This is a ridiculous song, a song that could never be done today. Such a bright cheerful account of an Indian “washing his frijoles in Dove and Lux” (?) before heading off down that lonesome track and getting run over by a train (toot toot!).

The Mills Brothers (Donald, Harry, Herbert, and John Jr.) first gained renown in the early part of the 20th century as a novelty group billed as “Four Men and a Guitar”. The sons of a founder of a barbershop quartet, they learned close harmonies at their father’s knee and were accomplished singers on their way to a brief and unspectacular career when one of them forgot to bring his kazoo with him to a gig. Oddly, the kazoo was their usual accompaniment (whatever happened to the modest but useful kazoo?), and, when Harry realized he didn’t have it, he cupped his hands around his mouth and performed such a good imitation of a trumpet that his brothers started looking around for a hidden musician. Excited by this accidental discovery, they began to work it into their act, each of them becoming remarkably proficient at imitating the tones and timbres of a hot jazz swing band. Hence their name – they had to convince early listeners that the only instrument they used was a guitar because their vocal mimicry was so polished. It is still difficult to believe that virtually all the instrumentation on their early hits, like Hold that Tiger, were performed vocally – and live, this being decades before multitracking was even theoretically possible. In some ways, the Mills Brothers were the direct forefathers of Bobby McFerrin’s one-man band.

I first heard The Mills Brothers at my friend Bob’s house. It was my senior year at Interlochen and he invited me to spend our three-week spring vacation at his home in Hammond, Indiana (it is not the home of the organ, he takes great pains to point out, but it is (I think) the subject of The Roches wonderful Hammond Song (“if you go down to Hammond, you’ll never come back”)). Curious to see where he came from, I took him up on his offer.

In many (sad) ways, that spring was the high point of my life. I was finishing up a rare four-year stint at Interlochen. I was in the top level of dance and was rehearsing and performing constantly. I was comfortable with who I was. I had built some of the most exhilarating friendships I have ever known. Winter was starting to release its annual stranglehold on Michigan and, most significantly and shockingly, I actually had a girlfriend. The pressure-cooker that was senior year was something I thrived in, but even so, I was getting burned out and was looking forward to a break, and getting out of the woods and into the edges of Chicago, the most exciting urban destination around (also pretty sad – though not as sad as it would be a few months down the road). So, I plowed through my coursework and the Winter Dance Concert, closed my books, hung up my dance bag, and hit the road to Hammond.

Bob and I had been good friends since early the year before, when I met him shortly after moving into the dorm. He was suite-mates (shared a bathroom) with Eric, a deeply kindred spirit that quickly became my roommate for quite a number of years. We look back at our first impressions with great humor these days. I thought he was this scary-looking Indian dude that probably carried a knife and matching attitude and he described me to somebody once as being a dancer, “but still pretty macho”. Right. We lived just a couple of rooms apart from each other in the dorm and had many wild adventures and deep conversations, so I was looking forward to spending some off time with him and his family.

When I arrived in Hammond, I realized that his family, for the most part, was his father. He had sisters and a mother, but not much contact with either. For the most part, we hung around the house and occasionally went to hang with his mentor, a voice teacher who had encouraged him to go to Interlochen and who took us to go see Porky’s while we were in town and chided Bob on his earring. Bob’s father was a quiet man, coming home from work and greeting us and then leaving us pretty much alone. I saw his life in very simplistic terms – going to work at wherever, coming home, having a beer and watching television and then going to bed. Simple pleasures for a simple man. I knew there was more to it than that, but I felt a strange longing being there. I suddenly wished I could be happy with such simplicity. That I could work a job doing whatever, take it off like a jacket at the end of the day, have a beer, watch a little television and go blissfully off to sleep. Accomplishing nothing but staying alive, missing nothing outside my little path and my little house and my little beer. I knew that would never work for me, that I was too restless or ambitious to happily live that kind of life, and had always taken it as a point of pride that I was so driven. But for the first time, I felt a longing for smaller goals, a desire to not have to feel so pushed from within.

Hammond is not one of the nicest places to visit, and probably an even worse place to live. Grey, dirty, industrial, and downwind from Chicago, it has little to recommend it. But I wasn’t there to take in the sights or the sites, I was there to hang with Bob. And that’s what we did. All day. Every day. He introduced me to chichorones and Mexican beef jerky. At night, we’d listen to the legendary Ken Nordine spin his sonic treats on the radio. One night, Bob pulled out an old Mills Brothers record and put it on, singing along gleefully to the well-worn tracks. The music was agreeable in an old-fashioned corny sort of way, and it obviously meant a lot to him.

Bob and I were both pining pretty hard for our girlfriends – me for Tina, he for Jill. We each spent part of every day writing soppy love letters to our chosen. Tina, bless her heart, sent me a letter every single day I was there. Jill, however, was not quite so attentive (or compulsive or bored or whatever) and Bob only got two letters from her during those three weeks. This started to irritate him. And then I started to irritate him. Three-week vacations sound like a good time, but that’s a lot of time to spend one-on-one with somebody – something I should have learned from my disastrous trip to visit my dad the previous spring break. We were civil and had a good time, but it started to get stressful. One night, near the end of the vacation, we were watching a nature special on television with his father. We were sitting next to each other and kind of nudging each other in a playfully aggressive way. As if by a prearranged signal, when the next commercial break came, we both jumped each other and started wrestling. It was meant as play, at least initially, but it quickly escalated into something else. Nobody got hurt, but there was definitely an edge to it. The longer the commercial break went, the more intensely we tussled. Bob’s father chided us at first, chuckling “now boys”, but as we rolled around more, banging into the furniture, he started getting more and more nervous. “Um, boys? Okay, ha ha ha. Alright boys, that’s enough.” Fortunately for everyone involved, the show started again and we both popped up and sat back on the couch, breathing hard and a little shaken at almost having come to blows with each other. We were both looking forward to the end of the vacation so we could take a break from each other there. Which we did, for about a day.

Years later, G told me about her first boyfriend’s family and how sweet they were and how they used to listen to the Mills Brothers and sing along, gleefully unaware (or uncaring) how uncool that was. Shortly after that, I was trawling through the used racks at a CD store when I came across a best-of package. Knowing G would like it and confident enough of our relationship to get her something that I knew would make her think fondly of her first lover, I bought it and brought it home. In the ten years between listenings, I had dropped my pretense of cool and was able to appreciate just how wonderful it was – their close family harmonies twisting together joyfully. There are many treasures to be found in their collection, but none so strangely sublime as the gleeful story of an Indian who got run over by a train. Toot toot!

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