Note: Stay tuned for part 2 where I will recount a most amazing small world story, buying a cowboy piano and preparing to travel to Australia to record poetry, music and stories from the Outback.
First, please consider CLICKING HERE for the story of, “I’ve Been Everywhere.” This is a three minute NPR story produced for the Western Folklife Center in the fall of 2012.
Rambling Boy
I was one of those kids who dreamed that freedom would come only when I got my driver’s license and a car that I could point in any direction, then go.
The theme of “rambling” is an ancient one, even biblical. Poetry, parable, and songs accompany those who venture out a-foot, horseback, hitchhiking, or catching a ride on a freight train or even a jet plane. For my generation the songs lined up: “Route 66,” “On the Road Again,” “Mustang Sally,” “Good Vibrations,” “Hit the Road Jack,” “Takin’ It Easy,” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”
My favorite was “I’ve Been Everywhere.” The hero of the story is a hitchhiker ready to climb aboard a 16-wheeler in a place I know, a place I can imagine on the great American Road trip, Winnemucca, Nevada.
I was totin' my pack
Along the dusty Winnemucca road
Then this iconic chorus followed by a rhyming list of all the places our hero has hitched a ride.
I've been everywhere, man
I've been everywhere, man
'Cross the deserts bare, man
I've breathed the mountain air, man
Of travel, I've had my share, man
I've been everywhere.
Jet Set
I’ve never considered myself a jet-setter though I admit to having hopped a few in my day. By far the greatest adventure was a trip I took with my friend George Gund to Australia in October,1989.
George treated his Falcon 50 private jet like I treated my car when gas was $.49 per gallon. Every flight was a new adventure. And he had the means to look at a map, any place in the world, and ask the pilots to take him there. I have stories about bumming around with George in the San Juan Islands, New York, Buenos Aires and Prague, but I’ll stick to our trip to Australia.
That August I received an invitation to attend a house-warming party in Alice Springs, Australia hosted by outback icon Ted Egan and his dear wife Nerys Evans. The letter that accompanied the invitation outlined ten days of celebration with a promise that I would see an Australia I could see in no other way.
I’d met Ted and Nerys the year before when traveling to the outback of Queensland to start fieldwork for an international culture exchange between American cowboys and Outback stockman. In preparation, I attended the Grand Opening of the Stockman Hall of Fame in Longreach where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip cut the ribbon. Though I didn’t meet the royals I somehow got in with a few outback legends such as Slim Dusty, Dame Mary Durack-Miller, R.M. Williams and Ted and Nerys, who later became dear friends. I also met a group of World War II bomber pilots who invited me along on what they called a “pub crawl” visiting the most remote pubs in Queensland. Sir Wally Rae agreed to take me on as co-pilot in his little Cessna. I had no idea, at the time, how fortunate I was to meet these bigger-than-life Australians.
I ran into George Gund shortly after the invitation arrived and told him about the party and how much I wanted to return to continue fieldwork collecting outback poetry and song. Unfortunately, there was simply no budget for the trip. George looked at me and volunteered to come along, acting as the Folklife Center photographer while I recorded. He added, “I can get us there.”
There is a whole story surrounding the first leg of the trip including the purchase of a cowboy piano. But that story will have to wait ‘til the next Boost.
Sinkatinny Downs
Ted and Nerys’s new home was to be christened Sinkatinny Downs. In Australia sinking a tinny carries much the same meaning as chugging a can of beer here in the states. When we arrived at the new homestead upwards of 400 guests had already arrived and the party was in full swing -- drinking, playing music and telling yarns.
Ted Egan later reported that guests consumed 48 kegs of Fosters Beer and Guinness Stout daily. I don’t remember the specifics much. Oh, those Aussies can drink. Before the first night was over, I’d met and listened to favorite Australian musicians Eric Bogle and the Bushwackers plus country singer John Williams. I remember a particularly stunning performance by Marrkilyi (Lizzie Ellis) who kept us spellbound as she recounted ancient stories in her native language of Yankunytjatjara using a sand tray to trace intricate tracks with her fingers.
The Gund party was made up of the two pilots who stayed in town, George’s assistant Nick, and George and his guest, young Iara Lee from San Paolo, Brazil. They were newly in love and later married. They stayed together until George’s death in 2013.
Before arriving in Alice, we had made a couple of stops in outback Queensland recording a few interviews and photographing. Then we went on to Alice where we spent three days at the party. On the last day George took a plane load of revelers for a circle around Uluru (Ayers Rock) 273 miles away. Then we were off to take in a different side of Australia including a night at the Sydney Opera then scuba diving on the Barrier Reef. I’m not sure there’s any way I could have called this a working trip. It didn’t exactly fit the profile of most of my folklore fieldwork which often included sleeping in my car to save money.
