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Train Songs

 


These are mostly old songs, as the notion of riding a train is largely an old experience. Who rides trains (or used to)? Hobos, guys on the lam, the lovelorn, wanderers, and fellow travellers. Today’s playlist consists of mostly bluegrass and blues, but rockabilly and rock ‘n roll join in. Even gospel takes its turn ferrying the faithful up to the pearly gates. Trains are linked to a wide range of situations and feelings. They can serve as a means of escape, freedom and joy, abandonment and sadness.  Doc Watson went so far as to wish mayhem on the train that took his girl…“I wish to the Lord, that train would wreck, kill the engineer and break the fireman’s neck.” But trains are like that, adept at taking men’s (and some women’s) babies away. They can also bring them home. Most any instrument can imitate a train sound, the harmonica, fiddle, guitar...and the human voice including a muted hand-trumpet by the Golden Gate Quartet, otherwise performing acapella. Train songs can be fast, exuberant, imitating the chugga-chugga motion; they can plod along as they’re just getting started (prolonging the pain/anticipation); or they can just connect us at any speed to the coming and going, the potential and failure, to the wellspring of human emotions. Trains are like that. . JH

Al compás del mundo programa #189, 7-17-25 – train songs

 


01 Jimmie Rodgers - Waiting for a Train

02 The Delmore Brothers - Pan American Boogie

03 Hank Williams - Lonesome Whistle

04 Doc Watson - The Train That Carried My Girl from Town

05 Bob Dylan - Freight Train Blues

06 Bukka White - Special Streamline

07 Lightnin' Slim - Mean Ol' Lonesome Train

08 Sister Rosetta Tharpe - This Train

09 Golden Gate Quartet - Golden Gate Gospel Train

10 The Virginia Mountain Boys - Lost Train Blues

11 G.B. Grayson - Train 45

12 Johnny Cash - Rock Island Line

13 Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs - Dixie Home

14 Vernon L. Sutphin - Lost Train Blues

15 Johnny Burnette - The Train Kept a-Rollin'

16 Chuck Berry - All Aboard

17 Otis Rush - So Many Roads, So Many Trains

18 Muddy Waters - Still a Fool

19 Taj Mahal - It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry

20 Dirty Dozen Brass Band - Night Train


Everything was hauled by train

and the sound of the train

was

the lonesome blues

chuggin rhythm

mournful whistle music

the foreboding hiss of steam

two lights on behind

the dream of the train was

cold railroad steel

Afterword: Sunnyland Slim got his name from the train. Jim has featured him on his Al Compas site many times. The train ran on the Frisco Line. It would go ever so fast. Going by, it would set papers and soda bottles to flying. And it would kill people and mules and destroy their wagons if they were stuck on the tracks. They wrote about it. The Sunnyland Train. The song comes to me, when I see that Purple T. JV

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