A P Carter – A Train Song

“Now listen to the jingle, and the rumble, and the roar,
As she dashes thro’ the woodland, and speeds along the shore,
See the mighty rushing engine, hear her merry bell ring out,
As they speed along in safety, on the Great Rock Island Route.” – J. A. Roff (1882)

“The Great Rock Island Route”, is an American folk song credited to J. A. Roff. Published in 1882, the song celebrates the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, which was incorporated in 1851. The line’s first trains began running in 1852, between Chicago & Joliet, with continued construction reaching Rock Island by February 1854, making the railroad the first to connect Chicago to the Mississippi River.

At the peak of its service, the Rock Island Line stretched across Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas. In the heyday of passenger rail travel, Rock Island operated the Golden State Limited (Chicago—Kansas City—Tucumcari—El Paso—Los Angeles) jointly with Southern Pacific Railroad.

But like many railroads, the Rock Island Line experienced waning profitability in the modern age of transportation, and in the 1970s bankruptcy loomed. After the railroad’s final train battled three days of snowdrifts to arrive in Denver on March 31, 1980, the insolvent company was liquidated. In 1984, after all assets were sold, and all debts were paid, the company found itself with a large amount of cash, changed its name to Chicago Pacific Corporation, and soon purchased the Hoover appliance company.

An interesting side note:
A spur of the Rock Island Railroad that ran beside a small hotel in Eldon, Missouri, was the inspiration for the popular 1960s television show Petticoat Junction. Ruth Henning, whose grandmother owned the hotel, was a co-creator of the show, along with her husband Paul, who also created The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.

“Listen to the jingle, the rumble, and the roar
As she glides along the woodland o’er the hills and by the shore
Hear the mighty rush of the engine hear those lonesome hoboes call
Traveling through the jungle on the Wabash Cannonball” – William Kindt (1904)

Alvin Pleasant Delaney Carter was a musician and founding member of the Carter Family, one of the most influential performing groups in the history of American country music. Born in 1891 in Maces Springs, Virginia, Carter was known throughout his life simply as A.P. In 1927 he formed the Carter Family band, together with his wife, Sara, and her cousin Maybelle. A.P.’s employment as a salesman had him traveling extensively throughout Central Appalachia, where he set about collecting songs that he heard performed by Appalachian musicians, and at church services in isolated locales.

Towards the latter part of the 1920s, as RCA Victor’s Victrola record player was increasing in popularity, the company set about a search for more recorded content to sell to its quickly growing customer base. The company sent a mobile-recording team around the country, with one of the stops being in Bristol, Tennessee, just a few miles from Maces Springs. The Carter Family recorded several sides at the initial session, which soon became popular nation-wide.

As the Carter Family recordings continued to sell in even greater numbers, A.P. returned to the remote hills and hollows in search of more material for his group to record.

The Carter Family would make one of the first known recordings of “Wabash Cannonball” in 1929, though it would not be released until 1932. A.P. Carter and his group would become so identified with the song, that some sources list him as its composer.

“From the great Atlantic ocean to the wide Pacific shore
She climbs a flowery mountain o’er the hills and by the shore
She’s mighty tall and handsome she’s known quite well by all
She’s a regular combination on the Wabash Cannonball” – William Kindt

A rewritten version of “The Great Rock Island Route” appeared in 1904 under the title “Wabash Cannon Ball”; the song is credited to William Kindt. Retaining the “Rock Island” melody, as well as the main chorus structure, the song now told the story of a fictional train, traveling through the hobo jungles along its continental odyssey.

There are many theories as to the origin of “The Wabash Cannonball”. Labor organizer, folksinger and storyteller, Utah Phillips, believes that hobos imagined a mythical train called the Wabash Cannonball which was a “death coach” that appeared at the death of a hobo to carry his soul to its reward (like Vikings on their way to Valhalla). The song was then created to tell the legend in rhythm & rhyme.

