outlook , and in a different class or with a different emphasis, The Literary Digest .-Notable contributors:*Theodore Roosevelt...
asks the question, "What is a "gandy dancer"?" Using the exact words from the publication:
- What is a "gandy dancer"? The words were on a blackboard outside a store on the BoweryBoweryBowery may refer to:Streets:* The Bowery, a thoroughfare in Manhattan, New York City* Bowery Street is a street on Coney Island in Brooklyn, N.Y.In popular culture:* Bowery Amphitheatre, a building on the Bowery in New York City...
. In old times they might have suggested the proximity of a cheap dance house. But the Bowery has changed. Within the space of a few blocks there are now more than a score of "labor bureaus" where formerly were low dives and "suicide halls". Inquiry of an Italian employee of the bureau elicited the information that a "gandy dancer" is a railway worker who tamps down the earth between the ties, or otherwise "dances" on the track. The announcement read:
-
- Men wanted for track work cinder ballast no rock straight time rain or shine paid weekly accommodation very good. Board furnished $5 per week. It is a good job particularly for veteran gandy dancers. It's a few miles out and requires no weeks till to gets back to this borg.
Michael Quinion
Michael Quinion
Michael Quinion is a British etymologist and writer. He runs the web site World Wide Words, devoted to linguistics. He graduated from Cambridge University, where he studied physical sciences after which he joined BBC radio as a studio manager.-Writer:...
identified the first known (printed) use of the term gandy dancer as 1918.
A story published in the August 1931 edition of Boys' Life
Boys' Life
Boys' Life is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America . Its targeted readership is young American males between the ages of 6 and 18.Boys' Life is published in two demographic editions...
, a monthly magazine published by the Boy Scouts of America
Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...
for boys 6 to 18, mentions the term "gandy". In the story, "Eddie Parker", about 17 or 18 years old and characterized as the all-American type, takes on a job as a worker in a railway section crew. His new co-workers are all Italian immigrants, or, as referred to in the story, "snipes". The "snipes" are characterized as lazy, stupid, and lovers of garlic, olive oil, and Italian music - certainly very prejudicial by today's standards, but an illuminating look into America's past. As the story goes, Eddie figures a way to get the "lazy" Italians to work at pumping the hand car (used to get to and from the section the crew would be working on that day) by using their love of music. He explains that he "hooked a grind organ (hurdy gurdy
Hurdy gurdy
The hurdy gurdy or hurdy-gurdy is a stringed musical instrument that produces sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to a violin...
) onto the under frame and attached the handle to the axle crank..,[and] whenever the axel turns the handle has to follow it". Interestingly, in this story the workers are referred to as section crew workers, but the hand-car is referred to as a "gandy".
Songs and chants
While most southern railroad maintenance workers were African American, gandy dancers were not strictly southern or African American. Section crews were often made up of recent immigrants and ethnic minorities who vied for steady work despite poor wages and working conditions, and hard physical labor. The Chinese, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans in the West, the Irish in the Midwest, and East Europeans and Italians in the Northeast laid and maintained track as well. Though all gandy dancers sang railroad songs, it may be that black gandy dancers, with a long tradition of using song to coordinate work, were unique in their use of task-related work chants.Rhythm was necessary both to synchronize the manual labor, and to maintain the morale of workers. Work songs and hollers sung in a call-and-response format were used to coordinate the various aspects of all rail maintenance; slower speech-like "dogging" calls to direct the picking up and manipulating of the steel rails and unloading, hauling and stacking of the ties, and more rhythmic songs for spiking and lining (aligning) the rails and tamping the bed of ballast beneath them. In 1939 John Lomax
John Lomax
John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist and folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk songs...
recorded a number of railroad songs which contain an example of an "unloading steel rails" call, and it is available at the American Memory site. The Lead Belly song "Take This Hammer" (available on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
) may be based on railroad chants.
