Did you notice in “The Summer Man“, when Don walked into Gene’s party, the children were playing musical chairs to the tune of ‘The Big Rock Candy Mountain“? I recall hearing a similar sanitized version of this hobo song at school when I was a child, and indeed, when you look into the history of the song, it was clearly not written for children—or was it?
This song was written by Harry McClintock in 1897 and was most recently brought back to fame in the excellent film,” O Brother Where Art Thou?” whose soundtrack featured long forgotten hillbilly and country gospel music. But the song itself, like Mad Men, turns out to have many layers, some quite surprising.
You may have noticed that I mentioned ‘sanitized’. And there are a lot of people think it’s a children’s song, and use it as such. Indeed, as a kindergartner in 1966, I recall Miss Griffith playing this for us on the portable boxy turntable that every elementary classroom had while we played musical chairs. We didn’t listen too deeply to the lyrics; we basically heard the good stuff about lemonade, bluebirds, but mostly the big rock CANDY mountain. I suspect it was the candy element of the title that made it so popular as a children’s song, but if you look into its history, you find that it was written as both a hobo’s dream of Utopia, and as a sarcastic commentary of how real hobos may hope to entice real little boys to join them on their journeys (and not for candy either). But before I get to that, I’ll share with you some of the elements that make it a hobo’s paradise.
Here’s the original recording by McClintock, made kid-friendly by this clever animation:
It begins with a hobo escaping some ‘jungle fires’ and telling his colleagues he’s not turning back, but
“…headed for a land that’s far away, besides the crystal fountains” (sounds good so far)
Then he implores them to join him:
“Come with me, we’ll go and see The Big Rock Candy Mountains”
As he starts off, it seems like a nice place that’s ‘fair and bright’:
But as this song progresses you see elements that make it especially hobo-friendly:
“The handouts grow on bushes…” (No need to beg)
With “cigarette trees” (free smokes!)
And “…streams of alcohol” (free booze!)
“The barns are full of hay (safe, cozy sleep)
“And the hens lay soft boiled eggs” (great if you have no teeth)
“A lake of stew and Whiskey too” (more hobo cuisine)
Where “You never change your socks” (Either they magically regenerate or you just don’t need them).
Then along with these creature comforts, comes authority with no power
“All the cops have wooden legs,” (hence they can’t catch you)
“The bulldogs have rubber teeth” (a bite won’t hurt)
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railway bulls are blind (free travel!)
And most important: “The jails are made of tin…you can walk right out as soon as you walk in” (no incarcerations)
And finally:
“I’m bound to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that created work…
I’ll see you all this coming fall in the big Rock Candy Mountain!”
As a hobo’s paradise, this is pretty easy living, but as this published and performed version ends, it leaves off the final verse, which paints a quite darker picture of hobo life, one that Dick may relate to. It’s the after verse, the reality of what happens to the target of the hobo, the one whom the hobo was trying to join him in the first place. It is in the tune of the first verse and goes:
“The punk rolled up his big blue eyes
And said to the jocker, “Sandy,
I’ve hiked and hiked and wandered too,
But I ain’t seen any candy.
I’ve hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
And I’ll be damned if I hike any more
To be buggered sore like a hobo’s whore
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.”
With this shocking revelation, you can see why McClintock cut this from his recorded version. But this was the full version from his street busker days. And McClintock mocked how the real hobos tried to recruit children here. I wouldn’t be surprised, but sad, to know that some succeeded. (Remember how Dick admired the hobo in “Hobo Code”)?
Of course, the irony is that it’s used at little Gene’s party is not lost:
“Big Rock Candy Mountain”=Hobo=Dick Whitman=Don Draper.
One thing is for sure, the PTA mothers at Gene’s party would have been totally mortified if they knew all the original words to the song, and would have never used it (although the booze and tobacco references were fine!)
Ironically, the family-friendly company L.L. Bean uses “Big Rock…” as a jingle for their products! Is that your doing, Don?
http://homadge.blogspot.com/2010/08/llbeans-big-rock-candy-mountain.html
By the way, I don’t condemn this song for its shock value; I think it’s really brilliant, but so sad when you think about it.
50 Responses to “The Big Rock Candy Mountain; Children’s Song or Hobo Paradise Come-On?”
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Good pick-up. I was re-watching the episode today and heard the word “hobo” in the lyrics of the musical chairs song, which I then recognized as BRCM. I was wondering if its use was part of the reason there was no music during the credits. The song itself was so sad and lonely sounding for a party, and it had to come to a stop in order to play the game.
Perhaps that was the intent. The music stops, everyone scrambles to find his or her place, and inevitably someone is left out and the loser of that round….
Around 1897, a “punk” referred to a kid/young adult male who had sex with men, usually older men. There were many different names and types of homosexuals in that era, and each one has its own characteristics. See George Chauncey’s “Gay New York” as my reference.
