FOLK SONGS ON THE COLORADO

FOLK SONGS OF THE COLORADO

Stars strolled the face of the then known earth and sang of the events that took place . . . or beat them out on a drum. Some centuries later, the private lives of kings and queens were spread about the countryside in dirty little ditties. . . the news of hangings and killings, feuds and worse were made into verse and sung in the public squares. Sacred rituals were, and still are, passed from lip to lip with the beat of a drum or the high thin cry of a flute, and never written in scroll because of the danger of detection by unsympathetic eyes or the evil spirits.

The folk song has a childlike simplicity. It says much in few words, and paints with subtle charm a vivid picture in the mind of the listener. It is unlike the modern American lyric which can leave nothing to the imagination, because it assumes that you have none. This defect in the modern song is nothing new. If folk songs are traced back . . . way, way back . . . we find sometimes thirty verses to a song that is now told in five. What then, has happened to make the folk song the pure art form that it is today? With the passing generations, unnecessary verses have been dropped from the original. Maybe five whole verses have been taken out and one which contains an explanation of them all has been inserted. The song is written and re-writ-ten so many times, by so many different writers that finally, only the best part of the song remains. Strangely enough, the story is altered little or not at all. Often a verse from one song will turn up in another. It need not necessarily be dropped from the original, it merely turns up in both of them.

Whenever a new place is found, or a new gimmick or fad or adventure passes under the sun, soon upon its heels follow the notes and lines in rhyme about it. So it is with the Colorado. This river has been flowing through this particular place, the Grand Canyon, for over a million years; but only since the river was charted in 1869 by Major Powell have many humans gone down it. In August of 1953 a known total of 189 was reached. So the folk songs of the Colorado River are relatively new, and as other folk songs they are written of an actual event or experience which has taken place. This doesn't mean that there hasn't been mention of the river in songs previous to this, but there are none that I know of prior to 1935 that tell of a well equipped pleasure jaunt from Lee's to Pierce Ferry, and mention a very special breed of people called “The River Rats.” The River Rat initiation ceremony was handed down to the present day river runners by Norman Nevills, who in turn got it from one of the Kolb brothers. These brothers ran down the canyon in 1911 and Emery Kolb went again in 1923 with the U.S.G.S. What songs they sang of the river, if any, are not recorded. The tradition of singing on the river goes back to Major Powell who named “Music Temple,” in the Glen Canyon of the Colorado (as he did many other places along the river), because they sat there the night they camped and listened to its huge cathedral-like structure echo and re-echo their voices, as it does the voices of today's River Rats. Again, the songs they sang were probably not yet of the river, but songs popular in 1869. Powell's diary records poems written by the men on his expedition, but I have not yet found any songs. There are conflicting sentiments regarding the title “River Rats” . . . some prefer to be called Canyoneers, perhaps a more dignified title, but one that certainly does not smack of contact with the rushing torrent that made this gorge.

The songs of the Colorado follow another standard pattern of the ancient folk song. They are first written in parody . . . that is, new words to tunes that everyone already knows. This figures, since it's more difficult for the novice to make music than to make words. One of the better exam-ples is, “When the Colorado Rises,” written as a parody on “The Whiffenpoof Song.”* When the Colorado rises And the San Juan River roars Past Norm's dear old starting place We love so well All the River Rats assemble Load the boats and man the oars While the magic of white water Casts its spell. There are phantoms on the river Of the good men gone before Of Powell, Brown and Holstrom And the rest But Nevill's voice says, “Face your danger Wherever you explore,” And he lives on in our memory As the best. Oh, we're all River Rats And we're on our way Row, row, row. We camp thru the night And we dare each day Row, row, row.

