Burl Ives 'twin' takes it all in stride in Big Rock Candy Mountain

BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN, Sevier County — Terry Briggs is no stranger to being recognized. Over much of the first half of his life he was a professional jazz singer, performing in clubs from coast to coast. People other than the IRS have, from time to time, requested his autograph.

But he never expected the kind of attention he's getting now that he's retired from show biz.

Every other day, it seems, someone walks into the restaurant he owns and operates here at the base of Utah's iconic candy-colored mountain, and goes, "Wow! It's You!"

And Terry sighs.

Because he knows it isn't.

"They think I'm Burl Ives," he says. "Then they want me to sing the song."

The "song" is the one that made the mountain famous, or vice versa. "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" was written in 1928 by a man named Harry McClintock, better known as Haywire Mack. As the legend goes, McClintock was a brakeman on the railroad that used to run through central Utah past a mountain so brightly colored it looks like it's made out of candy (but is really the creation of a long-ago volcanic uprising).

He wrote his song, a hobo anthem that fantasizes of a place where, among other things, "the handouts grow on bushes," and "the hens lay soft-boiled eggs" and "there's a lake of stew, and ginger ale too, and you can paddle all around it in a big canoe."

And, best yet, "where they hung the jerk that invented work."

Not long after McClintock's song became popular, some Utah residents lettered a sign and put it next to the volcanic mountain, dubbing it "Big Rock Candy Mountain." Subsequently, it turned into a small resort with hiking trails, lodging and a restaurant.

Like the mountain, the song has enjoyed tremendous staying power. It has been featured in all sorts of movies — most recently in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" — and covered by numerous artists.

But nobody covered it quite like Burl Ives, the singer and movie actor with the distinctive white goatee, who recorded "Big Rock Candy Mountain" in 1949 and turned it into a chart-topping hit in the 1950s.

Ives died in 1995.

But he lives on in Terry Briggs, who could be his much younger twin brother.

Same white goatee, same round face, same twinkle in his eye. Not to mention same soothing singing voice.