Biography
Harry McClintock accumulated an array of occupations that many stage performers might also claim, ranging from actor and poet to painter, newspaper reporter, and set designer. Yet the additional roles he filled placed him among a far smaller circle of recording artists: those who had also worked as seamen, sheep herders, railroaders, union organizers, cowboys, hobos, and muleskinners. The songs for which he is best remembered, however, celebrated idleness—“Hallelujah I’m a Bum” and “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.” McClintock secured copyright as their composer even while folk-music specialists and attorneys continued to debate their origins. During his recording and broadcast years he was billed as Haywire Mac, Radio Mac, or simply Mac, and he cut more than fifty sides of his own material and traditional pieces, many of which later appeared on reissues from Rounder and Smithsonian Folkways. He was also the first performer to commit several enduring American folk songs to disc, among them “Red River Valley,” “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” and “Jesse James.”
Born to a cabinet maker, McClintock sang in church as a boy and left home at fourteen. He traveled with a dog-and-pony show, caring for horses without pay, then headed to New Orleans in search of milder weather and found himself among jobless men who shared the same plan. The experience fostered a lasting sympathy that later surfaced in the rhymed verses of “Hallelujah I’m a Bum” and “The Bum Song,” the latter recorded twice because fresh stanzas kept emerging from every sidecar. At sixteen he began performing on the street for spare change and soon realized, as he later observed, that “Anyone who can sing never has to go hungry.” That insight produced his earliest composition, the tale of “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” drawn from childhood fairy tales of houses constructed from sweet cakes and candy. In McClintock’s version the hobos, not Hansel and Gretel, dwell contentedly without an evil witch. By 1905 the song’s popularity prompted him to have its lyrics printed on packs of cards. He had already written “Hallelujah I’m a Bum” in 1902 after his association with labor groups such as the Wobblies. Both numbers gained wider circulation once he reached the airwaves in San Francisco in 1925. His breakthrough program targeted children, whom he captivated with authentic cowboy repertoire; regulars also included a roster of Native American “performers”—chiefly boisterous acquaintances—identified as Tall Pine, Joe Longfeather, Silver Cloud, and Evening Thunder.
A few years afterward he entered the studio for Victor, completing forty-one titles over the next three and a half years. The sessions featured him alone, in partnership with fiddler Virgil Ward or vocalist Dorothy Ellen Cole, or accompanied by the full Haywire Orchestra. After the Victor contract ended he recorded for Decca and the small Flex-o-Disc label. To protect his publishing interests he eventually filed several lawsuits, because other performers sometimes presented his originals as anonymous traditionals in order to evade royalty payments. In a letter to the League of Composers he ridiculed the notion that so-called “hillbilly” songs simply materialized without authors: “The theory seems to be they are created by some sort of spontaneous generation.”
McClintock relocated to Hollywood in 1938 to pursue film work and appeared in several Gene Autry pictures, a Durango Kid western, and assorted serials produced at Universal and Republic studios. When cast, he usually played a villain; otherwise he delivered lines such as “He went thataway.” He continued in radio and contributed articles, plays, and fiction to pulp magazines under assumed names. In 1953 he returned to San Francisco for the radio and television program The Breakfast Hour, which he joined intermittently until 1955; he died several years afterward.
Born to a cabinet maker, McClintock sang in church as a boy and left home at fourteen. He traveled with a dog-and-pony show, caring for horses without pay, then headed to New Orleans in search of milder weather and found himself among jobless men who shared the same plan. The experience fostered a lasting sympathy that later surfaced in the rhymed verses of “Hallelujah I’m a Bum” and “The Bum Song,” the latter recorded twice because fresh stanzas kept emerging from every sidecar. At sixteen he began performing on the street for spare change and soon realized, as he later observed, that “Anyone who can sing never has to go hungry.” That insight produced his earliest composition, the tale of “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” drawn from childhood fairy tales of houses constructed from sweet cakes and candy. In McClintock’s version the hobos, not Hansel and Gretel, dwell contentedly without an evil witch. By 1905 the song’s popularity prompted him to have its lyrics printed on packs of cards. He had already written “Hallelujah I’m a Bum” in 1902 after his association with labor groups such as the Wobblies. Both numbers gained wider circulation once he reached the airwaves in San Francisco in 1925. His breakthrough program targeted children, whom he captivated with authentic cowboy repertoire; regulars also included a roster of Native American “performers”—chiefly boisterous acquaintances—identified as Tall Pine, Joe Longfeather, Silver Cloud, and Evening Thunder.
A few years afterward he entered the studio for Victor, completing forty-one titles over the next three and a half years. The sessions featured him alone, in partnership with fiddler Virgil Ward or vocalist Dorothy Ellen Cole, or accompanied by the full Haywire Orchestra. After the Victor contract ended he recorded for Decca and the small Flex-o-Disc label. To protect his publishing interests he eventually filed several lawsuits, because other performers sometimes presented his originals as anonymous traditionals in order to evade royalty payments. In a letter to the League of Composers he ridiculed the notion that so-called “hillbilly” songs simply materialized without authors: “The theory seems to be they are created by some sort of spontaneous generation.”
McClintock relocated to Hollywood in 1938 to pursue film work and appeared in several Gene Autry pictures, a Durango Kid western, and assorted serials produced at Universal and Republic studios. When cast, he usually played a villain; otherwise he delivered lines such as “He went thataway.” He continued in radio and contributed articles, plays, and fiction to pulp magazines under assumed names. In 1953 he returned to San Francisco for the radio and television program The Breakfast Hour, which he joined intermittently until 1955; he died several years afterward.
Albums
Singles