If you will take a trip across Navajo Bridge to the west side of Marble Canyon and walk down under the arm of its huge span where it clings with silver tentacles to the cliff, four hundred feet above the muddy Colorado. . you will see a plaque that reads: This man is almost totally responsible for making a thrilling sport out of a dangerous job. He was called the world's number one fast water boatman, and his expeditions, which began in 1936 on the San Juan and started down the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in 1938, continued until his death when he and his wife, Doris, were killed in a plane accident, landing at their home, Mexican Hat, Utah. He is remembered in nearly all the Colorado River songs, partly because he sang so much of the time and partly because he is now a folklore hero . . . a Paul Bunyan or a John Henry of the river. Norm himself designed the boats he used to charter passengers down these turbulent waters. He trained his own boatmen, both their oar arms and lungs, so that when he and Doris at last ran the River Styx, and his boatmen, Frank Wright and Jim Rigg, took over the Nevills Expeditions, the songs they had sung lived on. Now, every summer, these songs go down the river and are sung for the passengers, who in turn take them back to the cities and sing them to their startled friends who look at them with bottom lip at half mast, wondering how they made it through at all, much less, singing all the way! The tuneless little rimes and rimeless little tunes were all part of a plan to "keep the moral of the troups high" . . . This they did. Up to the time Norm died he had run the Grand Canyon of the Colorado more times than anyone in history, seven times, and had sung to some thirty-five passengers that had gone with him. Then Jim Rigg, co-owner of Mexican Hat Expeditions (the old Nevills operation) claimed that title this summer with eight times. Jim and his brother Bob also hold the speed record in a non-powered boat of two and a half days from Lee's to Pierce Ferry.

For the river boatman this old Colorado holds a strange fascination. The foundation of his feeling is one of absolute respect. Lacking this, he is an easy prey for its rapids, its granite narrows, and its utterly unpredictable nature. He knows that if he ever takes it too lightly, this old river will eat him up one day. On top of his respect he builds a knowledge of currents and patterns in the water that tell him of the safest route through for him and his passengers. He grows to know the speed of the water in all places; where the rocks wait, hidden beneath a thin lip of water to gouge out the bottom of the boat as it crashes through the rapids; where the sand bars lie; how far down the tongue of the rapid to take the boat before "cheating it out" to the side, out of the tail waves. Where to go in high water; where not to go in low water; where to camp at night; what to do in cases of emergency; routes out of the canyon in the event of accidents; hundreds of other little important things that may save a life. And always with the speed of lightning . . . a reaction so quick that it is done and over before you as a passenger are even aware that your life was just saved. And always a boatman's feeling for the river is reverent. A great many of the songs are hymns; to hear them echo and re-echo against the vermilion cliffs a mile skyward is an experience that should be denied no one. Some boatmen say the river talks to you at night. It says words, audible words . . . but they never told me what it said, though I could guess it was an answer to the wishes and dreams in the hearts of all men, and I wrote a song to the river boatmen that said as much.

One of the first songs to greet the ears of the passengers as they shove off from Lee's Ferry or Mexican Hat or Hite or Greenriver, is a boatman's version of I'm back in the saddle again Out where a friend is a friend Where the rushing waters play And you sleep out every day Oh, I'm back in the saddle again!

SONG OF THE RIVER BOATMAN*

To the tune of "Cry of the Wild Goose"

1. Last night I lay in a restless bed A hum-drum life pounding in my head When out of the night came a mighty roar The river, callin' me back once more.

Chorus: My heart knows what the river knows I gotta go where the river goes Restless river, wild and free The lonely ones are you and me.

Today I know your magic call Will lead me back to the canyon wall And the music in your rapid's roar Makes this boatman's song from his soul outpour!

Tonight as on your banks I sleep Like a woman, soft, you will sigh and weep And I will dream of a sweet warm kiss And a moonlit stream, and the love I miss.

Someday before I'm old and grey I'll find a woman who'll go my way She'll take the rapids strong with me And she'll blend her voice in a song with me.

