Thanks, Johnny! Forget the Pelican. Remember the Birmingham Special.
http://hswv.pastperfectonline.com/photo/3B360FE5-2138-4076-93B3-439854171382
The extent that this era of music has been marginalized in popular culture, makes it highly unlikely that the PC police would identify this particular song, much less the lyrics within it.
Their thinking doesn’t go beyond easy targets. After all, Turner Classic Movies, airs hours of political incorrectness on a daily basis with it’s films of 1930’s to 50’s vintage, and no one’s howling to have the channel removed. The reason being is that the viewing demographic doesn’t include a sufficient amount of PC activists that take notice or care.
I’ve heard that Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” refers to the “Tennesseean”, which was a prewar streamliner, pulled by a DL109/DL110 set, no less.
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From another portion of the song, it is Penn Station in New York that is the station. Penn’s current track numbers end in the low 20’s, and I doubt they have ever had a track 29. However, the “29” is needed for the rhyme scheme.
AND right across the street from Pennsylvania Station was the Pennsylvania Hotel!
It’s phone number? “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” of course!
Hey, as long as we’re doin’ the swing thing, how about a subway ride?
(That UP streamliner in the opening nothwithstanding.)
“Take The ‘A’ Train,” with the great Duke Ellington and his orchestra!
Considering that then the Tenneseean did not have sleeper from New York , it is difficult to see how this train could be fitted into the song. Southbound, it left Washington at nine in the morning, so breakfast would have been served in Virginia (if at all), and dinner in the diner was eaten between Bristol and Knoxville–and no breakfast was served into Memphis. The only “choo-choo” part of the trip was between Washington and Bristol, with a streamstyled Pacific working between Washington and Monroe. Number 45 arrived in Bristol at 6:00 p.m., and left at 5:10 p.m.
The September, 1941, TT has a picture of engine 2900, and not a DL-109 on the head end. Other pictures show the then current power of the Southerner, the Crescent, and the Ponce de Leon–all EMD power–on Southern rails.
There are also pictures of the ten hostesses Southern employed at the time; four were from cities on the route of this train.
In the end, I suspect that “Chatanooga Choo Choo” is not a song about a single train, but a composite, with many “licenses” taken for rhyming, timing, etc. Any direct references are likely pure coincidence…
Because my mother (b. 1920) loved Glenn Miller and played his music on Saturday mornings as she was cleaning our house in the 1950’s, I grew up knowing his recordings and and the lyrics by heart; this turned out to be a gift from her, as his music and that of the Big Band era has been enriching my life for over 60 years now. From the moment I heard “Chattanooga Choo Choo” I was hooked! I could hear and feel the motion of a train as the song played. I always assumed Track 29 was at Pennsylvania Station; if the station in actuality had fewer than that number of tracks, who cares? As someone said, it fits the lyric.
As far as “boy” in the lyrics, singers today don’t use that term or need to. They can substitute “hey” or “say” or something else innocuous. The word is not vital to the spirit of the song. This is not being “politically correct,” it is simply being aware and sensitive to the feelings of others, knowing that the original word could possibly cause offense; and why would any singer want to do that?
Somewhere I read that when the Miller band learned they were going to record “Chattanooga Choo Choo” they cringed; most of them thought it was, well, silly. But the great success of the record convinced them otherwise. By the way, the Hotel Pennsylvania in NYC still has PEnnsylvania-6-5000 as its phone number. But trust me, this is a hotel you never want to stay at. Ever.
Glenn Miller and his Orchestra appeared at the Hotel Pennsylvania on 7th Avenue about the same time the Dorseys were the house band at the New Yorker Hot
BOTH my hands are up!
I should add that like NKP Guy I too was exposed to swing music at an early age, around 10 or so. My parents had purchased an RCA LP (good old vinyl!) that featured Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” Artie Shaw’s “Frenesi,” a very young Frank Sinatra singing Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” plus others. I was fascinated by what I heard, and later on as a student of history, especially the World War Two years, I felt you really couldn’t understand the era without listening to the music.
When I was in college in the early 70’s I bought a two disc set of Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force Band, and the guys I shared an apartment with all loved it. We always played it during the partys we had, and everyone loved it!
