338:"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
571:"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."
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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:
538:, 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. USC-Columbia has a vintage gandy dancer video which demonstrates the singing, dancing-like rhythm, lining tool, and a very large crew.
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663:"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. “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."
245:"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."
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working in a sawmill. He was sent to a provisional training center in Fort Slocum, N.Y., in March 1944. As the story goes, Duckwork, on orders from a non-commissioned officer, improvised his own drill for the soldiers in his unit. Soon after, all the ranks were buzzing and keeping rhythm. Col. Bernard Lentz, who was the base commander at the Fort, approached
Duckworth and asked where he developed his unique chant. “I told him it came from calling hogs back home,” Duckworth said. “I was scared, and that was the only thing I could think of to say.”
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company would take old boxcars, remove the wheels, and lay them alongside the tracks. He remembers that the workers had a lot of children who attended the public schools, but the ones he met during his childhood were "kind of meek, and took a lot of abuse from the other kids". Fleming says that "you found them right outside of all towns in
California; that was part of the landscape." He suggests that they may have been the only ones who were willing to do the job because they got the lowest pay of any railroad workers, only about $ 40 a month.
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423:. 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:
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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:
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Barry
Dornfeld, who co-authored the documentary "Gandy Dancer", believes that Duckworth's military cadence calls were influenced by his familiarity with track lining calls. Dornfeld writes, "I recently uncovered a connection between the southern African American tradition of call-and-response works songs and military cadence calls used in drill training, popularly known as “Jody calls.”
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608:, 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 imagery were in order. An example:
342:, 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, "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..."
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Gbur called the work "gruesome and boring" and apparently it was seen by the townspeople as degrading for a woman to be doing manual labor, leaving the women feeling embarrassed about the work they were doing. However, she said, "One day attitudes changed when a voice boomed out, 'I am sure proud of you ladies!'" The voice was that of the village priest.
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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
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483:, 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
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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
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as gandy dancers. In an interview one of the women, Mary Gbur, said that it was the money, about $ 55 a week, that had attracted her to the job: “Money was short and I wanted to help my children continue their education after high school. And the railroad beat the $ 18 a week the dime store paid.”
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Duckworth, who was born in 1924 in
Washington County, Georgia, would have been familiar with the use of work chants sung for all kinds of agricultural work. He was also the same generation of the gandy dancers who used chants to line track. At the time he was drafted to serve in WW II, Duckworth was
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call, also known as a Jody call, is a traditional call-and-response work song sung by military personnel while running or marching. As a sort of work song, military cadences take their rhythms from the work being done. Many cadences have a call and response structure wherein one soldier initiates a
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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
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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
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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,
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Workers also needed to periodically level the track by jacking it up in the low spots. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they raised the track with square-ended picks and pushed ballast under the railroad ties. Even with repeated impacts from the work crew of eight, ten, or more, any progress made in
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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
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as the 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." But others have cast doubt on the existence of such a company. The
Chicago Historical Society has been asked for
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It is believed that
Private Willie Lee Duckworth Sr., who was stationed at Fort Slocum, New York as one of eight “Colored Infantrymen” in 1944, made up “Sound Off”, also known as the “Duckworth Chant”, which is used to this day in the U.S.Army and other branches of the military. Media researcher
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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
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was influenced by the working songs of the gandy dancers. His father, a section foreman in Meridian, Mississippi, brought his son with him to work as a water boy where he would have been exposed to their musical chants. Rodgers went on to be known as the "Singing Brakeman" and the Father of
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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
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and then spent five years as a cook for the Southern Pacific Railroad. In a weekly series of articles he wrote of his memories of the Mexican section hands in the 1920s and 30s. He recalled that the Southern Pacific gave them a place to sleep: old boxcars converted into two-room cabins. The
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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
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Maintenance of way cyclopedia: a reference book covering definitions, descriptions, illustrations, and methods of use of the materials, equipment, and devices employed in the maintenance of the tracks, bridges, buildings, water stations, signals, and other fixed properties of
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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 toil to get back to this
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In the 2005 point-and-click adventure game, Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon, a series of achievable titles could be obtained by performing various actions. One of these titles was the 'Gandy Dancer', bestowed on players for demonstrating their effective dance routines.
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available for southern black men and newly arriving immigrants at that time. Black men working on the railroad were held in high esteem among their peers. There's a blues song that says "when you marry, marry a railroad man, every day Sunday, a dollar in your hand."
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In the United States, early 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
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line and the remaining soldiers complete it, thus instilling teamwork and camaraderie for completion. Like lining calls, they also serve to mock one's superiors, vent anger and frustration, relieve boredom, and to boost spirits by poking fun or boasting.
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In these calls the men begin to tap their gandy against the rail during the first two lines to get in rhythm and unison. Then with each "huh" grunt the men throw their weight forward on their gandy to slowly bring the rail back into alignment.