The cataract boats, sixteen feet long and powered by elbow grease, are equipped with airtight compartments that are not exactly conducive to packing large guitars or small ones. Even though there is nearly always someone on the trips that can strum one of these plaintive, beautiful instruments, the sad story is that he'll have to leave it home. But in 1949 a little incident happened on the river that changed all that. A man named Ed Hudson took a powerboat through the Grand Canyon. It was a nineteenfoot boat with an engine of one hundred and twenty-five horesepower and it went through in four days, unscathed. The next year he tried it again. This time he abandoned the Esmerelda at Tuna Creek, twelve miles below Phantom Ranch, and when Mexican Hat Expeditions took their scheduled trip down, five weeks later, the crew rescued her, twenty-three miles below where she had been abandoned. Jim Rigg took her down the rest of the canyon to Lake Mead. This was enough to convince him that powerboat trips could be run at the high-water stages of the river with reasonable safety (since he took it out in low water). He and Frank Wright built two powerboats early in fifty-two. They chose the Chris-Craft twenty-one-foot kit boat with a Chris-Marine engine of sixty horsepower, and in May they made theirinitial run. It was and is a huge success. Then in June of 1953 the first guitar made her way safely through the deep and treacherous gorge of the Grand Canyon in the nose of one of those powerboats. Her trip was the most successful of all. Her chords echoed across the canyon as if she had been there through eternity and the voices that followed after her in the song begged for more, till the driftwood fire burned low and the river laughed in memory of another age.

Though there is no way of knowing whether she was the first guitar through the rapids, and it really doesn't matter, she was responsible for one of the first folk songs not to be sung as a parody, but to have its own text and tune. This is one of the gayer songs to be dedicated to the Colorado, and one that will take on the true folk history of the river, if it lives, because it is designed so any number of verses may be added or taken away at the wish of the singer without spoiling the sense of the song. As years go by, the chorus is all that is likely to remain intact.

The song begins in the San Juan boats at Mexican Hat, Utah and goes thru the Grand Canyon in the cataract boats to Lake Mead. That entire trip takes something like a month to complete and has many stop-overs and side canyon explorations. Naturally, the song covers only a few of these places. From Mexican Hat the boats float through the Goose Necks of the San Juan and struggle through a shallow place called Piaute Farms. Here the river widens from three hundred feet to three thousand and becomes correspondingly shallow. The passengers are often required to get out and walk or help push or pull the boats through when stuck on a sand bar. This operation, in the vernacular of the river people, is called "The Death March of the San Juan." This river then joins the Colorado and heads on toward Lee's Ferry, an old Mormon crossing, now the starting point of the Grand Canyon run. From there the song takes us to the most spectacular sight on the river, the Little Colorado. When it is in flood stage it flows more dust and silt than water, and is the color of the red earth through which it flows. Otherwise, it is fed by mineral springs some eighteen miles above the confluence, and where it meets the big riverthere is such a distinct line of demarkation that if you put your hand on that line, one side would be in turquoise, the other in muddy brown! To see this incredible sight, towering canyon walls on every side, a clear cobalt sky in contrast to the Little Colorado turquoise, is to become repatriated with the Deity or envision some great new world never seen before.

Next we come to Phantom Ranch at the foot of Bright Angel trail. Here the tourists from the South Rim make daily treks on the mules down into the magic world of the canyon. The deer are tame and come down every morning on the ranch lawn to eat pancakes that are left over from breakfast.