Anne Kimzey of the Alabama Center For Traditional Culture writes: "All-black gandy dancer crews used songs and chants as tools to help accomplish specific tasks and to send coded messages to each other so as not to be understood by the foreman and others. The lead singer, or caller, would chant to his crew, for example, to realign a rail to a certain position. His purpose was to uplift his crew, both physically and emotionally, while seeing to the coordination of the work at hand. It took a skilled, sensitive caller to raise the right chant to fit the task at hand and the mood of the men. Using tonal boundaries and melodic style typical of the blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, each caller had his own signature. The effectiveness of a caller to move his men has been likened to how a preacher can move a congregation." Typical songs featured a two-line, four-beat couplet to which members of the gang would tap their lining bars against the rails until the men were in perfect time and then the caller would call for a hard pull on the third beat of a four-beat chant. Veteran section gangs lining track, especially with an audience, often embellished their work with a one-handed flourish and with one foot stepping out and back on beats four, one, and two, between the two-armed pulls on the lining bars on beat three. Here is a vintage gandy dancer video which demonstrates the singing, the dancing-like rhythm, the lining tool, and a very large crew (note that the ballast has been removed, perhaps allowing a much greater movement of the track than most sources mention): http://www.sc.edu/csam/media/rv_high_railroad_work_song.ram
Documentary
In 1994, folklorist Maggie Holtzberg, working as a folklore fieldworker to document traditional folk music in Alabama, produced a documentary film Gandy Dancers. Holtzberg relates,- "Knowing that the occupational art of calling was fast receding into the collective memories of railroad retirees, I was motivated to locate individuals and document what I could of their passive repertoire of work song lore, before it was lost. At the start, I contacted railroad company officials. When I asked about finding gandy dancers to talk to, there was often a short pause and then a perplexed comment as to how I knew of this arcane tradition. One man laughed and told me I would need to contact a medium since the use of section gangs was abolished in the 1960s. There were, however, some encouraging leads. An owner of a railroad maintenance company remembered "one caller with a real high pitched voice who could go ten hours a day and never repeat a chant." He agreed that it was important to document what remained of the calling tradition but said, 'One man couldn't begin to explain the process of lining track. You would have to get a crew together to do it,' which, in the end, was exactly what we did."
It had been many years since modern machinery had replaced section crews, so Holtzberg spoke with older or retired roadmasters who might remember the callers, or know where they might be living. She managed to locate a number of callers and interviewed them in their homes. However, the men found it difficult to call track in their living room as opposed to being out on the track with the sound of rapping lining bars to call against. They met at a nearby railroad club that was rebuilding a depot museum. In this familiar environment the men quickly began to remember the old calls, and especially so when a train passed by blowing its whistle. Holtzberg recalls the words of John Cole, at 82 the oldest of the men:
- "Listen to that train. Yeah! That's a train! The hawk and buzzard went up north . . . You hear it blowing. I got a gal live behind the jail . . . That's a train . . . all it took was that noise." The train whistle blew and dopplered downDoppler effectThe Doppler effect , named after Austrian physicist Christian Doppler who proposed it in 1842 in Prague, is the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to the source of the wave. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn approaches, passes, and recedes from...
in pitch.
The film was completed in 1994 and is available at the website folkstreams.net. The trailer for the film is available at YouTube.
Typical call lyrics
The caller simultaneously motivated and entertained the men and set the timing through work songs that derived distantly from call and responseCall and response
Call and response is a form of "spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the statements are punctuated by expressions from the listener."...
traditions brought from Africa and sea shanties
Sea Shanties
Sea Shanties is the debut album of Progressive Rock band High Tide. The cover artwork was drawn by Paul Whitehead.-Production:Denny Gerrard produced Sea Shanties in return for High Tide acting as the backing band on his solo album Sinister Morning...
, and more recently from cotton-chopping songs, blues, and African-American church music. A good caller could go on all day without ever repeating a call. The caller needed to know the best calls to suit a particular crew or occasion. Sometimes calls with a religious theme were used and other times calls that would evoke sexual imaginary were in order. An example:
- I don't know but I've been told
- Susie has a jelly roll
- I don't know...huh
- But I've been told...huh
- Susie has...huh
- A jelly roll...huh
More examples of lining songs from the documentary Gandy Dancers:
- Up and down this road I go
- Skippin' and dodging a 44
- Hey man won't you line 'um...huh
- Hey won't you line 'um...huh
- Hey won't you line 'um...huh
- Hey won't you line 'um...huh
- Well I've been out East
- And way out West
- I believe I like
- Alabama the best
- Been out East...huh
- Been out West...huh
- I think I like...huh
- Alabama the best...huh
Retired gandy dancer John Cole explained spike driving songs in the documentary Gandy Dancers.