Allow me a personal observation: I’ve always believed that the generation I grew up with had a certain degree of World War Two envy, as insane and illogical as that sounds. We looked back at our parents time and saw a cause you could believe in, leaders you could trust, (giants really did walk the Earth in those days) villains you just knew were villains, the clothes, the cars, the music, the movies, the steam locomotives, (!) the great planes, you name it. What did we have? All around, it just didn’t compare. Liberal or conservative, we listened to that music and all had the same look on our faces.
Crazy, I know. Or maybe others feel the same way I did without realizing it?
We’ve been lucky here with a local band that does swing. My daughter’s high school band teacher was part of it, and that type of music found its way into the high school band’s repetoire.
All this talk about the word “boy”-- I never associated it with race. Back in those years shoe-shine boys frequently were actually boys of any race, as were newspaper boys and delivery boys. Remember when many small grocery stores used to have groceries delivered by boys on bicycles?
Firelock76 wrote the following post 15 hours ago[in part]:
BOTH my hands are up!
“…I should add that like NKP Guy I too was exposed to swing music at an early age, around 10 or so. My parents had purchased an RCA LP (good old vinyl!) that featured Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” Artie Shaw’s “Frenesi,” a very young Frank Sinatra singing Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” plus others. I was fascinated by what I heard, and later on as a student of history, especially the World War Two years, I felt you really couldn’t understand the era without listening to the music. …”
I, as well, grew up with the WWII and post WWII era’s music in our house. Swing and Big Bands records were always around: The Dorsey’s, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Bennie Godman, Artie Shaw, to name just a few that pop into memory.
And, I may possibly be mistaken, but I think, that when Glenn Miller formed his large wartime, Air Force band; it was about 50 or so(?). It was the first of the large military bands, to be so formed(?).
At the beginning of my last year of teaching, as we went around the room saying something about ourselves by means of an introduction & ice breaker, I found out I had a serious, budding clarinetist in my class. Who did he like better, I asked, Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw? He didn’t know of either.
The following day I brought in my Artie Shaw CD’s and one or two of Goodman. When he returned them a few days later his face had delight written all over it; he especially enjoyed Artie Shaw. He said he didn’t think anyone could possibly play such high notes! I didn’t think much more about it.
At the end of the year, I asked the students what they thought they’d remember best from our time together. I got the expected, happy answers from most. But I think one of the highest compilments I’ve ever had was when this clarinetist said, “I’ll always remember that this was the class where I discovered Artie Shaw.”
Since then he’s gone on to play clarinet and saxophone in college and professionally.
Firelock, I completely agree with your contention that in order to really get into the zeitgeist of a period it is incredibly helpful to know the music. Also, about your notion that we Boomers have a World War II envy: I think you’re really onto something there. I think we lived to see all that wartime unity disipate over the decades. Indeed, I never, ever thought I’d live to see Nazi flags proudly paraded in the streets of our cities! What would
I agree with you, but there are individuals who, since they are aware that the term has been used with disparaging and derogatory intent, will insist that any use of the term must be considered in that light.
Victimology breeds strange bedfellows.
Likely that is because it was the author’s prerogative to decide what it was he intended to report on? You could always write an article for submission listing materials you find significant, and see if if get’s published.
Thanks for the feedback NKP Guy! At least I’m not crazy for thinking the way I do.
I’ll tell you, it’s really no mystery, to me anyway, that the “Nostalgia Craze” hit, and hit hard, in the 1970’s considering the turmoil of the previous decade.
And I think anyone marching down the street in the post-war years with a Nazi flag would have been pummelled beyond recognition. But, this is still the United States of America, we do have the right to free speech no matter how noxious we may think it is. Doesn’t mean we have to listen though.
And as a history buff, I’d have to say whether I get angry at the sight of a swastika or not depends on the context. On the tail of a restored Luftwaffe aircraft or at a World War Two re-enactment, no. In the hands of some jokers who don’t know what National Socialism was really all about, yes.
What an evil genius Hitler was. He wanted a symbol for the Nazi party that was bold, simple, striking, and once you saw it you never forgot it. How right he was, in that respect anyway.
A swastika makes me shudder. So does a “Hammer and Sickle.”
RE: the Hammer & Sickle - what we didn’t know when we were hiding under our school desks during the Nuclear Air Raids - The USSR had more internal issues among it’s unon of socialist republics, that really weren’t interested in that ‘union’; as we found out when the USSR collapsed.
Oh yeah, it’s amazing what was revealed when that Iron Curtain finally collapsed.