I was learning to finger-pick “City of New Orleans” on the guitar the other day when it suddenly struck me just how many great train songs there are - and how many of them I love. I began compiling a mental list and after about 50 titles, I realised there have been more great songs featuring trains in a starring role than those about any other subject – apart, I’ll suppose, from lurv.
“Casey Jones”, “Smokestack Lightnin’”, “Mystery Train”, “Orange Blossom Special”, “Rock island Line”, “Freight Train”, “Last Train to San Fernando”, “Long Train Runnin’”, “Love Train”, “Train Kept A Rollin’”, "Chattanooga Choo-Choo", "Midnight Special", “Wabash Cannonball”, "Boxcars", “This Train”, “Folsom Prison Blues”, "Midnight Train to georgia", Marrakesh Express", “Desperadoes Waiting for a Train”…
There’s people running away on trains, being taken to prison
on trains, hearing train whistles moaning in the distance, trains bringing their
baby back – or taking them away, trains returning the singer to his
beloved home town, people dying in train wrecks, trains being robbed, trains as
metaphors for… well, just about anything. Porters, engineers, conductors – they
all get in on the act. Just as almost any film can be improved by sticking a
train journey in it, the same goes for a song. Emotional things, trains - and of course, the regulare clickety-clack rhythm works in just about any musical genre.
Here, for no reason at all, are some of my favourite
train-related songs, excluding the classics mentioned above and any songs I’ve
previously featured in this blog – and this is just the tip of the iceberg:
"Train Train", The Count Bishops - wonderfully obscure record from a wonderfully obscure London group, released by Chiswick Records in 1976 to absolutely no interest whatsoever. Should have sold a million.
"3:10 to Yuma", Sandy Denny. 1967 pre-Fairport Convention track from the singer with the most hauntingly beautiful female voice I've ever heard.
"Stop that Train", Keith and Tex - lovely, slow Trojan reggae from 1967, featured on the The Harder They Come soundtrack.
"Smoke Along the Track", Stonewall Jackson - his voice just sums up country music for me - hard-edged, twangy and mournful. He made some terrific records, and this, from 1959, is one of the best.
"Trans-Europe Express", Kraftwerk - one of those bands whose greatness and originality is more obvious looking back than it was at the time. This came out in 1977.
"On The Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe", Judy Garland - Look, you don''t have to be a friend of Dorothy to appreciate the occasional Judy Garland performance (for the impatient among you, she appears at 5'44"). Love this song, which is from The Harvey Girls (1946), and it's one hell of a routine. (For some reason, my mother loathed it.)
"My Baby thinks He's a Train", Rosanne Cash. Johnny's eldest daughter and British guitar wizard Albert Lee join up to create a Hot Country classic in 1981 - the genre and the rhythm of the rails were made for each other.
"Night Train to Memphis", Jerry Lee Lewis - one of the greatest popular music voices of all time, the best rock 'n' roll piano player of all time, the superbly grooved Sun Records house band, and a classic song (first done by Roy Acuff in 1946) = casual perfection.
"Pan American Boogie" (1949), Delmore Brothers - before Rockabilly, there was Hillbilly Boogie, and these chaps (from Alabama, but travelling from Cincinnati to New Orleans in this instance) were its finest exponents.
"Down Bound Train", Chuck Berry. I was amazed when I heard this on the third volume of a series of double-albums of the old reprobate's work released in the 1970s. The song is so un-Berry like, I assumed it was a cover version, but this B-side of "No Money Down", released in 1955, is a Berry original. Mythic, I'd say.
"Wreck of the Old 97", Johnny Cash - I presume the Great Man's chink-chunka-chink sound was entirely based on rhythm of a train. He made whole albums of train songs, so there's a lot to choose from, but I've always loved this hopped-up version of an old standard from the Johnny Cash at San Quentin album. (The picker blazing away in the background is Carl Perkins, by the way.)
"Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", The Kinks. This number from their Village Green Preservation Society LP takes the basic lick from "Smokestack Lightnin'" and transposes it to Wiltshire. Strangely appealing and distinctly odd.
"City of New Orleans", Arlo Guthrie - written by Steve Goodman, this has a beautiful melody, lovely chord changes, and the best lyrics in all popular music. There really is something about trains that brings out the very best in songwriters and performers.
Great post, kind of. What were you thinking of by recommending a million Gronmark blog readers to buy that Count Bishops pile of poo? If the drummer had ever met the rest of the band either in the studio or after then I'm Miles Davis. It's OK to dick with your sticks behind the beat but at some point it's a good idea to catch up, a point lost on the Bish rhythm maestro.
ReplyDeleteLast Train to San Fernando, which you name check, would be on the list of every boy in the 50s with an older brother with dodgy taste who couldn't see the Beatles coming. Likewise The Runaway Train by Michael Holliday.
For some reason, your music posts seem to attract far fewer comments than your other stuff. If any one doubts or even cares that the flame of rock and roll train songs still burns, check out Train Kept a Rolling on the Jeff Beck Rock and Roll Party DVD, now being shown on Sky Arts.
Re The Count Bishops - you have no soul. Drummer sounds okay to me - okay, a bit "spontaneous", but who cares (well, you do, obviously)?
ReplyDeletePoor old Michael Holliday - all I remember of him is the theme tune to "Four Feather Falls", an early Gerry Anderson "Toy Story"-style cowboy puppet series, and his cover of Marty Robbins' "Story of My Life". Terrible stage fright led to a nervous breakdown in 1961, and, one presumes, also caused him to commit suicide in 1963. At least he never witnessed Beatlemania.
I just met a very pukkah couple who lie in the same block as Sir Jeffrey Beck in London at a choral concert in Cornwall two nights ago. They had no gossip, unfortunately. I'm slightly astonished that Nigel Tufnell should be the one true old-style rock 'n' roll and rockabilly adherent out of all the 1960s British guitar gods - maybe that's why his guitar playing is more sprightly and inventive and playful than others from that era. Clapton and Paige can't really do R&R, Keef only does Chuck Berry and Jimi hendrix is still dead. Gawd Bless Jeff, whose "Brush With the Blues" is more interesting than every Clapton blues effort for the past thirty years put together.
I'm all for drumming spontaneity. I actually thought Keith Moon was as inventive a musician as any of the 60s 70s crowd. I'm not sure that this was what I heard on Train Train. The chap in the Count Bishops reminds me of the old drummer joke: What's the difference between Dr Scholl's foot powder and a drummer? One bucks up your feet, and the other....etc etc. Mind you, I once went to see a band called Tony Williams's Lifetime and wasn't sure that he had heard the joke either. He was widely regarded as one of the world's leading sticksters and he just seemed to be whacking the kit as and when he felt like it.
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