Gandy Dancers

Railroad workers who laid the tracks that first crossed America were often called gandy dancers. Find out what it was like to work on the rails in those frontier days!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is jobsolete. I'm Matt Beat and I'm Helen Hong,
and today we're appreciating gandy dancers. I got gale and
gave it Town, didn't want to see you killers, and
went down, got a gale Town. Being a gandy dancer

(00:25):
was not easy. It was a physically demanding job, backbreaking
and boring. It required precise coordination, often in the hot
summer sun, all day long. Now, if you've never heard
of gandy dancers before, you're probably wondering right now, what
the heck is he talking about? That sounds like you

(00:48):
need a performing arts degree, right Well, no, gandy dancers
were railroad workers, the ones who laid and maintained railroad
tracks before Miss Sheens took over the job. But one
thing is for sure, it did sort of actually seem
like they were dancing while they worked. So get out

(01:09):
those dancing boots and feel the rhythm. As in this episode,
we're riding the rails with gandy dancers. I have my
dancing boots on. Honestly, the first time I heard the
term gandy dancers, I automatically thought, are we talking about

(01:30):
go go boys at a gay club? Like that's literally
what it sounds like, have you ever been to a
gay club, Matt, not recently? Well, let me enlighten you
about gay clubs. A lot of gay men's clubs will
hire go go boys to dance like practically naked on
top of the bar and it's extremely enjoyable. Oh yeah,

(01:52):
like Coyote Ugly that that movie that came Yeah yeah, yeah.
But imagine like most of the client teller men and
all the day siss are men. Oh I'm imagining, But
that is not what a gandy dancer. Is it off?
Gandy dancer is a railroad worker. I mean that's I

(02:15):
never would have The terminology is definitely threw me off.
Let's just start with an expert that we spoke with,
Dr Maggie Holtzberg, who is the manager of the Folk
Arts and Heritage Program at the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She
did a documentary about gandy dancers. It came out back

(02:36):
in the nineteen nineties. So here is her definition of
gandy dancer. Gandy dancers refers to the manual labor that's
needed to build railroad tracks by hand and also to
maintain them. In the West, it was Chinese Americans, you
ha had Irish in other parts of the country Italians,

(02:58):
but in the Deep South it was prime merrily African
American men who did this work. And we're talking about,
you know, the first middle part of the twentieth century.
I'm glad she mentioned the Chinese railroad workers because there
were a lot of Asian Americans and people like who
had just come off the boat from Asia who were

(03:18):
doing this really tough labor of laying the railroad out
to the west. But it's interesting. I never thought about
that different regions of the country would have different demographics
of people who were doing this work. Yeah, and I
think it's important to differentiate because I guess they're called
they're they're called different things different places. I would say
section hands maybe is the most common, but gandy dancers

(03:42):
were like a subgroup within that that became known as
having a certain rhythm to the work that they did.
I want to go back to the gandy dancer term,
because Chinese workers actually were called coolie's. It was actually
a very derogatory racist term. Is gandy dancer a racist

(04:02):
derogatory term like Cooley is? It's not, but it's weird
because no one knows for sure where the name came from.
There's different theories. Obviously, the dancing part kind of makes
sense where that would come from, because it looked like
they were dancing. But the gandy part, Now, there's one
theory that they waddled like ganders. Do you know what

(04:24):
ganders are? I didn't know either until I looked it up.
Apparently ganders are male geese, like when when a goose
waddles around like left and right like, which is coincidentally
is also how I dance on the dance floor a flack,
how do the gander? But no, there's also another theory

(04:46):
that there was this company, it's called the Gandy Tool Company,
and and they may or may have not existed in
Chicago as a source of the tools that these Gandy
dancers used as they worked on these tracks. That's a
way boring their explanation than the than the goose. I
let's go with the goose explanation. Yeah, this company, there's
not really any proof that existed anyway, So yeah, we're

(05:08):
going with the geese. So the people themselves would call
themselves that, like I'm a Gandy dancer, Yeah, and there
was a there was some pride to it. This is
a clip from the documentary that Dr Maggie Holtzberg produced
late nineteen eighties early nineteen nineties just to document actual
gandhy dancers who had been retired for many years. But
we're still around. So here are Cornelius and John and

(05:31):
they're just gonna explain why it was called dancing gandy.
I think manufacturers produced the tubes, and I think it
was a tag that was put on on to the men.
But the dancing thought came from the rhythm of the men.
So they put the two with the tubes, made back

(05:54):
and he was the rhythm supplied by the men. Again,
answer makes two step forward, take two step forward and
one step back too long, step forward and step back
to put you in your position. There as a caller
there to synchronize the efforts. See, because if you don't

(06:16):
synchronize the efforts, then if everybody's picking up at different times,
no man can lift that reel. What you're doing is
not only moving the rear, you're moving the entire reel, tires,
everything that's there. And this is why I called for
tremendous coordination and strength. Oh well, there goes our goose theory.

