Big Rock Candy Mountain song

foghorn

foghorn

Valued Senior Member
I have just come upon something that now puzzles me...
When I was at primary school, aged about seven, I remember on some afternoons we had to sit on the Hall floor around the music teacher's piano.

I was never any good at picking up words to songs, so, it's rather odd that I can remember the opening few words from 'Big Rock Candy Mountain.'

Oh, the buzzin’ of the bees and the cigarette trees

The soda water fountain

Where the lemonade springs and the bluebird sings

In that Big Rock Candy Mountain.
Click to expand...

Since those school days I have never heard this song on shows or media (well, not very often.)

I recently caught myself singing those few words and thought I would at last look them up on Google.

I am now puzzled by... Why did the music teacher teach us to sing a song about down and outs?

I don't think any of us young kids would have any idea (back then) what the song was about?

The song words...

Two versions,

First version has the line ''Where they hung the jerk that invented work''.


Second version has the line ''Where a bum can stay for many a day, and he won’t need any money.''

https://www.lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/b/bigrockcandymountain.html

Ps. Am I blogging?
Pss. Would anyone like to jam with me?
 
foghorn said:
Since those school days I have never heard this song on shows or media (well, not very often.)
Click to expand...
It's on the sound track of O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Another olde song in a similar vein is, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum.

foghorn said:
I was never any good at picking up words to songs
Click to expand...
Back in the seventies, I heard a song on the juke box in a bar once. I remembered almost every word until, many years later I found it on a cassette in the bargain bin - Roland The Headless Thomson Gunner, by Warren Zevon (maybe best known for Werewolves of London). Today, Roland The Headless Thomson Gunner is the only song I have on my phone. :)
 
Aside, I guess, :leaf:

Maybe art is an attempt to explain what we are too ignorant to know exactly.

And I wanted to post this remake of a song - it's like everyone can remember the verses but can't remember which band originally made the song.

 
foghorn said:
I have just come upon something that now puzzles me...
When I was at primary school, aged about seven, I remember on some afternoons we had to sit on the Hall floor around the music teacher's piano.

I was never any good at picking up words to songs, so, it's rather odd that I can remember the opening few words from 'Big Rock Candy Mountain.'



Since those school days I have never heard this song on shows or media (well, not very often.)

I recently caught myself singing those few words and thought I would at last look them up on Google.

I am now puzzled by... Why did the music teacher teach us to sing a song about down and outs?

I don't think any of us young kids would have any idea (back then) what the song was about?

The song words...

Two versions,

First version has the line ''Where they hung the jerk that invented work''.


Second version has the line ''Where a bum can stay for many a day, and he won’t need any money.''

https://www.lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/b/bigrockcandymountain.html

Ps. Am I blogging?
Pss. Would anyone like to jam with me?
Click to expand...
Wasn't that Dylan's hero Woody Guthrie who sung about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl refugees.
eg This Land is Your Land

Who will write songs to remember the Covid Pandemic years.

Who will commemorate the years of Trumpian Disinformation and manipulation of the willing fools?
 
DaveC426913 said:
Was good the first million times I heard it.

If I never hear it again, it will be too soon.
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helluva good artist
but
poor guy, suffers from depression
but, in his day
(40 years ago)
he was in his hay day

..........................................
should i play it again,
just for you?
 
candy said:
I remember my dad having an lp with this song on it. I can not remember who sang it.
Click to expand...
You could probably get it on wax cylinders. :p

A friend of mine used to have an old, old, old gramophone that played cylinders. He had such classics as Marching Through Georgia and My Pretty Quadroon
 
sideshowbob said:
It's on the sound track of O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Click to expand...
Yes, I did like that film and one of the few times I have heard it. They used an original 1928 recording of Harry McClintock singing there.
sideshowbob said:
Another olde song in a similar vein is, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum.
Click to expand...

I can only think my old music teacher must have thought us kids in that class had no chance in later life, hence teaching us 'Big Rock Candy Mountain'.

sideshowbob said:
Back in the seventies, I heard a song on the juke box in a bar once. I remembered almost every word until, many years later I found it on a cassette in the bargain bin - Roland The Headless Thomson Gunner, by Warren Zevon (maybe best known for Werewolves of London). Today, Roland The Headless Thomson Gunner is the only song I have on my phone.
Click to expand...
I thought at first by the title, it had something to do with WW1, but it's modern day mercenary. I don't like your taste in music
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:biggrin:
candy said:
I remember my dad having an lp with this song on it. I can not remember who sang it.
Click to expand...

It seems others besides Harry McClintock 1928 ( O Brother, Where Art Thou?) have sung it... see my OP link.

geordief said:
Wasn't that Dylan's hero Woody Guthrie who sung about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl refugees.

eg This Land is Your Land
Click to expand...
I like some of Guthrie's stuff. But he would have been only 16 in 1928 when that old guy is singing it at the opening of O Brother.
 
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Burl Ives did a sanitized version of Big Rock Candy Mountain. He turned it into something resembling a children's song.
 
gmilam said:
Burl Ives did a sanitized version of Big Rock Candy Mountain. He turned it into something resembling a children's song.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that, that sent me a looking...
Hopefully this was the version the music teacher was teaching us. Unless that teacher was working out her notice that week???
 
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