This article explores the lumber camp songs and vaudeville tunes that were likely sung at Blue Ox Camp from 1930-1932, and secondarily Camp Do Your Best from 1925-1931.
Frozen Logger, Seattle’s lumber camp song
I asked my friend, the greatest unknown Paul Bunyan expert. What would they sing in 1930 on Mercer Island at America’s first Cub Scout camp? At Blue Ox Camp, with its Paul Bunyan theme.
He quickly replied: “The Frozen Logger”.
The Frozen Logger was written by James Stevens, author of the 1925 book Paul Bunyan that inspired Blue Ox Camp. Stevens wrote and performed Frozen Logger for a radio show on Seattle’s ABC Radio Networks in 1929. The series of shows he did about Paul Bunyan were surely the direct inspiration for Blue Ox Camp’s theme.
Later, after Blue Ox Camp closed, Ivar Haglund complained to a Seattle Times writer in 1937 that there were no good Northwest folk songs. Before Ivar had his seafood restaurants or even his aquarium, Ivar loved to sing and play folk songs. A Seattle Times reader recommended Frozen Logger to him, and Ivar began to play it regularly. It’s possible that a former Cub Scout taught him, but Ivar knew James Stevens and likely heard it directly from him.
A short aside. Haglund biographer and dean of local history Paul Dorpat described that Haglund got his theme song, and the name for his legendary restaurant Acres of Clams, from another song that a reader recommended in response to that same article.
Frozen Logger was first recorded in 1947 by Seattle performer Earl Robinson, and was released many times after that over the years.
Below is Pete Seeger (friend of Ivar Haglund) and Fred Hellerman, known as the Weavers, in their 1951 release of Frozen Logger which made it popular nationwide. There’s also this great 2010 live performance that they did.
The Pacific Northwest Folklore Society also has a recording of Don Morris performing the song in 1959, during a radio show with guests Ivar Haglund and James Stevens.
In June 2022 I sang Frozen Logger at the Blue & Gold ceremony for Pack 252 in Seattle, Washington. I changed the lyrics slightly, replacing “bum” with “chum”; “coffee” with “cocoa”; “whiskey” with “honey”; and “China” with “Tulsa”.
Vaudeville’s Does the Spearmint Lose its Flavor?
“Does the Spearmint Lose its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?”, was likely sung both at Camp DYB and Blue Ox Camp.
In a 1978 letter to the editor, a writer remembered singing it as a Cub Scout at Camp Meany from 1938 to 1940. The writer could still sing it from memory forty years later.
Camp Meany followed Blue Ox Camp as Seattle’s Cub Scout camp. It was built next to Camp Parsons, and is now the east half of Parsons: Dungeness, Skokomish, Mt. Constance (originally Mt. Mystery), Mystery Beach, and up to the Dining Hall and Quilcene. It’s why Parsons feels like two separate camps.
The song was recorded in 1924 by vaudeville performers Billy Jones & Ernest Hare and quickly found fame. DSLIFOTBO had a revival again in 1959 by Lonnie Donegan in the UK. He swapped out “Spearmint” for “chewing gum” to make it playable on BBC radio. A new version appeared in the credits of the recent HBO series Boardwalk Empire.
I sang this in September 2022 at a meeting of Pack 252 in Seattle, Washington. I only sang one verse, the trip to the White House, and ended after the line about tonsils.
Below is the original.
Vaudeville’s Ain’t Gonna Rain no More
“Ain’t Gonna Rain no More” is one of the few songs from my time in Scouting that still randomly pops into my head, three decades later. I think there’s an unbroken chain from vaudeville the year before Camp Do Your Best straight through to today.
Locally, the first advertisement for performance of this song was at a vaudeville theater in Seattle called the Million Dollar Heilig. It was almost 100 years ago, in May 1924. The song was popularized by vaudeville performer Wendell Hall in late 1923 on his first record.
But the origins are older. “Ain’t Gonna Rain no Mo” was recorded by the North Carolina Folklore Society while surveying African American farmers, definitely sung in the early 1910s. And it was apparently even older still, and used in dances from North Carolina to Texas and throughout the South.
It was most often sung after heavy rains. The lyrics were originally ironic, a joke when everyone knew it was going to keep raining. When it bridged from folk song to popularity, though, the chorus lost that irony and became a a simple statement that it would never rain again. Soon after the advertised performance in Seattle in 1924, a performance in Spokane was halted by an angry group of farmers who were worried that the joyous singing would prolong the dry spell they were in.