(06:40):
I still am going with the goose theory legend. I
know he gave it the proper explanations, but I really
like the Goose theory better. Let's talk about the actual work.
So it's not just the building of the tracks, it's
the maintenance. And over time the four worse and vibration

(07:00):
of the trains and just the sheer weight of the
trains makes it so there's a little tiny shifts in
the tracks, and so that crews would have to come
through and actually realign the tracks and make sure they
were level again, and because otherwise you would have a
derailment of a train, which is no good. Each crew
member had a lining bar and it was shaped to

(07:22):
a chisel point so it would dig down into the
ground to the gravel underneath the rail. And so they
would all take a step toward the rail and pull
up and forward on their pride bars to move the
track to kind of get it back into to where
it should be. So if if one section of the
railroad is like slightly off, you have to shimmy it
back into place and then reattach it down to the ground.

(07:44):
They would have to do it several times before they
get actually get it to move. So each piece was
so heavy that it took a bunch of people at
the same time to get this piece of steel to move. Yes, basically, yeah,
I'm breaking out of sweat just listening to this, Matt.
I mean, this is not a cushy time behind a
podcast microphone. We have a good This is like intense

(08:08):
manual labor. The crews were like four all the way
up to ten at a time, and then there'd be
one guy yelling, kind of leading, saying like and this
was kind of usually the person that kind of started
these these chants or little songs that they did to
kind of keep the rhythm, because rhythm was important. Well, like,
have you ever tried to move a couch up or downstairs? No?

(08:30):
I hire hire people for that. Mat, you're talking to
the most unathletic person you have ever met in your life. Like,
if I had to lift anything more than like a
dinner plate, I'm like, oh God. Well for us working
class folks like me, basically, if you're you're moving something
that's long and awkward and heavy, everybody kind of has

(08:52):
to coordinate because if either someone's getting hurt or someone's
crashing into something. But yeah, it was really cool that
she was able to document but it wasn't just in
the Deep South, and they did this apparently this was
like this phenomenon happened all over the world in terms
of teams singing like to kind of and like, if

(09:13):
you think about it, this was not a fun job,
but maybe this made the job that was very physically
demanding more fun. You know, you think about it, like, Okay,
this sucks, we're out here, but we might as well,
you know, turn it into a little singing. And I do,
and I do see how you would want some sort

(09:34):
of beat too, like pulled lift the rail to kind
of like when you see like people who like in rowboats,
you know, if there's a team of people who are
rowing a boat at the same time and everyone has
to be synchronized to row at the same time. Yeah,
it was so critical too, because it'd be a dangerous job.
So Maggie's going to tell us about the dangers. Many

(09:55):
of these men talked about just brutal conditions. First of all,
you're in a Deep South, which is hot to begin with,
and it was probably a long day. I do remember
one guy talking about if there was creasote that fell
off the box car, it would just peel you like
hot water. You know, this was really not easy work.

(10:18):
You had to be coordinated and you had to watch
out for each other's safety. So that's another aspect of
coordinating your movements. Wait if if what fell off of
the what basically tar was melting its Yeah, and it
would fall off of the truck and melt you. It

(10:38):
was just so hot out that it was that it was.
She was just trying to demonstrate how hot it was. Wow.
So so you're just sweating and it's like three million
degrees and you're like trying to lift this huge heavy
steel bar. Wow. Okay, let's get into the music. God

(11:09):
gal and gave it town dude. Want to see you
killers went down? Got a gal beat down? Want to
see you do it? I get it right, I got
the beat. I could be a Gandy dancer. No, I couldn't.
I don't have any muscle mass whatsoever. But did you

(11:31):
hear the three beats in silence? Like the silent you know,
like the that was the part where they're pushing the
part of the trucks into Oh so the silence was
when you pulled or pushed right. Oh, that's so interesting,
Like and it Paul done, Paul yes, so you're singing

(11:53):
while you're working. It gives you a beat to pull too,
and also it makes the work a little bit more
fun because there you're entertaining yourselves. Yeah, there were other
reasons to hear Maggie and Cornelius will explain in this
next clip. And then you have the caller who is
sort of like the conductor, right. He starts singing a

(12:15):
work call that will get everybody wrapping their lining bars.
These are these long, heavy lining bars and they would
wrap against the rail in rhythm, and then the lyrics
of the song and the timing would instruct them of
when to actually shove it all together. He would have
to make suita calls to motivate them to call upon

(12:40):
that sprint that they didn't know that they had. Sometimes
they were fun calls, sexual calls, or religious type calls,
so he had to have a repertoire. What did he
say sexual type calls? Of course? What is that means?
Sexual type calls? Well, you know, some of the songs

