There is nothing like being stuck on a journey to galvanise me into adding another chapter to my blog. Certain songs leave an evocative trail behind them and seem to encapsulate the experience of a journey not finished or a road still traveled. Traveling entails patience, observation, meditation, contemplation and a balance between activity and being passive. You hand over your care to an airline, a driver or as in this instance a train.
Arlo Guthrie’s recording of the City of New Orleans (his only chart success) says it all. Contrary to popular belief, Guthrie did not write the song. It was written by the late Steve Goodman who sketched the outline while traveling on the train with his wife in 1970. It was only on returning home and hearing that the passenger service would be discontinued that he refined the song and released it on his first album. Goodman was always grateful to Arlo Guthrie however who recorded it on his biggest hit Album, Hobo’s Lullaby in 1972. So the story goes Goodman played the song to Arlo at the Quiet Knight bar in Chicago who agreed to add it onto his latest album release.
I am due to see Arlo Guthrie in concert in August and as is often the case I began to rummage through my iTunes collection and started to listen to all things Guthrie. Alice’s Restaurant remains one of the anthems of the early 70s. I remember going the Windmill Cinema in Soho with my friend Piers Rowlandson to see this cult film which had captivated anti-Vietnam America. The distributor must have been so nervous about its success in the UK that they screened it in a tiny intimate theater more used to seeing bare breasted beauties rather than long haired American hippies.
The song is one of those tunes that keeps reverberating in your consciousness but it has also great significance to the Blues Road. It was the train that brought many of the great bluesmen from the Delta into Memphis and ultimately into Chicago. More important even than Highway 61 as a conduit to work and recognition. Illinois Central was their first sight of the great city and close by, the Maxwell Street Market was their first taste of Chicago living. Songs often refer to Maxwell Street and I always believed that the coffee was named after the street (It was actualy named after the Maxwell Hotel in Tennessee) and that the “Spoonfull Blues” refered to the coffee (Sadly not, a song written by Willie Dixon after a blues number by Charlie Patton)
The song is a lyrical, romantic account of a journey and bears no mention of the significance of the journey to the blues story. Guthrie was adamant that he wanted the song to have more of a rock sound about it than Goodman’s flocky version. He recorded the album at Sun West Studios in Hollywood and it was produced by Lenny Waronker. Waronker with a glittering collection of musicians (Ry Cooder, Burritos bassist Chris Ethridge, drummer Jim Keltner and Jim Dickinson on piano) pusuaded Arlo to record it at the end of a long session. The resulting recording was so laid back that they had to tweak the speed and overdub it to get it right.
The song has subsequently been covered by Willie Nelson, John Denver, Jerry Reed, Judy Collins, Chet Atkins and many others. Kris Kistofferson referred to it as “the best train song ever!”
Arlo Guthrie has made a considerable contribution to American music but his pedigree is unrivaled. He was born into the “First Family” of American folk. His father Woody traveled through the USA writing songs and experiencing difficult and hard times. He had an affinity with the downtrodden, the dispossessed and the exploited and wrote about the hardships of the great depression and the despair felt by the voiceless migrant workers. Woody died of Huntington’s Chorea prematurely but a wealth of his recordings still remain. His book “Bound for Glory” is a must read for American roots fans.
Bob Dylan describes meeting the very young Arlo when he visited Woody on his arrival in New York. As children, the Guthrie kids would have grown up with household names such as Pete Seeger, Cisco Huston, Rambling Jack Elliot, Bob Dylan and many more. What an influence this must have been on the young Arlo Guthrie?
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The “City of New Orleans” was not the only famous train that left out of Illinois Central Station. The “Green Emerald” rode to St Louis while the “Miss-Lou” traveled to Jackson Mississippi.
All these trains run by the Illinois Central Railroad had their own livery, splendor and mythologies but this was to change when Amtrak took over the service in 1971. Much of the romance disappeared and the rolling stock gradually deteriorated. The train stopped short of Memphis following Katrina and Arlo and the train joined up to help publicise the damage and collect funds for the victims of the Hurricane.
Its still possible to ride that famous train which takes 19 hours to reach New Orleans. Listen to the songs below and take a virtual ride through towns with magical names such as Chicago, Carbondale, Cairo, Memphis, Greenwood, Yazoo City, Jackson……..and beyond.
Lyrics: City of New Orleans
Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin' trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.
Chorus:
Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car.
Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score.
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor.
And the sons of Pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel.
Mothers with their babes asleep,
Are rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.
Chorus
Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
But all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.
The conductor sings his songs again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.
Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