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identified the first known (printed) use of the term gandy dancer as 1918, but 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
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onto the under frame and attached the handle to the axle crank.., whenever the axel turns the handle has to follow it." Throughout the story, the workers are referred to as section crew workers, but the hand-car is referred to as a "gandy".
386:, a few women worked as gandy dancers. During the war years so many of the men were away that the U.S. developed a severe labor shortage and women stepped in to do what, to that time, had been done exclusively by men. A 1988 article in
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for hiking, biking and other recreational uses, 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.
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There are various theories about the derivation of the term, but most refer to the "dancing" movements of the workers using a specially manufactured five-foot (1.5 m) "lining" bar, which came to be called a "gandy", as a
580:"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
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George P. Reynolds, Susan W. Walker, Foxfire 10: railroad lore, boardinghouses, Depression-era Appalachia, chair making, whirligigs, snakes canes, and gourd art, Random House, Inc., 1993, page 31
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A "wide awake gang" of section crew workers. Photo shows what appear to be heel claw bars used to pull up spikes. The title and caption of the photo refer to union membership. Published in
234:, 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.
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In the 1960s Maintenance of Way laborers were still being called "gandy dancers" by track foremen in Oregon, and the tamping rod was called a "gandy pole" by most or simply a "gandy".
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and vibration, produces a tiny shift in the tracks, requiring that work crews periodically realign the track. If allowed to accumulate, such shifts could eventually cause a
1003:"the existence of a Gandy Manufacturing Company ... has not been substantiated" Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary (Random House, Inc.), 2010
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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.
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for workers employed to inspect and maintain the track. In the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Mexican and Mexican-American track workers were colloquially
454:"snipes" are characterized as lazy, stupid, and lovers of garlic, olive oil, and Italian music. "Eddie" figures a way to get the Italians to work at pumping the
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information on the company so many times that they have said, "It's like a legend," but they have never been able to find a Gandy company in their old records.
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Robert W. Bruere, The Industrial Workers of the World, An Interpretation, Harper's magazine, Volume 137 Making of America Project Harper & Brothers, 1918
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But most researchers have identified a "Gandy Shovel Company" or, variously, "Gandy Manufacturing Company" or "Gandy Tool Company" reputed to have existed in
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308:(IWW), Robert W. Bruere explained the economic circumstances that sometimes drove gandy dancers and other itinerant workers to join that organization:
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In 1994, folklorist Maggie Holtzberg, working as a folklore fieldworker to document traditional folk music in Alabama, produced a documentary film
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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
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recorded a number of railroad songs which contain an example of an "unloading steel rails" call; it is available at the American Memory site.
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John Lundeen, The advance guide, Volumes 28-29, United Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees and Railway Shop Laborers, 1919, page 88
458:– 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
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Tools for handling railroad cross ties and rails, including rail tongs (sometimes called "rail dogs"). Sketch published in 1915.
559:, around 1900. Photo illustrates the track, railroad ties, and the built-up bed, which section crews were required to maintain.
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The caller simultaneously motivated and entertained the men and set the timing through work songs that derived distantly from
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Freeman H. Hubbard, Railroad avenue: great stories and legends of American railroading, Whittlesey House, 1945, page 344
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awards as "Master Folk and Traditional Artists" for their demonstrations of this form of African-American folk art.
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Railway and locomotive engineering: a practical journal of motive power, rolling stock and appliances, Volume 15
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Calling Track and Military Cadence Calls: How an African American Tradition Influenced Military Basic Training
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40:. One man is holding a bar, while others are using rail tongs to position a rail. Photo published in 1917.
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recorded the song "Gandy Dancer", an original instrumental composition that was released on their album
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For each stroke, a worker would lift his lining bar (gandy) and force it into the ballast to create a
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A railroad section gang – including common workers sometimes called gandy dancers – responsible for
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Rhythm was necessary both to synchronize the manual labor, and to maintain the morale of workers.
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The term has an uncertain origin. A majority of early northern railway workers were Irish, so an
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257:, 1896. Above is a heel claw bar, below is a lining bar, and to the right is a straight wrench.
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Members of a section crew riding a hand car at an Indiana Harbor Belt Line railroad yard, 1943
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Maggie Holtzberg, "The Making of the Film, A diary account of the making of Gandy Dancers",
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PBS, American Experience, People & Events: Workers of the Central Pacific Railroad,
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Gimme Your Money Please / Little Gandy Dancer by Bachman-Turner Overdrive - RYM/Sonemic
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shifting the track would not become visible until after a large number of repetitions.
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in the years before the work was done by machines. The British equivalents of the term
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Jackson, Alan A. (2006). The Railway Dictionary, 4th ed., Sutton Publishing, Stroud.