(13:03):
were a little edgy maybe, but we had that like
parental advisory, I love this, I love it. So you're
working hard and it's like mostly men who were doing
it and they're like sweating in the hot summer sun.
So they're like, hey, let's make this song really funny,
so like pull this steel bar as if it's a

(13:25):
hottie at the club exactly. M Yeah, I know. Motivation
was the other really big part of it, Like yeah,
because again it's repetitive. Imagine doing that over and over
and over all day long. So yeah, this would break
up the monotony, and it had like a religious feel
to it, as I think I forgot his actual words

(13:47):
that he said saying the religious He said it was
either he was it was either like sexual calls or
religious calls. I guess you couldn't put those two together.
So you're either you're either lie, alright, guys, this is
a sexual song, or alright, guys, we're talking about Jesus now.
So well, you know, it makes sense. I do think

(14:10):
that was a great way to motivate them, and I
the thing that came to the song that came to
mind to me when I first kind of was listening
to this interview was, uh, whistle while you work from
snow White in the Seventh World. That was how all
these little animals that she was forcing the work and
clean up the house. I don't know how she how
do you get Disney animals to clean your house? I

(14:31):
want to get that in my house. That was how
she was. I have a dog and he won't clean anything.
But yeah, so Maggie goes into more of this what
like as far as the sexual calls, singing for these
men served several purposes. But it didn't just coordinate their movements,
but it uplifted them. And it also was a way

(14:53):
to take their minds off of what they were doing
the difficulty of it. So in that case, you know,
some of the songs were really dirty. You know, they'll
be talking about women, and I mean one of them
is you know Birmingham and oh hammet all you ought
to see that ham up my girl's drawer. I got it, Yeah,
live behind it, Jael, she got up on the door.

(15:15):
She got car Quis Sale, throw it over, birming Ham
and no hammet all you already see the hammer my
gad row throw it over to whoa, there are no
ham up her drawers? What? And that's not really that bad.

(15:39):
That was one of the few that they could actually
include in the movie to not make it rated art
I guess or wow, that is yeah, I mean there's
a stereotype even today of like construction sites being like,
you know, dirty, like boys clubs, because it's mostly men
who are working and they're like cracking dirty jokes all
day and like whistling at women when they walk by,

(15:59):
and yeah, so it's kind of there's a little bit
of that element of like, you know, if you just
get a bunch of men together and they're doing manual labor,
you know, things that are going to get naughty. Yeah.
There were also a lot of songs that we're a
wonderful way of getting back at the white foreman, you know,
and saying things that he couldn't understand. It was like

(16:22):
that tradition of coded language that again would be uplifting
to you as an insider. The men would would gather
in a close group and they would sing things that
would if the boss really understood what they were singing,
would not have liked it. Little things like boss can't read,
the boss can't right, boss can't tell when the track
is right, and I'm sure there are much worse things

(16:44):
than that. Or they would purposely put the line out
of alignment when they could hear that the train was coming,
and then he had to, you know, plead with them
to get it right. Bar can't read the ride, Bar
don't don't we're tracking ride this goal the goal. Look

(17:05):
at about hi he stands stand more like a prominent
bost man. Look both he's dann Wow, that's so interesting.
Of course, there's there is an element of like racism
here because if it's like mostly black workers and then

(17:28):
the foreman is white and he's like bossing them around
and telling them what to do, and like oftentimes he
wouldn't be a nice guy. Yeah, you would want to
talk trash about your boss, and if you anybody, if
he's standing right there, you'd have to find a way
to do it, kind of like flipping the boss the bird,
but using your pinky finger instead. And it's like an
inside joke like yeah boss, But yeah, there are there's

(17:51):
kind of there's often that dynamic in most workplaces. You know,
whoever is managing typically does get paid a lot more
and kind of looked down on who's who they are managing.
But it was even more extreme with the railroad workers
of course, and this is with Chinese Americans. It was
pretty bad as well. So we've we've talked about how difficult.

(18:27):
This work was, but for some of them at least,
and I've seen conflicting reports on this, but for some
of them it was surprisingly decent pay and it was
a respected profession. So Cornelius and John talk about this
a little bit. Those men who woked on the railroad
were the pride of the community, and the women took

(18:51):
pride and they just didn't let that man go away
from whom looking inn it kind of way. His clothes
have to be a cutain we started iron and especially
after they moved to some of the other jobs like
the brakeman of the fireman on the railroad. If you
re road man in my time, he was noticed by

(19:16):
white and black. He was noticed because that was money.
That was it, because that was the only money that
black folks and most of the white people if they
weren't already headed, so the money would Ah, this is
really interesting. So this was a time when there wasn't

