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Thursday, July 28, 2005
GONE DEAD TRAIN
King Solomon Hill
1932
GONE DEAD TRAIN
Randy Newman
Performance OST
Warner Bros. 1970
[Buy it]
GONE DEAD TRAIN
Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse
Reprise 1971
[Buy it]
In that great train race, the Gone Dead Train done lost out to that Mystery Train by more than sixteen car lengths (not to mention the Night Train). Penned by a Junior (Parker), that upstart young'un Train (glimpsed in 1953) got all the sponsorship and endorsement deals: its Jim Jarmusch cinematic ode to Elvis and Memphis, its Greil Marcus book-length spiel to the same pagan gods, and it continues to tunnel deep into both the vernacular and the subconscious mind. Just don't board the one that has Bon Jovi as the conductor.
Perhaps its the tenor of folks who wind up covering that train. If The Band and The King are gonna sing about the "Mystery Train" how can gin-sopped covers by second-tier acts Nazareth and Izzy Stradlin make the "Gone Dead Train" less gone? I myself worked my way backwards on that ghost train, moving from the caboose forward. Crazy Horse, before just being Neil Young's backing band, before Danny Whitten was just another lost soul booked out and bound to go on that Southland line, made it choogle lazily on the tracks, powered by powders and Jack Nitzsche on the piano bench.
Lo and behold, Nitzsche's soundtrack for the Nicholas Roeg-James Cammell movie, Performance, features Randy Newman doing a furious turn on the same song (his punk mewl and sneer flashed for but an instant before hiding back behind that LA demeanor). According to Nitzsche, the lyrics he wrote with Russ Titelman were cobbled from obscure blues tunes, and there are nods to Charley Patton and Lucille Bogan, to jelly rolls, squeezed lemons, demon eyes, and of course, coke dick (before the days of 'erectile dysfunction'). But behind it all looms this demon train as described by Mississippian King Solomon Hill.
Climbing to the front, into the conductor's car, Hill's version is the oldest mention I can find. I'll be damned if I can parse what he is mumbling about over the furnace's roar though. There is some advice: "Boys, if you out and runnin' around in this world this train will wreck your mind" and this helps parse them words, as if you need any more encouragement to dig a song played with a picked-clean cow bone as slide or enjoy such a ride, be it on a ghost train or that even more mysterious one-eyed object.
posted by beta
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