- "So gandy dancing goes in with the music. That's the way it’s been since way back. In the beginning of the railroad, you had to line it up. That’s where the gandy dancers come in. And you even gandy danced behind a maul. Even spiking, you make the spike maul talk; you sing to it. Like when you’re driving a spike down. [SINGING] “Big cat, little cat, teeniny kitten. Big cat!” That’s you driving the spike as hard as you could. He’d holler, “Make a wheel out of that maul.” And that means spike fast. And so, with two of us spiking, you make that maul talk! “Big cat, little cat, teeniny kitten,” and that spike would be down."
In 1996 two former callers, John Henry Mealing and Cornelius Wright, received National Heritage Fellowship
National Heritage Fellowship
The National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar to Japan's Living National Treasure award, the Fellowship is the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts...
awards as "Master Folk and Traditional Artists" for their demonstrations of this form of African-American folk art.
Popular culture
"The Gandy Dancers' Ball" is a song recorded by Frankie LaineFrankie Laine
Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...
in 1951, but with gandy dancers as actual dancers at a railroad workers' ball. Laine sang it with a chorus of dancers in the 1955 comedy film Bring Your Smile Along
Bring Your Smile Along
Bring Your Smile Along is a 1955 Technicolor comedy film by Blake Edwards. It was Edwards' directorial debut and the motion picture debut of Constance Towers. Edwards wrote the script for this Frankie Laine musical with his mentor, director Richard Quine...
.
Singer/political activist Bruce "Utah" Phillips
Utah Phillips
Bruce Duncan "Utah" Phillips was a labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet and the "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest". He described the struggles of labor unions and the power of direct action, self-identifying as an anarchist...
, in Moose Turd Pie, told a tall tale
Tall tale
A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories such as, "that fish was so big, why I tell ya', it nearly sank the boat when I pulled it in!" Other tall tales are completely...
of working as a gandy dancer in the American southwest. Phillips ascribed the source of the workers' shovels to the possibly mythical Gandy Shovel Company of Chicago.
Gandy Dancer is the name of a seafood restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...
. The building originally housed the Michigan Central
Michigan Central Railroad
The Michigan Central Railroad was originally incorporated in 1846 to establish rail service between Detroit, Michigan and St. Joseph, Michigan. The railroad later operated in the states of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois in the United States, and the province of Ontario in Canada...
depot.
The Gandy Dancer Trail is a 98-mile recreational trail
Rail trail
A rail trail is the conversion of a disused railway easement into a multi-use path, typically for walking, cycling and sometimes horse riding. The characteristics of former tracks—flat, long, frequently running through historical areas—are appealing for various development. The term sometimes also...
that follows the old Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie railroad grade from St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, through a bit of eastern Minnesota and terminating in Superior Wisconsin.
See also
- Military cadenceMilitary cadenceIn the armed services, a military cadence or cadence call is a traditional call-and-response work song sung by military personnel while running or marching...
- Waulking songWaulking songWaulking songs are Scottish folk songs, traditionally sung in the Gaelic language by women while waulking cloth. This practice involved a group of people beating newly woven tweed rhythmically against a table or similar surface to soften it...
- Venezuelan work songsVenezuelan work songs- Songs of milking : The milking songs are those associate to the milking of cows with the purpose of tranquilizing the animal during the task. It is custom in Venezuela to give name him to the cows. The milk man flame to the cow by its name and improvises verses of eight syllables in which...
- Work songs
- Field hollers
- Sea shantiesSea ShantiesSea Shanties is the debut album of Progressive Rock band High Tide. The cover artwork was drawn by Paul Whitehead.-Production:Denny Gerrard produced Sea Shanties in return for High Tide acting as the backing band on his solo album Sinister Morning...
External links
- Memory.loc.gov John and Ruby Lomax 1939 recordings