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GANDY DANCERS
n/a
Member Posts: 168,427 ✭
Someone brought up Gandy Dancers in another post, and I remembered something about songs, so found this article, Rather interesting..
What are Gandy Dancers? If you already know, you're one up on where I was a couple weeks ago.
As we lolled about the house one evening, the phone rang and we spoke briefly to friends who were driving through the province of Ontario. I forgot to ask why they posed the query. I think they saw a crew working along the railroad.
Aha! It had something to do with the railroad. The signal deteriorated and I lost the cellphone connection. I fired up the computer and searched for Internet references.
There were pages and pages of stuff related to Gandy Dancers. Some had connections with railroad history. Many did not. There were Gandy Dancer restaurants, Gandy Dancer clubs, a Gandy Dancers' Ball, Gandy Dancers photographs and paintings, along with lots of antique and modern railroad tools.
Thanks to the Internet and friends such as historian Peg Barcomb, I was soon completely up to speed. Peg has lived part of the D&H Railroad history in Rouses Point. She has written and spoken many times on the subject. Railroads were key to our growth.
As I sat in her apartment, we compared childhood recollections. I recalled running each afternoon to the Thornwood train station with my little buddies. We waved at the conductors and the engineers. We were thrilled to get a wave and a tip of the hat in return.
The sound of the behemoth steam locomotives is indelibly imbedded in our memories. Peg agreed. She remembered rushing out to wave at the trains when she was a child in Rouses Point. I asked Kaye and her eyes lit up as well. Her pleasant memories were connected with trains up in Saranac Lake.
Peg reminded me that her late husband, Pete Barcomb, was himself a Gandy Dancer with a section crew out of their northern Clinton County community. She described their responsibilities to include "maintenance of way," meaning that they took care of the track and everything along the right-of-way.
Pete's railroading career spanned 17 years, from 1942 until 1959. Peg later reminded me that one of our beloved Dr. A.B. de Grandpre's sons earned college money during the summer by working with Pete as a Gandy Dancer.
I visited dozens of Web sites, trying to trace the Gandy Dancers back to their roots. It all started with the Gandy Manufacturing Co. in Chicago in the 1800s. They made railroad tools.
The African-American workers used the rhythms of motion and song to make the long work days laying track, go by smoother. If you have seen movies depicting the precision involved in one hammer striking the spike just a split second after the other, while singing work songs, you'll get the idea.
It must have been pure harmony of motion. The workers said their music helped to lighten the monotonous, backbreaking labor as the ribbons of track were laid across the Southland.
How many Gandy Dancers were there in a crew? I believe the number ranged from eight to 14. Their songs - some made up as they worked and others almost chants, used over and over again throughout the years - survive to this day, in specialty songbooks, festivals and recordings. They are a precious part of our history.
The all-black crews were often led by a white foreman and the "dancers" were said to have incorporated secret messages to one another within the lyrics of their songs.
There were different rhythms and words to fit each job on the railroad. Many crews had a person known as a "caller" who would act as the lead singer. He was the one whose task it was to relay special job instructions to the other workers while at the same time, using the song to lift their spirits.
National Public Radio, of which I am a huge fan, has chronicled and preserved the Gandy Dancers' traditional music in several program series throughout the past two decades or so.
I ran across mention on the New York University Web site of a documentary film titled "Gandy Dancers," described as "focusing on the expressive culture of eight retired African-American railroad-track laborers." The 30-minute film, released in 1994, is said to "center around the Gandy Dancers' singing of railroad calls, which survive as artistic expressions of religious faith, working conditions and sexually explicit poetry." I'd love to see it some time.
The original Gandy Dancer concept involving the often-barbarous hand labor involved in laying railroad track was eventually replaced in the 1960s by machines. Civil rights, unions and modern work safety standards have not only altered the face of railroad construction, but the face of our nation. Thank God for that.
Section crews are still called Gandy Dancers, but few are aware of how much "Blood, sweat and tears" came before.
