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Eleven men died so the mail could get to Spencer on time. The crash occurred when the 97 failed to negotiate a curve on a forty-five-foot-high wooden trestle outside Danville, Virginia.

The train’s engineer, a thirty-three-year-old named Joseph “Steve” Broady, had been ordered to put on speed by his bosses at the Southern Railway, who were concerned about keeping the company’s U.S. (It was in any case set to the music of an older folk favorite, Henry Clay Work’s 1865 “The Ship That Never Returned.”) The song told of the September 27, 1903, crash of the Old 97, a.k.a., “the Fast Mail,” which ran between Monroe, Virginia, and Spencer, North Carolina, and had legendarily never once been late. “The Wreck of the Old 97.” Reportedly, Vernon Delhart made this America’s first million-selling country-music hit, in 1924, although David Graves George, one of the first people to actually reach the wreck site, made a long and dogged fight in court to claim the song was his. Louis (which, as the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio, ran the last, regularly scheduled Pullman sleeping car in 1971.)ħ. Or the old Chicago and Alton Railroad’s Midnight Special between Chicago and St. It may have been inspired instead by the Missouri Pacific’s Houstonian, which left Houston around midnight and rolled by the Sugar Land penitentiary where Leadbelly was imprisoned. Contrary to popular lore, it does not refer to the Southern Pacific’s Golden Gate Limited no such train ever ran. My favorite version is Leadbelly’s rendition, but Creedence is also great, and then there’s Belafonte’s 1962 cover, which starts with a hard-driving Dylan harmonica riff to start - supposedly the first piece of music Bob ever got recorded. “The Midnight Special.” An old, old folk song, the words first written down by Howard Odum in 1905, and first recorded in the 1920s. But also Clapton, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, the Doors, the Dead . . . Who hasn’t done a version? Sure, there’s Elvis. And if you don’t believe me, just watch Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers dance and sing it to the Glen Miller Orchestra.ĥ. Yes, there’s that offensive and anachronistic shout-out to a shoeshine “boy” at the beginning. “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” by Harry Warren (music) and Mack Gordon (words). “The Ballad of John Henry.” The classic 1870s “hammer song.” I always liked the Harry Belafonte version, but it’s hard to find a bad one.Ĥ. “City of New Orleans,” by Steve Goodman. Popularized by Arlo Guthrie, it’s not only a song about trains, but also a pretty good one about deindustrialization. drinkin’ coffee and smokin’ big cigars.” In the end, “those people keep a-movin’, and that’s what tortures me.” And isn’t that the American lament in a nutshell, whether we’re doing hard time on a murder rap, or a mortgage-and-family?Ģ.

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We can see not only free people but rich ones, “in a fancy dinin’ car . . . It’s immensely visceral: we can hear the train rolling, can hear its whistle. But it also speaks to the heart of how we feel about trains, that pang we feel when we see them taking other people to other places - even if you’re not in prison. “Folsom Prison Blues,” by Johnny Cash. Yes, I know it’s about prison. Really: outside of the basics - sex, death, love, God, food, dances, and drugs - have so many popular songs ever been written about anything else? Particularly an inanimate mode of transportation? I don’t think so.ġ. Folk, rock, blues, big band, gospel, show tunes, skiffle, bluegrass, Newgrass - you name it.

My list was selected to reflect the incredible variety of musical genres in which train songs have been written. Scoff at it, hate it, love it, add to it - you’ll probably be right. “Ascending the Alleghanies,” Harper’s Magazine (June 1859)īelow, my list of the best train songs ever written.

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