James Coffey’s “Legends of the Rails”
Not accurate and kind of cheesy, but the nostolgia has always appealed to me.
Mike F90: Sending you a P.M.
Tom
Like I did the last time this topic popped up here, I submit this little-known tribute to the brave laborers who left their homes and families and everything they knew in order to scratch out some sort of living while building the early railways of Britain. Starts out with a bit of sentimental build-up, carving the right of way and laying the track, and then the train finally gets moving at about 5:50:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTkooJV7xx0
And to see the kind of rail visuals Phil and the boys incorporated in the live performance:
Rock Island Line - 1950’s Johnny Horton and/or Johnny Cash versions
City of New Orleans - 1970’s Steve Goodman and/or Arlo Guthrie versions
Can’t You See - 1970’s The Marshall Tucker Band (considered among the top five Southern Rock songs ever, the band is from Spartanburg SC so the “southbound all the way to Georgia” is most likely the Southern)
Driver 8 - 1980’s R.E.M. (Southern Crescent is mentioned in the song, Chessie System is shown in the video, the band is from Athens GA)
Steel Rail blues gordon Lightfoot
So far,just about everything mentioned has been Country or Rock. Here are a few railroad related songs mostly from the Big Band era. While I haven’t gotten into the Classical genre, there may well be some more or less modern pieces that were inspired by the sounds and rhythms of the railroad. If you know of any, please let us know. (I’d almost bet that Wagner wrote something in his later years.)
1. Blues in The Night, Ella Fitzgerald, 1961. Uses the sound of trains to define the Blues inthe Night
2. Casey Jones, Spike Jones, 1940. A humorous take on an old vaudeville song about a train engineer.
3. Chattanooga Choo Choo, Glenn Miller, 1941. A song about a trip home by train.
4. Choo Choo, Jack Payne 1931 – Instrumental, using sounds and rhythm of a steam engine
5. Daybreak Express, Vince Giordano, ca. 1985. Instrumental song with a railroad title.
6. Down By the Station, Tommy Dorsey, 1948. Whimsical song probably was a children’s song. Big surprise hit.
7. Dream Train Nat Shilkret, 1928. Instrumental with some train &ld
I’ll go with another one by James Coffey. “Ghosts of the Rails.”
"Rail and machine
Fire, smoke and steam…"
I just remembered another one, a lullabye written by Malvina Reynolds: Morningtown Ride, most famously done by the Seekers in 1968.
Tom
Holy smoke, I looked at the timetable and it’s from the old New Jersey and New York (Erie) Railroad, now New Jersey Transit’s Pascack Valley Line! All the stops are pretty much today as they were then, the differences being today’s trains start in Hoboken and terminate in Spring Valley, the line beyond abandoned.
Amazing. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
You suppose the songwriters or the publisher were commuters on that line?
An addendum: There’s an old movie from about 1930 or so that takes place on the Southern Pacific called “Other Men’s Women,” originally “The Steel Highway” starring Grant Withers, Regis Toomey, James Cagney, Mary Astor, and Joan Blondell where some railroaders are sitting in a yard office singing “On the 5:15.” It shows up on Turner Classic Movies from time to time.
Reminds me that the Who had a 5:15 song too, on Quadrophenia…
Choo Choo Ch’boogie
Ramrod,
My admiration has no limits now. An inventory of favored tunes and lyrics, railroad oriented, vast and varied, Ya’ got it.
A couple that I’d throw into the mix:
The Stanley Brother’s Orange Blossom Special,
Hank Snow’s The Wreck of the Old 97.
Roy Acuff’s Wabash Cannonball
Hobo Bill’s Last Ride, Hank Snow
and The Sons of the Pioneers’ “Way Out There” and “One Last Ride.”
Ernest Tubbs sang about a hobo in Texas trying to get home, “if you haven’t got a nickle” said the brakeman…
The “Singing Brakeman,” everything he sang evoked his era…Jimmie Rogers…the '20s to the '30s.
There are song writers and songs, so many…let’s honor them…
I’m speechless, Chuck.
“I Thought About You” (Music by Jimmy Van Heusen, Lyrics by Johnny Mercer") (listed by ramrod)
I took a trip on a train
And I thought about you
I passed a shadowy lane
And I thought about you
Two or three cars parked under the stars
A winding stream
Moon shining down on some little town
Johnny - Folsum Prison Blues
Speaking of Not Rock or Country, here’s “Ain’t No Brakeman” performed by the great bluesman John Mayall:
Lyrics by Fontaine Brown: http://www.lyrics.net/lyric/9916497
UPDATE: posted too soon, here’s the same song covered by Coco Montoya with superior railroad related video:
UPDATE TWO: don’t know if this has been posted already, but Wikipedia wants your input: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_train_songs
Could be a very long topic, this …
peter paul and mary, Freight Train, This Train (don’t carry no gamblers) 1965?
What? No one’s nominated Liz Phair’s ‘Baby Got Going’ yet? Can’t believe it.