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Friday, January 23, 2009
THE MEMPHIS TRAIN
Rufus Thomas
1968
Available on : Beg, Scream & Shout! The Big Ol' Box of 60's Soul
Rhino : 1997
[Buy It]
TRAIN TO TAMPA
Sam Dees
1968
Available on : The Birmingham Sound: The Soul of Neal Hemphill, Vol. 1
Rabbit Factory : 2006
[Buy It]
SAME TRAIN TWICE
Swamp Dogg
1977
Available on : The Excellent Sides of Swamp Dogg, Vol. 5
SDEG : 2007
[Buy It]
PLAY A TRAIN SONG
Todd Snider
2005
Available on : Tales From Moondawg's Tavern
TRAIN SONG
Tom Waits
Big Time
Island : 1990
[Buy It]
Last night I took the train up to Boston for a reading, and then took the last train of the day back to New York. There were equipment delays and subways going one way and commuter-rail connections the other way; all in all, the entire trip took fourteen hours, eleven of which were spent on tracks. The way up was a midday trip, crowded and aggravated. The way back was nearly empty, just me and what seemed like a youth soccer team and a woman reading a dirty book and another woman with a highly shaggy dog in a bag. I tried to sleep, had a little success, tried to read, had a little success.
Between these failures, I had plenty of time to think, and one of the things I thought about was trains: or, more specifically, planes, trains, and automobiles, and how they have furnished fertile subjects for songwriters. In rock and roll, cars win: early rock and roll and rockabilly have too many car songs to count--the original "Brand New Cadillac"? "Dead Man's Curve"? the balance of the Beach Boys/Chuck Berry catalogs?--but if you widen the scope to include blues, soul, country, and jazz, trains may pull into the lead. (This is just a metaphor. I am not endorsing any car/train races. Very dangerous.) There's "Mystery Train," of course, and "The Train Kept A-Rollin'," and "Smokestack Lightning" and the Singing Brakeman and a tradition so rich that I would consider it at greater length if I wasn't so tired from the train. There are many, many things to say about trains in song, but I'm only going to be able to extract one today, and that's how trains embody both desire and helplessness, even when they're not heading into a tunnel. In cars, you drive, which is a self-starting and self-determined act. In trains, you're subject to schedules, to conductors, to people meeting you at the station or not being there to meet you. Songs about trains are necessarily songs about waiting, and that makes all the difference in the world. To that end -- I think it's called a terminal in train talk -- here are Rufus Thomas, Sam Dees, Swamp Dogg, Todd Snider, and Tom Waits. The last two are live versions, and in both cases, songs are preceded by highly shaggy dog stories. The Snider is especially epic, more than fifteen minutes of waiting before he gets to the song -- it just keeps a-rollin'.Labels: ben, blues, rhythm and blues
posted by Ben
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