The night before running the most sinister rapid on the river, Lava Falls, we camp somewhere beneath the overhanging pinnacle of Toroweap Point. Anyone on the trip who up to now has taken it all too lightly gets the book thrown at him. The boatmen tell all their best "rapid stories" here, and the river comes alive with the "phantoms that have gone before." Sleep may be a little restless on the old air mattress and white sheets this night, after being told of "lining" Lava Falls. (At the big rapids like Hance, Granite and Hermit, the cataract boats are sometimes lined. Lava is always lined. Jim Rigg and one other boatman are the only two people ever to have gone through Lava in a cataract boat. This means the boatmen tie ropes to the stern and prow of the boats, unload all the equipment and literally lift them over the rocks along the bank, one by one. This is a backbreaking and dangerous job because the currents here are swift and treacherous. One slip and a man could be swept downstream. A powerboat, being too large for this operation, runs through everything, the boatman, standing behind the wheel, singing through the spray.) In the dining room at Art Green's place in Marble Canyon, the night before the trip leaves Lee's Ferry, all the passengers are treated to a couple of river films. One of these in particular has some slightly exaggerated Hollywood narration on the sound track. This has been memorized by the boatmen and is used on the river as standard patter to stimulate the passengers' anticipation. In voices that rumble with great authority they repeat such phrases as "These are the most dangerous waters known to man!" . . . "Waves thirty feet high-spray twice that high!" . . . "Nervous? No wonder. Once you start, there's no turning back!" . . . "To those intrepid explorers who stake their lives against a safe passage down its turbulent rapids, it is known as DANGER RIVER!"* Here the music blasts menacingly and the microphone was held under a fire hydrant. This dialogue has contributed much to the songs, to the jokes enjoyed by the passengers and to the real folklore of the mighty Colorado.

MUDDY RIVER+ Now if I had a Mexican Hat I wouldn't put it on I'd jump right in From its broad brim And skim down the San Juan.

Verse 2: And if somebody made for me A good old Goose Neck pie I'd rather float On down his throat In a river boat, says I.

Chorus: Oh-oh-oh, Oh-oh-oh, Muddy River Oh-oh-oh, On your way down to the sea I'll take your rapids and your roar Like they ain't never been took b'fore And come a runnin' back for more Cause you don't worry me!

Verse 3: There is a stretch at Piute Farms That sorta makes me doubt'cha Your throat will parch From this death march And take the starch from out'cha And then the San Juan flows right on To meet his blood relation And if your ear Is tuned I fear You'll hear this conversation.

Chorus: Oh-oh-oh, Oh-oh-oh, Muddy River I'm the mighty Colorado, that I am You mud with me, I'll mud with thee We'll send our flood down to the sea I'll meet'cha there for a big party We'll bust out Boulder Dam!

(The remaining verses of the song are a musical travelogue following the river past Lee's Ferry, down Grand Canyon, to Lake Mead and finally Boulder Dam.) Each trip down this fabulous river with its changing passenger list is bound to add something new. Only the boatmen can tell you what catch phrases and songs really stay with the river. For instance, there's a little four line rime to the tune of "Little Brown Jug" that the boatmen have been singing to each other for years . . . at the proper embarrassing moments, of course: No guts at all No guts at all He's a very fine boatman But no guts at all!

On one of the powerboats there was so much singing of a certain song after each successful run of a rapid, that she was finally named after the song and now runs the river as the good ship "Lollypop." The cataract boats are named after "Norm," "Doris," "Sandra" (their daughter) and "Mexican Hat III." The San Juan boats are named after places on that river, such as "Mystery Canyon," "Music Temple," "Redbud Canyon" and "Hidden Passage." These names almost suggest the serenity of the San Juan river, which is without rapid running with the exception of three or four small rapids during the entire trip.

Back when Norman Nevills was running the river, sometime prior to nineteen forty-nine, he introduced the Driftwood Burners Society of America. For several reasons this society is most worthy: first of all, to aid the Bureau of Reclamation with the problem of choked-up Lake Mead every summer. Thousands of tons of driftwood float down the river and form a solid mass several miles thick down through Iceburg Canyon, below Pierce Ferry. If these immense stacks of wood which collect along the banks of the Colorado in high water through that two hundred and eighty mile ride are turned into ashes, they don't impede travel on the lake. They don't get into the fancy commercial market either, where you are charged up to three hundred dollars apiece for them. but then, you can always take the trip yourself and salvage a few pieces. or float down on one. Secondly, they provide one of the most spectacular sights on the river. A red roaring blaze, sometimes two blocks long, spreading its glow a mile high up marble cliffs and lasting all through the night; greeting the dawn with a predawn glow. And oh, the smell! No smell like a driftwood fire! These fires are also used as signal fires from Tanner Rapid to the Ranger Station on the South Rim. Three built in a row means trouble . . . send help below. So far there's been no need for three.