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Gandy dancers are celebrated in The Gandy Dancer Festival, in Mazomanie, Wisconsin.
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workers, besides lining bars gandy dancers also used special sledge hammers called
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What is a "gandy dancer"? The words were on a blackboard outside a store on the
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In 1996 two former callers, John Henry Mealing and Cornelius Wright, received
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Retired gandy dancer John Cole explained spike driving songs in the documentary
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Sketch of standard section crew tools from the B & O Railroad, published in
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Railway workers move a cross tie using tie tongs. Photo published in 1916.
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wrote a song called "Little Gandy Dancer" that appeared on the group's
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During the early 1940s when the U.S. was involved in the fighting of
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Black historian and journalist Thomas Fleming began his career as a
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William Safire, What's the good word?, Times Books, 1982, page 180
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Between Logos and Eros: New Orleans' Confrontation with Modernity
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carried the story of several local women who had worked on the
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outside the U.S. and Canada) and the mass of the crushed rock (
211:) beneath them, each pass of a train around a curve, through
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website. The trailer for the film is available at YouTube.
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Railway workers in historical advertisement for Blue Buckle
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Early economic circumstance of maintenance of way employees
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workers in the United States, more formally referred to as
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was converted into a restaurant called the Gandy Dancer.
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Encyclopedia of Alabama: Gandy Dancer Work Song Tradition
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Laying railroad track "in the woods". Photo published in
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Possible first print appearance of "Gandy Dancer" - 1913
1099:"When Women from Coaldale were Railroad "Gandy Dancers""
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E. T. Howson, American Railway Engineering Association,
193:"Typical Stone Ballasted Track", photo published in 1921
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Ribbons of Rail – Maintaining modern American railroads
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The film was completed in 1994 and is available at the
285:, large clamps called "rail dogs" to carry rails, and
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The Columbus Free Press – Reflections on Black History
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Workers adjusting railroad tracks, Louisiana, ca. 1939
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Slavery in the new world from Africa to the Americas
1454:LyricsZoo, "Moose Turd Pie", Utah Phillips lyrics,
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The Outlook – Francis Rufus Bellamy – Google Boeken
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The African-American Railroad Experience | KPBS.org
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Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Journal
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Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Journal
1242:"African American Railroad Workers: Gandy Dancers"
281:to drive spikes, shovels or ballast forks to move
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255:Maintenance of way standards on American railways
710:"The Gandy Dancers' Ball" is a song recorded by
445:A story published in the August 1931 edition of
163:Irish or Gaelic derivation for the English term
38:maintenance of a particular section of railway
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48:Photo of railroad maintenance section crew,
1416:"Calling Track and Military Cadence Calls"
702:The Gandy Dancer State Trail is a 47-mile
1418:. Keepers of Tradition. February 15, 2011
1142:Boy Scouts of America Inc (August 1931).
923:Railway track and structures, Volume 65,
197:Though rail tracks were held in place by
129:, and East Europeans and Italians in the
27:Slang term for workers on railroad tracks
1579:Music history and comments on the labor.
1148:. Boy Scouts of America, Inc. p. 19
1629:Industrial Workers of the World culture
925:Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation
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1296:: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (
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525:There is no doubt that country singer
754:Ann Arbor (Michigan) railroad station
97:, for builders of railway lines, and
93:), originally builders of canals, or
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173:while running on the railroad ties.
1517:John and Ruby Lomax 1939 recordings
875:is an old black slang term for the
604:traditions brought from Africa and
759:Folk singer Huddie Ledbetter (aka
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729:Going to the Ventures Dance Party
503:the bed of ballast beneath them.
141:to keep the tracks in alignment.
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642:Hey man won't you line 'um...huh
237:The process is explained at the
50:Lake Erie & Western Railroad
1097:Wash, Jean G. (November 1988).
612:I don't know but I've been told
306:Industrial Workers of the World
1374:Moore, Erin Christine (2008).
1120:World Wide Words: Gandy dancer
1:
1458:, retrieved November 23, 2010
1007:, retrieved November 23, 2010
994:, retrieved November 23, 2010
974:, retrieved November 23, 2010
914:, retrieved November 23, 2010
133:all worked as gandy dancers.
1559:"Negro Work Songs and Calls"
669:National Heritage Fellowship
651:Hey won't you line 'um...huh
648:Hey won't you line 'um...huh
645:Hey won't you line 'um...huh
449:, a monthly magazine of the
1589:African-American work songs
1584:Notes on the term's origin.
298:In 1918, in an article for
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1510:Vintage gandy dancer video
990:November 25, 2010, at the
734:Singer/political activist
636:Up and down this road I go
131:Northeastern United States
75:, who laid and maintained
1230:In the Country of Country
1020:Encyclopediaofalabama.org
679:In the armed services, a
639:Skippin' and dodging a 44
1437:Gandy Dancer State Trail
1005:Dictionary.reference.com
784:Bachman-Turner Overdrive
621:But I've been told...huh
557:Northern Pacific Railway
119:Midwestern United States
1572:April 14, 2015, at the
323:Men Wanted! High Wages!