Wallace Stegner novel? Wikipedia; spoilers for the novel in the link.
The novel is probably not being alluded to.
This is a very dark and disturbing post, or the allusion in the show is very dark and disturbing, especially if the last two lines of the unexpurgated version are considered.
Henry Francis is a “transient worker” in a way. Maybe I need to look up the relationship between Rocky and Lindsay in 1965.
Okay, another way to interpret this, adding Betty’s line “We have everything”, is that the Francis house is the BRCM. We have heard the word “whore” in that house before.
Henry may need to move to Manhattan, taking Betty with him. She will be needed on his arm. She will not be pleased.
And Don is no longer the hobo, but the guy who’s “damned if he’ll hike [run] anymore.” Which is certainly more Don’s attitude at the end.
This is a GREAT thread! I’m grinning from ear to ear, because usually I pick up on things that other people pick up on but are more witty and clever in how they post..but this one totally escaped me and..it’s brilliant!
Earlier in the episode, Betty threatened to throw Henry out and told him that he could go back to his “hotel, or wherever he was living”. She also made a snide reference to his castle a servants.
It seems that in Betty’s mind, she is the punk and Henry is hobo.
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I guess the most Betty-positive interpretation of the allusion is that by handing Gene to Don without rancor or hesitation, Betty has broken free of her obsession, and is no longer the “hobo’s whore.” Okay.
But I am not seeing the love for Henry.
Of course considering at the time he claims he wrote this song, McClintock was well aware of the harsh reality of these migrant workers’ lives (having actually rode and worked the rails himself), the song was most likely a parody of the Gilded Age robber barons’ disparaging depictions of the hobo and his cohort.
It’s interesting to remember the West never could have been settled and exploited as quickly or as cheaply without the labor of the shiftless, irresponsible, lazy American hobo.
I don’t think Don’s assimilation of the “Hobo Code” is necessarily meant to be considered a character flaw.
I noticed Sally got to keep her short hair.
JR, it’s very hard to take short hair away.
Betty’s life is built on fantasies that help her endure reality. Henry was her fantasy of a white knight who rescued her from lying, cheating Don/Dick who wasn’t worthy of her – a veritable hobo..
But now Henry isn’t perfect, ie he won’t let her be self-absorbed, and she has to create the fantasy that “we have everything” to fend off the realization that her decision to leave Don might not have been all that wise.
In keeping with the Hillbilly theme:
1. The key account this week was Mountain Dew (It’ll tickle yore innards – a real hillbilly slogan), and there is creative mixing up drinks, but the best they could come up with was vodka & dew. Peggy tells them they need another ingredient to make it a “cocktail” (and thus some class!) otherwise it is just another hillbilly drink…
2. Harry has a sighed photo of Buddy Ebsen (The Beverly Hillbillies) in his office as he is trying to convince Joey to audition for a role on Peyton Place
I always thought the hobo in MM was the good guy and Archie who after promising to pay him, didn’t, was the bad guy. I remember googling “Hobo Code” and seeing all kinds of stuff about it, I was surprised and hadn’t really expected to see anything. It was not a bad code for hobos to live by. Is it possible that Don was a hobo for a while before he joined the army?
I remember a 76rpm record with “The big Rock Candy Mountain” being the first record I ever heard when I was probably 4 years old in the early 50s. I loved it very much and would listen to it over and over again. It’s kind of disappointing that it mentions buggering boys in the final verse.
It’s not very likely that a hobo would stop by the Francis place is Ossining, but if one did, I wonder what kind of mark or sign they’d leave about the people living there. And what might a passing hobo tell Sally or Bobby about people and life?
I thought the lyric on the recording was “Where they hung the Turk that invented work”
Holy cats! My dad used to sing the kids’ version of this song to us when I was little, and I’m sure we had a recording of it. But in the kids’ version they left in the reference to cigarette trees, which always bother me as a child. Who wanted those? Yuck.
Echoes of medieval rhymes about the black plague and rape devolving into children’s nursery rhymes. Betty was not the first person to need the world to come at her pre-sanitized, as it were.
Wow, the hobo/hillbilly/moonshine connection in this episode is interesting – in Don’s flashback when Archie is killed – a young Dick is given moohshine to drink – now Don is trying to wean himself away from his dependence on drinking.
Thanks for all of your wonderful input!
Yes Josie, the hobo that Dick met was much more of a good guy than Archie would ever be, a better father figure. I bet Betty sees Don as a hobo that she doesn’t want in her home, but has no choice.
Don holding his son up in the air reminded me of photo of Kennedy with John Jr. being held in a similar manner. I think Betty sees Don and her marriage to him as a big disappointment. Lying, cheating and more of the same. I don’t think there’s much love either way between Betty and Henry. Although I think Henry is more together than Don and as result expects Betty to behave like an adult instead of a petulant child.
