I posted the above picture on the Photography group blog a while ago. Today seems a fitting day to show it here since that’s what it looks like today as well. Click it to make it bigger.
My title today is a line from the song “The Big Rock Candy Mountain”. This is a very old song that goes back to at least the 19th Century and possibly even as far as the early 18th. It is thought that it might have been a Highwayman recruitment song, and there are many versions of the lyrics. It is certainly a “Hobo” song at least. I bet Bob Dylan had heard it at the start of his career.
Clearly being a Highwayman isn’t the sort of career that was likely to attract a wife back in those days, so they needed to attract kids as apprentices to keep their business going. Hence this song. It was first recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928, and his recording of it was used in the brilliant film “O Brother Where Art Thou”.
Here is my recording of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZanRKcBpyc
Cheers, Tom.