blocks long, spreading its glow a mile high up marble cliffs and lasting all through the night; greeting the dawn with a predawn glow. And oh, the smell! No smell like a driftwood fire! These fires are also used as signal fires from Tanner Rapid to the Ranger Station on the South Rim. Three built in a row means trouble . . . send help below. So far there's been no need for three.

To become a member of this organization, with one match and no preparation, you must be able to light a fire. No preparation means no stacking of small sticks, a la boy scout, just light it as you find it.

After the trip has left Lee's Ferry and the boats glide slowly downstream to pass under the huge span of Navajo Bridge, all the friends and well-wishers stand atop waving goodby to the boats below. In the cataract boats it will be eighteen days to Lake Mead, in the powerboats, ten. But regardless of how the trip is taken, something of this great canyon will come out with you. And though the river's course has not changed noticeably in the last hundred thousand years, it has been known to change the course of a human life in just those few days. Men have lost themselves and found themselves on this ancient muddy highway. They've used it as an an escape through the canyon of life, only to discover life, and go on to live it as if it were a privilege. In order to escape themselves they've run the river, but instead they found themselves "eddied out" and decided it was useless thereafter to run. Sick people, out of wheelchairs, or just released from the hospital, have traversed the river with such a healthy mental outlook that their bodies have responded physically enough to become well again. "As a man thinketh, so shall he be," and a man deep in these rocks of ages has reason to think of something besides himself; to think and wonder and ask "why" about a lot of things. He has time to get his soul all washed and polished, like the granite in the gorge; see with his eyes a thing of beauty beyond verbal description, and to feel in his heart a desire to create something . . . something that will last for even a particle of time. In the distance is heard the roar of rocks of ages has reason to think of something besides himself; to think and wonder and ask "why" about a lot of things. He has time to get his soul all washed and polished, like the granite in the gorge; see with his eyes a thing of beauty beyond verbal description, and to feel in his heart a desire to create something . . . something that will last for even a particle of time. In the distance is heard the roar of

OPPOSITE PAGE

"LOWER GRAND CANYON," by Tad Nichols. The scenery in the lower or western half of the canyon is some of the finest in Arizona. Much of it can be seen only from the Colorado River, since few roads go to the rim. Here indeed, from the river level, one feels the mood of insignificance within this great sculpture of rock. Camera: Rolleicord with Schneider Xenar lens, Ektachrome film.

CENTER PAGES

"THE LITTLE COLORADO RIVER," by Tad Nichols. This blue lagoon is formed where the Little Colorado meets the Big Colorado. Springs of clear water, ten miles above the mouth of the Little Colorado Canyon, flow the year around, and minerals dissolved in the water give it the beautiful color, like the waters of Havasu Creek. But the first rainstorm of the summer season will send a flood down the Little Colorado and the blue lake will change to a chocolate brown. Camera: 34x44 Graphic, Ektachrome film.

"MARBLE CANYON," by Tad Nichols. About 40 miles below Lee's Ferry the Colorado River has carved a deep gorge in the redwall limestone. At this point engineers have studied the rock walls to determine if they will bear the weight of a huge dam. One of their survey flags waves from the canyon rim. A road goes out to the dam site from Cedar Ridge. In order to obtain this picture the photographer had experienced the thrilling ride in a cable car dropping 2000 ft. from Marble Canyon rim to the inner gorge. Camera: Rolleicord with Schneider Xenar lens, Ektachrome film.