We had the kids’ version on 8-track. Man, I’m old.
We’ve seen Don integrating more and more of “Dick” into his everyday persona. If the original song represented his hardscrabble hobo beginnings, maybe the sanitized version represent the new Don, who is more of a cleaned-up version of Dick than the full-on Denial!Don was.
About those smelly cigarette trees, I think the word ‘cigarette’ was rewritten as ‘sycamore’ in the kids version, but I may be mistaken, it may have just sounded like that to my young ears.
In the background music early in this episode, I thought I heard Bethany humming this tune in the cab ride home from her date with Don.
Well, I learned something today! Thanks, Therese!
I’m a big Mad Men fan and after re-watching the above-mentioned scene, I definitely understand your vision of Don as a hobo… I’m feeling a little sad for him this season.
#22 Terese, the kids’ version I have on 45rpm says “bubblegum trees,” although I have also heard “sycamore trees.” My record is totally cleaned-up for kids, and I remember playing it over and over in the late ’50s.
Found it online (children’s version), sung by Tex Ritter. You’d never know it was a hobo song:
Like all the posts and Therese’s ideas, it seems the fans of MM may be among the smartest viewers going.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/383/origin-story
Here is a link to a story aired in August on This American Life about one of the original ad men. Listen to it and patiently wait till the end. You’ll hear a thesis put forth by the ad man himself, 50 years later, about the actual, dismal legacy of advertising men. Ironic and brilliant to people like you here who get it that while the network sells its dramatic product, adhering to the tenets of successful marketing, it self-condemns (whether it means to or not) as it reveals the dismal truths behind the American dream.
Thanks for today’s class. (Oh, and for another class, another ‘origins’ story, listen to the second interview on the link.)
Aww, Deb, didn’t Sally cut her hair in March and it is now June, so if she hadn’t gotten a shape up or a trip it seems like it would be a bit longer than it was there? I think that is what JR is referring to. Doesn’t hair grow 1/2 – 1 inch a month? So after 3 months untrimmed or maintained it would be about 1.5-3 inches longer and when you get your hair crooped a few inches can be a lot. We didn’t see it post cut but I doubt they cropped it so short that after 3 months it wouldn’t look longer than it did there, but I could be wrong.
We saw it post-cut at Sally’s first visit to Dr. Edna. It was about the same as it is now, so I assume they decided to keep it short.
Excellent observation, Therese. Wiener and the other writers do a wonderful job of reinforcing the overarching themes of the Draper story in small ways, and MM’s smart audience [as you show here] take the hint! The Hobo Code episode was an early and telling insight into what made Don Draper; the theme reappeared in the great hobo/gypsy Halloween episode; and now we have Big Rock Candy Mtn. as a little background music for baby Gene’s B-day! With Francine [the wonderful Anne Dudek] and a lop-sided B’day cake, too! Damn you, Wiener, you even fill the transitional episodes with tasty goodness!
@ #16: Yes, I hear it as “Turk” too, not “jerk”, though I suppose it could be an audio glitch. Still, that’s the sort of thing (either direction) that can happen to song lyrics over time.
Celebrity endorsements are (usually) hackneyed and lazy and whatever else Draper says, but since I’m no celebrity –
“I highly endorse KM’s linkage to the Julian Koenig interview up at #28; Timely, relevant and entertaining— a trifecta winner!”
Good stuff.
KM thanks for the link- This American Life is always excellent!
Wow, that Tex Ritter version isn’t just sanitized, it a sugar overload! Compare:
One evening as the sun went down
And the circus it was over
The tent came down and the funny old clown said,
Boys, I’m now in clover
I’m headed for a land that’s far away
beside the popcorn fountain
Now I’ll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
There’s a land that’s bright and fair
Where the doughnuts grow on bushes
And there’s lots of cookies there
Where the dogs and cats are happy
And the sun shines everyday
Where there’s birds and bees in the bubble-gum trees
By the lemonade springs
And the whippoorwill sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
The houses are built of blocks
And the little streams of soda pop
Come trickling down the rocks
The soldiers there are made of lead
And they are very brave
There’s a lake of stew and ice cream too
You can paddle all around in a paper canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain
The frogs have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay hard-boiled eggs
There’s chocolate pie in all the trees
And jam in all the lakes
Well I’m gonna go where the wind don’t blow
There’s a big free show
And there’s candy snow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
So come with me and you’re gonna see
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
Great discussion. I’m 200 years old, so the version I heard as a kid was Burl Ives’s — and it has a completely different melody. First time I heard what I assume is the traditional melody was watching “O Brother Where Art Thou?” Kind of a shock, but it made a lot more sense as a hobo’s song.
Here’s Burl — you can hear how different (and prettier) the melody is:
@ 22 Terese- The version I heard growing up was “sycamore trees.”