(19:36):
a lot of economic opportunity for black Americans in the South.
Did we say what era this was like in the
early I guess we have not said that yet, but yeah,
so basically since railroads since that began, so so like
eighteen hundreds, eighteen thirties and then all the way up
to about the nineteen fifties to nineteen sixties when machines

(19:59):
started to do the job instead. And we'll get into
more of that later, but yeah, so like if you're
talking this started, you know, the railroad started being laid
in eighteen thirties, that's even before the Civil War, so
like probably at one point slaves were doing this, and
then after the Civil War it was like Lobe, it
was like, you know, obviously black Americans were not getting

(20:22):
paid the same as white Americans were and doing the
same kind of jobs. So so this was maybe one
of the more prestigious jobs that an African American could
do at the time. Wow. So if these guys that
she's interviewing, you know, they're like, like how old were
they and like when were they working? Do you know?

(20:44):
They must have been probably in their seventies, maybe eighties,
So this was they would have been, like I said,
they were working basically in the Jim Crow South. So
it was still you know, in the nineteen forties and
fifties and sixties were still talking about like a time
where there's just not many opportunities for Americans. So yeah,

(21:06):
so maybe this is one of the jobs that was
like a good job that you could get even though
it was such hard work and you earned every single penny.
But but it sounds like if you did, if you
could get this job, it was actually pretty good compensation.
One of the men was saying that even the women
in that community, the black women that were married to
these men, would wouldn't send them out like looking a mess,

(21:29):
Like their clothes would be pressed, and they took pride
in their appearance because it was kind of like an
upstanding job and they didn't want them to look messy
when they were going to work. Yeah, I mean, I
think that was my biggest takeaway from what she was
just saying, was that the fact that there was this
prestige and even if the pay wasn't like that high,

(21:53):
it was still it was just important work. I mean,
they literally were making sure that these railroad tracks were
safe so that there would not be accidents, train accidents.
They're saving lives. But actually there were a few women
who were gandy dancers that we know of. Mostly yeah,
during World War Two, because of a worker shortage because

(22:17):
so many men were fighting in the war, many women
stepped up and kill these positions. And course, of course
the women who took over all the jobs during the war.
That's so interesting. And so they were lady gandy dancers. Unfortunately,
I don't know if we have any records of specific

(22:38):
songs that they sang. Man would I loved if I know?
I wonder they also got naughty. If if it was
like a team of lady gandy dancers and they're doing
this gruff physical manual labor and they're chanting in there like, yeah,
grab that man's you know, when he comes home, I'll

(23:00):
show him home. I don't know. If I was a
better chanter, I would chant something about hot steel or
hot rails. Am I right, Megan the stallion? CARDI b
Megan the stallion, Please add me in your squad. They're

(23:20):
never going to add me in their squad. That so
obviously it seems like this is not a job anymore.
So like what happened to the job. What happened was
these just insane machines that now do the work. Okay,
So so this used to be like really hard work
that was done by these crews of workers, and then

(23:43):
machines came along and took over the jobs, which partially
was good because it was like really hard, dangerous work.
But also this was kind of like a cool gig
that you could get that you no longer can get. Yeah,
I mean really just a big part of railroad culture.
You do see nostalgia for it. There's even a Gandy

(24:06):
Dancer Festival. What does one do at a Gandy Dancer festival?
Like contests for chanting and contests for picking up this
deal bars are like, what's Oh, I don't you know.
I've never been to one. But Matt, well, I know
what we're doing. We're going to meet up at the
Gandy Dancer Festival August. Oh. Snap, if as long as

(24:31):
there's no global pandemic, I say, we meet up at
the Gandy Dancer Festival. I'm looking at the website right now,
and I believe they actually sing these old songs, the
Gandy Dancer songs. So I'm actually really legitimately want to
go to this thing. So I want to hear like
an R rated one. I don't think you're going to
see that at this festival. It looks like it's a

(24:53):
kid friendly event, arn it. Thank you to Maggie Holtzberg
for giving us her wisdom on Gandy Dancers and if
you want to watch your film that's called Gandy Dancers,
you can see it online at folk Streams dot net.
And let us know if you have any relatives who
are Gandy dancers or do you know any gandy dancing

(25:15):
chance or especially lady Gandy dancing chants. I'm definitely interested
in that, me too. Tweet us at job Salete pod
on Twitter. Job Salete is produced for I Heart Radio
by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge Podcast for You. It's hosted
by us Helen Hong That's Me and Matt That's Me.

(25:38):
The show was conceived and produced by Steve Za Markey,
Anthony Savini, and Jason Elliott. Our editor is Tommy Nichol,
Our researcher is Amelia Paulka, our production coordinator is Angie Hyms,
and theme music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Special
thanks to our I Heart Radio team led by Nikki Etre,
Katrina Norvell, Lee Cantor, Mangesh Hatti, Khador, Will Pearson, Connell

(26:03):
Byrne and Bob Pittman h