Another theory for the train’s origin states that the song is based on a tall tale in which Cal S. Bunyan, Paul Bunyan’s brother, constructed a railroad known as the Ireland, Jerusalem, Australian & Southern Michigan Line. After two months of service, the 700-car train was traveling so fast that it arrived at its destination an hour before its departure. Finally, the train took off so fast that it rushed into outer space, and for all is known, it is still traveling through space. When the hobos learned of this train, they called her the Wabash Cannonball and said that every station in America had heard her whistle.

Wabash Cannonball by Roy Acuff record label

Country singer Roy Acuff recorded “Wabash Cannonball” in 1936. His version is reported to be one of the fewer than 40 all-time singles to have sold greater than 10 million physical copies.

“Wabash Cannonball” is a signature song of the Indiana State University Marching Sycamores and the Purdue All-American Marching Band. Both campuses are adjacent to the Mighty Wabash River. It is also associated with the Stephen F. Austin State University Lumberjack Marching Band, the Texas Tech University Goin’ Band from Raiderland, and the University of Texas Longhorn Band. “Wabash Cannonball” is known as the unofficial “second” fight song of Kansas State University, having been played since the late 1960s. It was the only piece of sheet music rescued from the KSU music department in a fire in 1968. It was also used as the theme song by USS Wabash.

What does this particular train song have to do with baseball? Here’s what: Baseball Hall of Famer, Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean, who had had a colorful career pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals, among other teams, often sang verses of the song while broadcasting the Major League Baseball Game of the Week in the 1950s and early 1960s.

“The Wabash Cannonball” is included on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list, and is the oldest song on that list.

The Wabash Cannonball was the name of a (now-defunct) roller coaster at Opry Land USA in Nashville.

And in what is truly a case of life imitating art: While there was never a real-life Wabash Cannonball, in the wake of the song’s popularity, the Wabash Railroad renamed its daytime express run between Detroit and St. Louis as the Wabash Cannon Ball in 1949, the only actual train to bear the name, which it carried until the creation of Amtrak in 1971.

Though the recollection is vague, I’m pretty sure the first time I heard the song was when “Cousin Ernie” (Tennessee Ernie Ford) came to visit the Ricardos in New York and performed a solo on their living room sofa during an episode of I Love Lucy.

“Listen to the jingle, the rumble and the roar”

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago,_Rock_Island_and_Pacific_Railroad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabash_Cannonball

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._Carter

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=wabash+cannonball+lyrics

All photos sourced from internet searches, none belong to the author.

“All around the water tank
Waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home
Sleeping in the rain” – Waiting for a Train (Jimmie Rodgers) © Peermusic Publishing

Born on September 8, 1897, in Meridian, Mississippi, James Charles Rodgers has become known as “The Father of Country Music”. While he certainly didn’t invent the musical form, Rodgers, along with his contemporaries The Carter Family popularized the genre during the early days of radio and phonograph recordings. Though he also dabbled in folk, blues and jazz, it is for his accomplishments in bringing the traditional, nostalgic music of rural white people in the American South to the attention of a nation that would prove to have a huge appetite for this common strain of musical communication.

Rodgers’ mother died when he was six or seven, and he subsequently spent much of his youth living with various extended family in rural Mississippi & Alabama. Destined to be an entertainer, he had by the age of thirteen already spent time on the road organizing and performing in traveling shows, only to be tracked down and brought home by his father, Aaron Rodgers, a maintenance-of-way foreman on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.

His father found young Jimmie his first job working on the railroad as a water boy. It was during this period that he was taught guitar technique by other rail workers and hoboes that he encountered on the job. As a water boy he would also have been exposed to the work chants of black gandy dancers. A few years later, through his older brother, Walter, he became a brakeman on the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad.

“I walked up to a brakeman gave him a line of talk
He said if you’ve got money boy I’ll see that you don’t walk
I haven’t got a nickel, not a penny can I show
Get off, get off you railroad bum and he slammed the boxcar door” – Waiting for a Train (Rodgers)

In 1924, at age 27, Rodgers was diagnosed with tuberculosis. After a period the disease would cause him to give up working for the railroad, and he eventually returned to entertaining.

