The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #4571   Message #3885445
Posted By: Jim Dixon
29-Oct-17 - 10:39 AM
Thread Name: Origins: The Big Rock Candy Mountain(s)
Subject: Lyr Add: THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAINS (Soundie)
YouTube has a "Soundie" version of McClintock's song, from 1942. (Soundies were early film analogues of music "videos." There were once machines like juke boxes that played these films in bars.) There's a jazzy orchestral arrangement, with an interlude of boogie-woogie piano, but no guitar is seen or heard. I believe that's really McClintock singing and acting. The words are changed, and scenery added, to emphasize lust instead of gluttony. This version has some historical interest, being reflective of its time perhaps, but it doesn't make me want to sing it:


THE BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAINS
As sung by Harry McClintock in a 1942 Soundie.

One evening as the sun went down and the jungle fire was burning,
Down the track came a hobo hikin', and he said: "Boys I'm not turning.
I'm headed for a land that's far away beside the crystal fountains.
So come with me; we'll go and see the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

"In the big Rock Candy Mountains, the living there is swell,
Why, Ziegfeld never met such gals; in the mountains there they dwell.
Why, they make your life a pleasure; they are at your beck and call,
Where you sing and play and the grub they pay,
That's the life for me, where the drinkin' is free,
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, you lead a life of ease.
Why, the place is full of cuties who always strive to please.
You never do no walkin'; you ride in rollin' chairs,
Where the champagne pump throws its spray,
And you make hey-hey all the livelong day,
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."