I’ve always wondered what Don thought about Bobby dressing up as a hobo for Halloween.
#34 Fun. For purposes of sanitizing it for kids, removing the hobo, this version kind of makes sense (heaven on earth for kids with a sweet tooth). I just wonder why the sanitizer felt (s)he had to change soft-boiled eggs to hard-boiled. Images of Easter eggs and bunny, I suppose.
Great post! I had most recently heard this song used on an early episode of “Big Love,” in which the creepy head of the polygamist’s compound, played creepily well by Harry Dean Stanton, sings this to the children as they gathered round him on the rug. Ever since then the song has totally creeped me out! And now I see it has a bit of creepy history in a way – with potential “punks” and cigarette trees, etc. Pretty funny!! I think its use in this episode, which I didn’t even notice until this post, frankly, is a little creepy too. Especially because I thought the whole party scene itself was a little strange. It didn’t look like much fun to me – older kids woodenly (forced to be?) playing musical chairs, younger kids doing their own thing. PS Please forgive my overuse of the word creepy in this post!
This is full of all kinds of awesome, especially if you’re a JoCo fan:
I also used to listen to the 78 in the early fifties. When I heard it played at the birthday party my first thought was that it was old fashioned and that its presence highlighted how stuck in the 50s they were.
When I was a little kid in the fifties, we lived near “Bums’ Jungle”. It was really an old railroad yard that had many ramshackle little buildings where hobos would stay. (they were always “bums” to us, I never even heard the word hobos then) These men would come to our door to ask for a sandwich or a quarter. By mother would oblige but my dad would get angry with her about it and she finally stopped. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t give them a sandwich.
I would really like to see flashbacks of Don’s teenage years before he joined the army. There is still a mystery there. But they’d have to get an actor who looks a lot like Don. That might be hard to do.
I hope to heck that we see Archie in a flashback this season. His hillbilly joke was priceless, and there seems to be a never ending basket of reasons as to why Don would keep “seeing” his father staring him down.
Me, too, Mark. Joseph Culp always turns in an amazing performance as Archie. He gets under my skin.
Like Sally, I was born in 1954 & the Burl Ives version of The Big Rock Candy Mountain was one of my favorite 78 rpm records. I recognized it immediately on Sunday night. I used to sing a sanitized version to my niece & nephew when they were little. (Sugar plum trees replaced cigarette trees.) Since then I had read about the original song & its dark roots. When I watched the encore the connection with the hobo theme really hit me & I thought that was why there was no music for the closing credits. As for the party itself, re babyGene’s comment, it reminded me of birthday parties I attended at about that time of friends whose mother’s were a little more uptight & controling than mine. Lots of very tightly organized games & quiet playing. My mother just turned my friends & me loose out of doors. Reflecting back on my childhood days, I am beginning to realize that the doctor’s wife who was the mom of one of my close friends may have been Betty.
I have only just seen this.Is this the only episode that doesn’t have music over the credits at the end—-I thought this significant.
There are quite a few that don’t end with music, Phil.
Phil, ep 106, Babylon, has no music over the credits, but there is the eponymous song that ends just before they roll, and you hear some traffic noise over them.
Made In America ended with a blackout and dead silence… Oh, sorry, wrong show!
On a very fine day in the month of May
A great big bum came hiking
And he seated his pratt ‘neath a big green tree
Which was very much to his liking.
On the very same day in the month of May
A farmer’s lad came hiking.
Said the bum to the son, “If you will come,
I’ll show you some sights to your liking.
“I’ll show you the bees in the cigarette trees,
The big rock candy mountains,
The chocolate heights where they give away kites
And the sody-water fountains.
“The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings,
The marbles made of crystal.
We’ll join the band of Dangerous Dan
Who carries a sword and a pistol.”
So the bum set out with the lad at his back.
For six long months they travelled,
Then the boy came back on the very same track
And this sad tale he unravelled.
“There are no bees in the cigarette trees,
No big rock candy mountains,
No chocolate heights where they give away kites,
Or sody-water fountains.
“No lemonade springs where the bluebird sings,
No marble made of crystal.
There is no such man as Dangerous Dan
Who carries a sword and a pistol.
“He made me beg and sit on his peg
And he called me his jocker.
When I didn’t get pies he blacked my eyes
And called me his apple-knocker.
“No more I’ll roam from my very fine home.
I’ll save my junkerino.
You can bet your lid that this old kid
Won’t be no one else’s punkerino.”
The buggering of the “punk” in the last verse made me think about another hobo/punk parallel in “The Hobo Code.” Elliot, the travelling salesman, is the hobo who wants to teach Sal (the punk) about anal sex. They communicate in code, and then Sal refuses to follow through or be “inducted.”
Yikes! Man this just gets darker! Phil, that’s downright frightening!