With the ironic false prophecy removed, another change later worked its way in. Sometime in the last hundred years the chorus changed from “How in the world can the old folks tell it ain’t gonna rain no more?”, to a more nonsensical “How in the heck can I wash my neck if it ain’t gonna rain no more?”
Ain’t Gonna Rain no More lyrics
The song was likely carried year after year from camps in the 1920s and 30s (Parsons, DYB, Rotary, Backus, and Meany) to Brinkley when it opened in the 1960s. It was in Brinkley song books in the 1980s. It’s still sung at Camp Edward, which sits on most of the former Camp Brinkley site.
For lyrics of the original song check out this 1920s Yellowstone Park Camps song book.
In September 2021 I had the opportunity to teach Ain’t Gonna Rain No More to other adult Scout leaders, and chose these favorite verses:
While canoeing never quarrel, for you’ll find without a doubt
Canoes are not a proper place to have a falling outOnce there was a chemist, a chemist there is no more
For what she thought was H2O was H2SO4Peter was a rabbit, a rabbit he is no more
For what he thought was a hole in the ground was a hole in the kybo floorA peanut sitting on the track, its heart was all aflutter
Round the corner came the train; toot toot: peanut butterOh, how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
If he held a saw in his little paw, a ton of wood he couldOh the mosquito it flies high, the mosquito it flies low,
If the squeeter lands upon me, it ain’t gonna fly no moThis verse is about a man with a trombone, the words are very few
He blew, he blew, he blew, he blew, he blew, he blew, he blewOh it rained all through the night, it rained the night before
Various sources
With a positive future vision, it ain’t gonna rain no more.
I sang Ain’t Gonna Rain No More again at Camp Edward during 2022 summer camp, and a staff member took note of verses not in their camp song book. I hope some of them will become standards. Of the verses above, I believe only the H2O/HS2O4 verse and the kybo floor verse were sung previously.
Shanty Boy’s lumber camp songs
In James Stevens’ book Paul Bunyan, he mentions four lumber camp songs performed by the great entertainer Shanty Boy: Jack Haggerty, Island Boys, John Ross, and Bung Yer Eyes. Stevens may have performed them and other songs on his Paul Bunyan radio show, and it’s possible they were sung by kids at Blue Ox Camp.
“Jack Haggerty (and Flat River Girl)” is still well known and could have been sung at camp. It was written in Michigan by logger Dan McGinnis in 1872, and due to his background a number of Irish American performances are available on YouTube. Below is a recording from 1989 by Michigan folk singer Neil Woodward which has vocals that I enjoy the most, not taking the lyrics too seriously. Also check out Mick Hanly’s 1980 recording.
The original tune of the song is forgotten. Most current recordings, including Neil Woodward, match the 1939 recording of John Norman, either sharing origin with it or directly reference. An alternate tune was recorded in the 1950s performed by John Leahy. Some recordings on YouTube have completely different tunes and structures but claim folk origins, perhaps indicating more splinters of the song.
Island Boys and John Ross are difficult to find details on, and no recent performances are available.
“Island Boys” is apparently “Boys of the Island“, a song sung by lumbermen in New England.
“John Ross”, also called “Old Dan Golden”, is included in the 1927 publication Minstrelsy of Maine. It is sung to the tune of Lowlands of Holland and also comes from New England.
“Bung Yer Eyes” is even more obscure and difficult to find than John Ross or Island Boys. The few mentions of it include a description with lyrics in the 1889 book Shanty Boy or Life in a Lumber Camp.
A source describing the tune of Bung Yer Eyes cannot be found, though, even in the Traditional Ballad Index. Please leave a comment if something likely comes to mind.
Other lumber camp songs?
Digging through old logging folk music albums reveals a number of songs that could have been in their songbook.
For example, the 1960 album Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks included a number of classic lumber camp songs that predated the Cub Scout camps. In particular Lumberjack’s Alphabet (1904) and Once More a-Lumbering Go (1895) would have been fun and easy for youth at Blue Ox Camp. The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks (1904), like Jack Haggerty, had romantic lyrics more fun for adults to sing, but was very popular and may have appealed to staff.
The University of Wisconsin Madison has assembled four songs in a lesson for students. This makes a good model for how one might put together an introduction to Seattle lumbering songs for youth.
Further reading
- Cub Scouts started in Port Angeles (part 1 of this series)
- Camp DYB, 1925 Cub camp in Port Angeles (part 2)
- Wolf Cubs lost at war (part 3)
- Blue Ox Camp, Seattle’s Paul Bunyan themed camp (part 4)
- Cub Scout Alphabet
Also: