Time marches on Joe Cain procession going strong, as more groups expected

After years of witnessing Carnival fun from the sidelines as members of the service industry, Tyger Bullock and others decided to start their own Mardi Gras tradition.

What began as a group of service industry professionals on a downtown pub crawl each year close to Fat Tuesday turned into one of the more recognizable Joe Cain footmarcher groups, aptly named the Dauphin Street Drunks, or DSDs for short.

“The first year we dressed as pirates and went on a pub crawl,” Bullock said. “It was something easy that everyone could throw together. Also, after about 20 bars saying ‘argh’ is easy, so it stuck.”

The pirate-clad group still participates in the downtown pub crawl, which is slated for two weeks before Mardi Gras day and for about 10 years has made marching in the Joe Cain procession a tradition as well, Bullock, who is captain, said.

“We were invited 10 years ago to march and that’s when we started,” Bullock said. “It’s freaking awesome. We love it. We absolutely love it.”

For Bullock, the procession that pays homage to Joe Cain and his Chief Slacabamorinico character is much more intimate than other parades, as the marchers are at eye level with the crowd and can even take the time to greet them.

“You can get a lot more up close and personal with the crowd,” she said. “I like to go to the kids and war veterans because I served in the Navy. When you’re on a float, you can’t get that close to them.”

Wayne Dean, the current Chief Slac and inspirational leader of the footmarchers, said the street-party aspect of the procession is the point. The groups very much stick to the inspiration of Cain, a man credited with reviving Mardi Gras in Mobile after the Civil War.

“I ride in a couple of the mystic society parades and I love them, but Joe Cain Day is different,” he said. “The mystics are the type of thing Joe Cain said, ‘well, I don’t want people to have to do that and that’s not for everybody.’ But something like Joe Cain Day, it is something for everybody.”

Dust-up

Disharmony between the two societies that make up the People’s Parade began in 2009 and came to a head in 2014 when the permit holders, the Joe Cain Parading Society — the group of floats that had traditionally followed the marchers — asked footmarchers to pay a $25 fee and register to enter the parade. New guidelines also sought to limit the number of participants, Joe Cain Marching Society President  Michael Lyons said. He, like many others, felt registering and paying for the parade went against what the procession was about.

“It was sort of like taking the whole past history away,” he said. “These were things that, for us, were upsetting.”

Led by the Wild Mauviliians, a number of marching groups boycotted the 2014 procession, Washington Square Marching member Gerald Tomlinson said. 

“My people didn’t march that year,” he said.

Since the parading society held the original permit, Tomlinson said, the marchers were forced to the back of the parade, following the floats. The parade also had a second “Joe Cain” character, as Citizen Joe Cain debuted. 

The marchers remained behind the floats in 2015 and 2016, but the marching society gained its own permit and in 2017, with help from Mayor Sandy Stimpson’s office, led the parade once again, Lyons said.

Now, what happened in 2014 is “water under the bridge,” Lyons said.

“There is no animosity,” he said.

In 2018, the restriction on the number of participants was lifted. The marchers welcome anyone to participate, whether an individual or a group, Lyons said.

“We want to make sure everyone feels welcome to participate,” Lyons said. “It’s free and open to anybody.”

Dean said he was happy the procession was back to the way Julian Rayford — credited with reviving the Joe Cain story — intended.

“The whole intent of the whole Joe Cain procession is the people,” Dean said. “It was folks who didn’t join organizations, you know, that just got out and walked.”

Participation in this year’s procession is expected to be strong, but last year’s was hurt by rain. Turnout is usually strong for the event, which is unique to Mobile-only event.

“Two years ago, I think they had like 200,000 watching,” Dean said. “Obviously it would be tough to have 200,000 marching in the street. I’d love to see that. Two-hundred-thousand people having fun in the streets together, all sizes, shapes, races, colors, creeds, out there having a good time.”

Other groups

The Wild Mauvillians, one of the parade’s largest  groups, got its name to honor a small Native American tribe French colonists encountered when settling the city, a group co-founder said. The small tribe helped the settlers survive, the co-founder said.

The group first began marching in 2011 and has now grown to 75, the co-founder said. The group’s signature throw is an oyster shell necklace.

Dan Friedline and friends founded the MARD group after another friend who lives in New Orleans told them about a “skull and bones” group there. Traditionally, the New Orleans group goes around knocking on doors and helping to prepare folks for Carnival festivities.

“We gave it a try,” Friedline said. “We went to Oakleigh and roamed around with noisemakers, encouraging everyone to come out for Mardi Gras.”

The next year, when another skull and bones group did something similar, Friedline said his group “morphed into something else.” The group now marches wearing formal dress and animal heads, he said.

“It’s a blast,” Friedline said. “It’s a ton of fun. I enjoy the history.”

Similar to what you might find with bigger parading societies, Friedline’s group has a signature throw: decorative masks.

Gerald Tomlinson is a member of the Washington Square Marching Society, which has about 25 members. Like Bullock, Tomlinson said the procession can be very personal, as participants are among the crowd rather than riding above them.

“It’s a lot of fun to march and be a part of it,” he said. “We make a big deal of it.”

Joe Cain Marching Society president Lyons is part of a family group that participates in the procession each year.

“For us, it’s a family gathering,” he said of the procession.

Two years ago, Lyons built a quadricycle, which the family refers to as the “mothership.” They use it in the procession.

“We resurrect it each year,” he said.

The newest group to enter the footmarcher ranks is the Mystic Squirrels of Bienville, or Mystic SOBs. The squirrel-themed group sprang from the mind of Riley Brenes, a former employee of the Mobile Arts Council, Executive Director Shellie Teague said.

After workshopping the idea for several months, Teague said the group embraced it as a way to raise funds for the arts organization. A call for participants then went out on social media, she said.

“The response was really immediate,” Teague said. “I know within an hour, we had two people sign up, which was huge because Mobilians are notorious for waiting to the last minute to buy things, to buy tickets.”

The roughly 65-member group will don matching squirrel masks and wear self-made ensembles inspired by the outfit of Chief Slac, but members are encouraged to “go nuts,” Teague said.

“The Arts Council is not going to stifle creativity,” she said. “If you don’t have an idea, here’s something you could do, but that’s exactly right, go nuts with it. Let’s have a really good time.”

The Arts Council has raised close to $4,000 through the fundraiser, which makes it somewhat unusual among footmarching groups, but Teague said they got the blessing of board members and other longtime marchers.

“They were all really excited,” Teague said. “We were upfront that we were going to charge people to be in this because we’re going to use this as a fundraiser, and they understand because they do fundraisers through the year to help raise money.”

The council has not designated where the funds will go, although Teague said she’d like to earmark it for a specific idea.

History

Julian Rayford, known as Judy, is credited with reviving the story of Joe Cain and becoming the second person to don the Chief Slac costume.

Dean said Rayford personally told him about the day’s genesis and about carrying Cain’s skull back home in his jacket pocket.

“He told me many times, but he wrote about it also; he reached down lovingly, there was a root growing out of Joe Cain’s eye socket, he lovingly pulled that out, shook the dirt off and held it up to the sun and light came through,” Dean said. “So, that’s when we say Joe Cain passed the feathers to Julian.”

Around 1970, Rayford “passed the feathers,” as it were, to Red Foster, Dean said. After 16 years, Dean himself inherited them.

Dean said he hadn’t planned on ever portraying Chief Slac until Foster told him about it.

“He said, ‘well, you are, but I’ll give you plenty of notice,’” Dean said. “Well, he didn’t. He told me at the end of the parade the next year that it was his last parade.”

Dean said he doesn’t know when he’ll pick a successor, although he has thought about it.

“I’ve been struggling with that for a number of years because the role has changed somewhat and again, it’s a character for all the people and it could be anybody,” he said. “It could be a woman, it could be a black man, it could be, ironically, a Native American, but the person that takes this role needs to embody everybody. Not just go out on Joe Cain Day, but be able to go to schools, be able to go to highbrow events, be able to go to neighborhood gatherings.”

In the 1960s, the original procession started at the old City Hall on Royal Street and ended at the Church Street graveyard, where Cain and his wife had been reburied. Tomlinson said the original intent was to be similar to a jazz funeral.

“Over the years it grew and turned into a downtown festival,” he said. “Out of the idea that Rayford had of a celebration of Joe Cain, it turned into a downtown citywide celebration.”

Part of the reason the procession encompassed more of downtown was because the city stopped allowing the large group of marchers to use the graveyard after complaints it had been damaged, Mobile Mask publisher Steve Joynt said.

After its move out of the graveyard, enthusiasm for the procession waned, Joynt said, but it would pick up again. At one point anybody could bring a float or a flatbed truck, which are called units, to the parade. The number of units has since been limited to 36, Joynt said.

In fact, Lyons can remember the parade being so large in the 1970s and 1980s that it attracted 500 to 1,000 participants. One year, the parade was so large the head of the procession finished the parade before the tail got started.

“The city had to put some sort of limits on it,” Lyons said.

The procession has always had its oddities. Dean remembers one year a local radio station sponsored an all-female kazoo band for the parade.

“Those girls could play kazoo pretty good,” he said. “Then another radio station, another year, had the ‘Transistor Sisters.’ They all had transistor radios and tuned it to their station and they all did routines in the parade, and that was neat.”