By 1927 Rodgers had returned to Meridian, MS, where he settled in with his wife Carrie and daughter Anita. April of that year found him in Asheville, North Carolina, where he performed on that city’s first radio station, WWNC, which would eventually lead to a weekly radio show for him and a band that he had cobbled together. In July of ’27 Rodgers would make his first recordings for Ralph Peer, a representative of the Victor Talking Machine Company, in Camden, New Jersey. Though success from those initial recordings was modest, he would return to New Jersey in November, armed with original songs co-written with his sister-in-law, Elsie Williams, who would eventually become his most frequent collaborator, writing or co-writing 40 songs for Rodgers.

One of the sides cut during this second series of sessions was “Blue Yodel”, also known as “T for Texas”. Over the next two years it would sell nearly half a million copies, cementing his place as one of the top recording stars of that era.

The next few years found Rodgers continuing to cut new records. He made a movie short for Columbia Pictures, The Singing Brakeman, toured the Midwest with Will Rogers, even made a recording of “Blue Yodel No. 9”, accompanied by Louis Armstrong on trumpet, and his wife, Lil Harden Armstrong on piano.

“He put me off in Texas a state I dearly love
The wide-open spaces all around me the moon and stars up above
Nobody seems to want me or to lend me a helping hand
I’m on my way from Frisco going back to Dixie Land” – Waiting for a Train (Rodgers)

Rodgers died May 26, 1933, at the age of 35, from a pulmonary hemorrhage. At the time of his death his recordings accounted for fully 10% of RCA Victor’s sales, in a market that had been severely impacted by the Great Depression. When the Country Music Hall of Fame was established in 1961, Rodgers was one of the first three inductees, along with music publisher/songwriter Fred Rose and singer/songwriter Hank Williams. Rodgers was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1986 as an early influence, and inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2013. Merle Haggard recorded a tribute album, Same Train, A Different Time: Merle Haggard Sings The Great Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, while Lynyrd Skynyrd named both Haggard and Rodgers in their song “Railroad Song” (“I’m going to ride this train, Lord, until I find out, what Jimmie Rodgers and the Hag was all about”).

On Haggard’s album, Same Train, A Different Time, in a spoken introduction, the singer refers to Rodgers as “the most important man, who ever sang a country song”.

On May 24, 1978, the United States Postal Service issued a 13-cent commemorative stamp honoring Rodgers, the first in its long-running Performing Arts Series. The stamp depicted him in brakeman’s outfit and guitar, giving his “two thumbs up” (as in one of the famous photos of him), along with a locomotive in silhouette in the background.

Chester Arthur Burnett, better known as Howlin’ Wolf, tried to emulate Rodgers’s yodel, but found that his efforts sounded more like a growl or a howl. “I couldn’t do no yodelin’,” Barry Gifford quoted him as saying in Rolling Stone, “so I turned to howlin’. And it’s done me just fine.”

Bob Dylan wrote in the liner notes to a 1997 tribute album: “Jimmie Rodgers, of course, is one of the guiding lights of the twentieth century, whose way with song has always been an inspiration to those of us who have followed the path. … He was a performer of force without precedent with a sound as lonesome and mystical as it was dynamic. He gives hope to the vanquished and humility to the mighty.”

The professional recording & performing career for which Jimmie Rodgers is remembered and revered lasted barely six years, and yet his influence is still felt nearly a century later by those who remain inspired by his musical legacy, and feel driven to pay tribute to the “Singing Brakeman” in their own personal way.

“Though my pocketbook is empty
And my heart is full of pain
I’m a thousand miles away from home
Just a-waiting for a train” – Waiting for a Train (Jimmie Rodgers) © Peermusic Publishing

Sources:

http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/39/jimmie-rodgers-the-father-of-country-music

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Jimmie+Rodgers+%28country+singer%29+%E2%80%93+Wikipedia

All photos sourced through internet searches, unless otherwise noted

Tag: A P Carter

Listen to the Jingle

The Singing Brakeman