717:Bring Your Smile Along
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675:Military cadence calls
615:Susie has a jelly roll
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413:The Outlook (New York)
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127:Southern United States
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1567:The James Jordan Buck
1468:Gandy Dancer Festival
1278:on September 30, 2012
736:Bruce "Utah" Phillips
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567:. Holtzberg relates,
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451:Boy Scouts of America
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396:Tamaqua, Pennsylvania
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328:Permanent Employment!
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169:as they waddled like
152:
115:Western United States
47:
35:
1619:Obsolete occupations
1344:on November 25, 2010
1179:on November 25, 2010
1101:. The Valley Gazette
239:Encyclopedia Alabama
67:term used for early
1624:American folk music
1614:Railway occupations
1562:Library of Congress
1318:on October 24, 2010
826:List of train songs
596:Typical call lyrics
552:North Coast Limited
415:asks the question:
117:, the Irish in the
1442:2011-08-26 at the
1206:2012-02-24 at the
970:Hobo Terminology,
782:of the rock group
627:A jelly roll...huh
618:I don't know...huh
561:
523:
443:
388:The Valley Gazette
368:
352:
275:maintenance of way
271:
259:
241:folklore section:
228:
195:
159:
95:inland navigations
58:
42:
1540:Phillips, Bruce.
1521:Phillips, Bruce.
1338:"Folkstreams.net"
1312:"Folkstreams.net"
1173:"Folkstreams.net"
769:Dave "Snaker" Ray
602:call and response
500:call-and-response
481:Mexican Americans
403:Early use of term
384:Rosie the Riveter
301:Harper's Magazine
213:centripetal force
123:African Americans
16:(Redirected from
1636:
1555:
1553:
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1546:
1542:"Moose Turd Pie"
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836:Railroad shopmen
831:Military cadence
814:
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681:military cadence
470:Songs and chants
392:Reading Railroad
165:seems possible.
21:
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985:Folkstreams.net
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677:
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530:Country Music.
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408:Michael Quinion
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362:, published in
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77:railroad tracks
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565:Gandy Dancers
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1561:
1550:November 13,
1548:. Retrieved
1531:November 13,
1529:. Retrieved
1487:November 12,
1485:, retrieved
1480:
1474:
1463:
1450:
1432:
1420:. Retrieved
1396:
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1369:
1358:
1346:. Retrieved
1342:the original
1332:
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1316:the original
1306:
1280:. Retrieved
1276:the original
1271:
1262:
1252:December 10,
1250:. Retrieved
1245:
1236:
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1181:. Retrieved
1177:the original
1150:. Retrieved
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1126:
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841:Sea shanties
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778:The bassist
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725:The Ventures
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81:gandy dancer
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61:Gandy dancer
60:
59:
54:Rawson, Ohio
29:
18:Section hand
1363:Youtube.com
1348:November 3,
1322:November 5,
1282:January 12,
1183:November 5,
788:first album
780:Fred Turner
590:Folkstreams
542:Documentary
475:labor. The
460:grind organ
279:spike mauls
199:wooden ties
1608:Categories
1272:www.sc.edu
1145:Boys' Life
887:References
872:Jelly roll
851:Work songs
761:Lead Belly
704:rail trail
508:John Lomax
498:sung in a
492:Work songs
447:Boys' Life
304:about the
217:derailment
100:platelayer
790:in 1973.
773:Taj Mahal
765:work song
744:tall tale
742:, told a
723:In 1962,
584:in pitch.
360:Over Alls
145:Etymology
106:traqueros
91:navigator
1570:Archived
1545:(lyrics)
1440:Archived
1422:July 17,
1292:cite web
1204:Archived
1105:July 13,
1051:railways
988:Archived
798:See also
506:In 1939
456:hand car
203:sleepers
69:railroad
1526:(audio)
912:PBS.org
521:, 1902.
496:hollers
477:Chinese
372:bellhop
232:fulcrum
208:ballast
185:History
178:Chicago
171:ganders
157:, 1921.
125:in the
1384:
949:
485:chants
421:Bowery
366:, 1920
89:(from
56:, 1920
877:vulva
858:Notes
738:, in
536:blues
431:burg.
340:hobos
139:lever
86:navvy
65:slang
63:is a
1552:2010
1533:2010
1489:2022
1424:2015
1382:ISBN
1350:2010
1324:2010
1298:link
1284:2022
1254:2019
1185:2010
1154:2022
1107:2015
947:ISBN
771:and
752:The
494:and
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394:in
273:As
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201:(
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