Geoff Mack
The beer tent was only a stumble away from where they had set my swag (the Aussie term for what American cowboys call a bedroll). One night I walked into the tent and took a seat next to a thin gentleman in his late sixties. We toasted and he asked how I had come to be a guest at the party. It was a longish story but he seemed interested enough. I then asked how he knew Ted and Nerys and he replied he’d been a lifelong touring entertainer and knew Ted from that world. After a lull he asked, “Have you ever heard the song, “I’ve Been Everywhere?” I replied, “Who hasn’t heard of it? It’s one of my favorites.” He then asked, “Would you believe I wrote that song?”
He could see I was incredulous. He stared me straight in the eye and exclaimed, “What’s more, I’ve never even been to the States.” I looked at him in bewilderment. This was impossible. There are so many place names. So many purely American references in the song. How could someone who had never set foot in America write such an American classic? He raised his glass, “yes, by cracky, I wrote it in in two hours sitting in the cab of my caravan – just a notebook, magnifying glass, and a U.S. Road Atlas.”
I was floored and only then realized my tape recorder was back at camp. I had been recording interviews and performances for the past two days and this was the one time I wasn’t carrying it. After that evening I did not run in to Geoff Mack again. I even checked with Ted and he verified the unlikely story I’d been told.
What’s in a Song (2005-2012)
I never forgot that chance meeting with Geoff Mack. Several years later when Taki Telonidis and I began discussing a new radio series. I told him the story of meeting Geoff Mack and how, after hearing his story, I was never able to hear that song in the same way again. We went on to propose a series for Sunday Morning at NPR which we titled, “What’s in a Song.” Over the years we produced nearly fifty short pieces that gave listeners a chance to hear a song interwoven with the story behind it.
After retiring from the Western Folklife Center, I was anxious to resume my life as a musician and had even recorded a new solo album. Waddie Mitchell and I had always talked about how much fun it would be to go to Australia so I proposed a trip where I’d perform cowboy songs, he’d recite his cowboy poems, and my wife Teresa would tell stories about growing up on a Wyoming Ranch. I asked Ted Egan if he could help and he introduced us to a friend who then booked a haphazard tour titling our little group the Lonesome Rangers
Lonesome Rangers
We landed in Melbourne where we met up with Waddie and his wife Lisa for our first stop, the Port Fairy Folk Festival. After performing there we headed off with Ted and Nerys for a little tour through South Australia wine country, ending up in Adelaide for a show with Eric Bogle. We then made the long drive inland to Alice Springs in the middle of Australia for a good long visit at Sinkatinny Downs. Ted had arranged for us to visit some of the great cattle stations north of Alice but that year there were major floods and the roads were impassable. Not seeing cattle country was a real disappointment, particularly to Waddie. The last stop on our tour included a couple of performances in Sydney before Waddie and Lisa flew back to the states. Teresa and I stayed on and I spent another week completing an hour-long radio documentary about the folklorist John Lomax for Australia’s Radio National, their equivalent of NPR.
Reunion
One weekend we took a train to Mount Kuring-Gai where I’d arranged a visit with Geoff Mack and his wife Tabbi. It had been 23 years since I’d first met him in that beer tent. Now, at 91, he had only just retired from touring. I was anxious to finally record the story of “I’ve Been Everywhere.” This interview, which had eluded me for so long, became one of our last “What’s in a Song” segments.
Spending a leisurely day together I learned much more about the performing team of Geoff Mack and Tabbi Francis. Geoff started his performing career in Borneo enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force. His first big break came in 1944 when he was asked to open for the famous English film star Gracie Fields to an audience of 18,000 troops. After that he was hooked on entertaining. When the War ended, he returned to Australia and performed in variety shows. He eventually moved to England in 1948 where he met English comedian and dancer Tabbi Francis. They married in 1953 and hopped on his Panther motorbike heading off on a 20,000 km ride through western Europe down through Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, all the way south to Sri Lanka. There, they shipped the bike back to West Australia and finished the journey riding across the Nullabour Plains before ending up in Sydney.
For years they toured with the last of the great tent shows. Mack was a staple of the early country music scene and even toured extensively with the legendary Slim Dusty. Somewhere along the road he had an idea for a song that would, in rapid fire, spew out 94 rhymed Australian places, mostly Aboriginal place names. This song became the first version of “I’ve Been Everywhere” and became a hit when Lucky Starr recorded it in 1959. Then, upon request from his record label, Mack wrote the famous American version. Hank Snow released it first and then Johnny Cash recorded it. It took on a life of its own and made Mack famous, comfortably well off and christened with a new nickname, Geoff “Tangletongue” Mack. At heart, Geoff and Tabbi were true adventurers, true ramblers. That is why this song, no matter what place names it carries in the lyrics, rings with that age-old truth of the quest to roam out on the world’s stage.
I've Been Everywhere
Mack certainly did bare all, in the desert and with the telling of his story...as did you, with this most interesting song origin tale!