"I dont care how thin you make a pancake, it still has two sides"
"A wise man is a man that realizes just how little he knows.
What are Gandy Dancers? If you already know, you're one up on where I was a couple weeks ago.
As we lolled about the house one evening, the phone rang and we spoke briefly to friends who were driving through the province of Ontario. I forgot to ask why they posed the query. I think they saw a crew working along the railroad.
Aha! It had something to do with the railroad. The signal deteriorated and I lost the cellphone connection. I fired up the computer and searched for Internet references.
There were pages and pages of stuff related to Gandy Dancers. Some had connections with railroad history. Many did not. There were Gandy Dancer restaurants, Gandy Dancer clubs, a Gandy Dancers' Ball, Gandy Dancers photographs and paintings, along with lots of antique and modern railroad tools.
Thanks to the Internet and friends such as historian Peg Barcomb, I was soon completely up to speed. Peg has lived part of the D&H Railroad history in Rouses Point. She has written and spoken many times on the subject. Railroads were key to our growth.
As I sat in her apartment, we compared childhood recollections. I recalled running each afternoon to the Thornwood train station with my little buddies. We waved at the conductors and the engineers. We were thrilled to get a wave and a tip of the hat in return.
The sound of the behemoth steam locomotives is indelibly imbedded in our memories. Peg agreed. She remembered rushing out to wave at the trains when she was a child in Rouses Point. I asked Kaye and her eyes lit up as well. Her pleasant memories were connected with trains up in Saranac Lake.
Peg reminded me that her late husband, Pete Barcomb, was himself a Gandy Dancer with a section crew out of their northern Clinton County community. She described their responsibilities to include "maintenance of way," meaning that they took care of the track and everything along the right-of-way.
Pete's railroading career spanned 17 years, from 1942 until 1959. Peg later reminded me that one of our beloved Dr. A.B. de Grandpre's sons earned college money during the summer by working with Pete as a Gandy Dancer.
I visited dozens of Web sites, trying to trace the Gandy Dancers back to their roots. It all started with the Gandy Manufacturing Co. in Chicago in the 1800s. They made railroad tools.
The African-American workers used the rhythms of motion and song to make the long work days laying track, go by smoother. If you have seen movies depicting the precision involved in one hammer striking the spike just a split second after the other, while singing work songs, you'll get the idea.
It must have been pure harmony of motion. The workers said their music helped to lighten the monotonous, backbreaking labor as the ribbons of track were laid across the Southland.
How many Gandy Dancers were there in a crew? I believe the number ranged from eight to 14. Their songs - some made up as they worked and others almost chants, used over and over again throughout the years - survive to this day, in specialty songbooks, festivals and recordings. They are a precious part of our history.
The all-black crews were often led by a white foreman and the "dancers" were said to have incorporated secret messages to one another within the lyrics of their songs.
There were different rhythms and words to fit each job on the railroad. Many crews had a person known as a "caller" who would act as the lead singer. He was the one whose task it was to relay special job instructions to the other workers while at the same time, using the song to lift their spirits.
National Public Radio, of which I am a huge fan, has chronicled and preserved the Gandy Dancers' traditional music in several program series throughout the past two decades or so.
I ran across mention on the New York University Web site of a documentary film titled "Gandy Dancers," described as "focusing on the expressive culture of eight retired African-American railroad-track laborers." The 30-minute film, released in 1994, is said to "center around the Gandy Dancers' singing of railroad calls, which survive as artistic expressions of religious faith, working conditions and sexually explicit poetry." I'd love to see it some time.
The original Gandy Dancer concept involving the often-barbarous hand labor involved in laying railroad track was eventually replaced in the 1960s by machines. Civil rights, unions and modern work safety standards have not only altered the face of railroad construction, but the face of our nation. Thank God for that.
Section crews are still called Gandy Dancers, but few are aware of how much "Blood, sweat and tears" came before.
"I dont care how thin you make a pancake, it still has two sides"
"A wise man is a man that realizes just how little he knows.