Train Songs!

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Bob Dylan

50+ Year Amtrak Rider
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Watching some of the great videos on you tube and posted here brings to mind the following:

What are your favorite all time train songs???(Limit of 5 please!)Mine are:

1)Chattanoga Choo-Choo

2)City of New Orleans

3)Midnight Train to Georgia

4)This Train Doesnt Stop Here No More

5)Wabash Cannon Ball

***Honorable Mention: "Rocket from Decatur"(a friend of mine wrote it/hes a traveling folk singer in the West/Mid-West) ;)
 
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1. City of New Orleans (Arlo Guthrie version)

2. Chattanooga Choo-Choo

3. Casey Jones (Johnny Cash version)

4. Midnight Train to Georgia

5. Waiting For a Train
 
Johnny Cash singing "City of New Orleans"

Even though the most popular version of this song was recorded by Arlo Guthrie, you'd think that Johnny not only recorded it first, but wrote it—and even lived it. I don't think there was ever a train song that he sang that he didn't own.

Edit: fixed minor typo.
 
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"Orange Blossom Special" - Johnson Mountain Boys & Bill Monroe's 1930s version (bluegrass versions) & Boxcar Willie (country version)

"Wabash Cannonball" - Roy Acuff 1938 version

"Fireball Mail" - Roy Acuff 1940s version

"Night Train to Memphis" - Roy Acuff version

"On The Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe" - Johnny Mercer 1940s version

And most of the songs the others have posted so far....

OBS gone freight...
 
1. Rock Island Line - Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee

2. She Caught the Katy - Taj Mahal

3. This Train is Bound for Glory - Woodie Guthrie ?

4. Hey Porter - Johnny Cash

5. Back Up Train - Al Green
 
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1.On the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe (hands down, I am told I played this constantly as a child.Sometimes I can find it in the slot machine at Johnny Rockets, When I do I play it about three times)

2.Orange Blossom Special

3.Chattanooga Choo Choo

4.City of New Orleans

5.Midnght train to Georgia
 
1. Chat Choo Choo

2. Caught The Katy

3. ATSF

4. CONO

5.Orange Blossom

Honorable Mention. Wabash Cannonball.

I can still remember that tune being played as background for a news report on the train-offs back in the mid-late sixties. I thought it was a local Detroit station, but in hind-sight, it could have been on Uncle Walter's broadcast. (When I was that age, "news was news" I din't knw diff between local and national..........) Stuck with me though, just like Mike Wallace's report on 60 Minutes, of mud-pumping trains "speeding along" at 10 miles an hour, just after AMTRAK took over in '71. "Is This Any Way To Run a Railroad?"
 
Watching some of the great videos on you tube and posted here brings to mind the following:
What are your favorite all time train songs???(Limit of 5 please!)Mine are:

1)Chattanoga Choo-Choo

2)City of New Orleans

3)Midnight Train to Georgia

4)This Train Doesnt Stop Here No More

5)Wabash Cannon Ball

***Honorable Mention: "Rocket from Decatur"(a friend of mine wrote it/hes a traveling folk singer in the West/Mid-West) ;)
"Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash
 
Johnny Cash signing "City of New Orleans"
Even though the most popular version of this song was recorded by Arlo Guthrie, you'd think that Johnny not only recorded it first, but wrote it—and even lived it. I don't think there was ever a train song that he sang that he didn't own.
The song was written by the late Steve Goodman, who's also famous for "A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request."

Goodman attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and one day while riding from Chicago back to school decided to stay on the train and rode through to New Orleans, or so the story goes.
 
Johnny Cash signing "City of New Orleans"
Even though the most popular version of this song was recorded by Arlo Guthrie, you'd think that Johnny not only recorded it first, but wrote it—and even lived it. I don't think there was ever a train song that he sang that he didn't own.
The song was written by the late Steve Goodman, who's also famous for "A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request."

Goodman attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and one day while riding from Chicago back to school decided to stay on the train and rode through to New Orleans, or so the story goes.
There is also a story that Steve Goodman wrote the song as he rode the train to New Orleans to work for a presidential candidate.

He also wrote the song that WGN uses for cub broadcasts, "Go Cubs Go" and I also believe that he wrote "Margaritaville" made famous by Jimmy Buffet.
 
1. Amtrak Blues Alberta Hunter

2. Crazy Train Ozzy Osbourne

3. Petticoat Junction Theme

4. Gandy Dancer's Ball Frankie Laine

5. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down The Band, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash
 
  1. City of New Orleans
  2. Rock Island Line (sung by Little Richard with Fishbone)
  3. The Gambler
  4. (Charlie on the) M.T.A.
  5. John Henry, Steel Driving Man
 
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Watching some of the great videos on you tube and posted here brings to mind the following:
What are your favorite all time train songs???
Well, this ain't exactly a train song, but I sure can close my eyes and imagine a train dancing merrily along the rail to the beat of the music with The Traveler hanging half out of the train's cab window waiving enthusiastically at everybody they go by! ^_^

Check out "Shuckin' the Corn" at YouTube!
 
OK, here we go after lengthly considerations:

1. Downtown Train -- Tom Waits

2. Driver 8 -- R.E.M.

3. Ghost Train -- Counting Crows

4. Freight Train Blues -- Bawb Dylan

5. Last Train To Clarksville -- The Monkees

And of course every song Johnny Cash recorded on the subject!

I'm loading my iPod right now with every possible 'train'-song I can find for my upcoming trip, so please keep posting your fav's 5!

Ruud
 
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