Rolling Stone – A Train Song

“People get ready
For the train to Jordan
Picking up passengers
From coast to coast” – People Get Ready (Mayfield) © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music

“In the slave period here, one of the things that was prominent was the song – how the songs extolled the glory of God . . . You know that. They needed it. Some people were so low that they had to look up to see the ground. Where were they living? On the other side of the tracks. But what will God do? God will build a bridge over the tracks for me to get across”. – Rev Earnest Palmer – Deep South, by Paul Theroux

Curtis Mayfield was born on June 3, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. One of five children, Mayfield’s father left the family when Curtis was five. His mother (and maternal grandmother) moved the family into several Chicago public housing projects before settling into Cabrini–Green during his teen years. His mother taught him to play piano, and he was encouraged by his mother and grandmother to embrace gospel music. One of his earliest experiences performing was with the Northern Jubilee Gospel Singers at this aunt’s church.

In 1956, Mayfield joined his high school friend Jerry Butler’s group, The Roosters, to which he contributed his own original compositions. Two years later the group became The Impressions. With a varying lineup of members, The Impressions had a number of hits in the early 1960s, including their recording of “Amen”, an updated version of the old gospel tune, which was included on the soundtrack of the Sidney Poitier film, Lilies of the Field. The Impressions would reach the height of their popularity in the mid–to- late 60s with a string of Mayfield compositions that included “Keep On Pushing”, “It’s All Right”, the up-tempo “Talking about My Baby”, “Woman’s Got Soul” and “People Get Ready”.

“People, get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

“People Get Ready”, the title track of The Impressions’ album, People Get Ready, eventually became the group’s biggest hit. Released in 1965, it peaked at number 3 on the Billboard R&B Chart and number 14 on the Billboard Pop Chart. Mayfield said he originally wrote the song in response to both the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the deadly church bombing of Bloody Sunday in Birmingham. Martin Luther King Jr. chose “People Get Ready” as the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and often used the song to get people marching or to calm and comfort them.

Robert F. Darden, a contributor to the Dallas News, comments about Mayfield’s song: “The allusion to the railroad is no accident. It immediately resonates not just with the spirituals, but with older blues songs as well, where references to trains quickly show up in the lyrics. A host of writers have noted, during the Civil War and Reconstruction, railroads still evoked awe and wonder among African Americans in the South. The unofficial pathways to freedom in the North were called the Underground Railroad, where passengers were summoned by the spiritual ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’. And when freedom did come, those still-magical vehicles enabled the formerly enslaved people to join in the Great Migration north”.

“All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

According to Curtis Mayfield’s son Todd, their ancestors had been enslaved in Louisiana and carried their stories with them on the Illinois Central Railroad to the South Side projects of Chicago. Mayfield’s grandmother, Annie Bell, was a devoutly religious woman and encouraged her grandson’s love of music, especially gospel. Mayfield himself says that “People Get Ready” probably came from the subconscious “preachings of my grandmothers and most ministers when they reflect from the Bible.”

Social commentator Juan Williams has been quoted as saying, “The train that is coming in the song speaks to a chance for redemption – the long sought chance to rise above racism, to stand apart from despair and any desire for retaliation – an end to the cycle of pain.”

Music critic Stanley Crouch wrote, “by saying, ‘There’s a train a-comin’, get ready,’ that was like saying, OK, so regardless of what happens, get yourself together for this because you are going to get a chance. Your chance is coming.”

“Faith is the key
Open the doors and board them
There’s hope for all
Among those loved the most” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

Robert F. Darden also writes, “’People Get Ready’ has been interpreted as both an allusion to the religious apocalypse known as the second coming in many Christian denominations and as a warning to those who oppose equality and civil rights in the modern day. And, as is the case with the best songwriters, both interpretations can be right”.

“There ain’t no room
For the hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all mankind
Just to save his own

“Have pity on those
Whose chances are thinner
‘Cause there’s no hiding place
From the kingdom’s throne” – People Get Ready (Mayfield)

Curtis Mayfield’s song has stood the test of time. In 2000 it was chosen by a panel of 20 songwriters – including Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson – as among the top 10 songs of all time. They ranked it at number nine. In 2004, Rolling Stone placed it at number 24 in its 500 greatest hits of all time, and also placed it at number 20 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. The song was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. “People Get Ready” was named as one of the Top 10 Best Songs of All Time by Mojo music magazine, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2016, the song was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry due to its “cultural, historic, or artistic significance”. It has been recorded and performed by dozens of artists.

Singer Curtis Mayfield (L) poses with the first annual Soul Train Quincy Jones Award for outstanding career achievement. /Photo by Fred Prouser REUTERS REUTERS

In August 1990, Curtis Mayfield was injured when lighting equipment fell on him during an outdoor concert in Brooklyn. Paralyzed from the neck down, and no longer able to play the guitar, he continued composing, singing and recording music. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in of March 1999. He died from complications of type 2 diabetes on December 26, 1999.

Todd Mayfield, who is his father’s biographer, writes, “Though he isn’t here, my father is still part of that fight. His music speaks as powerfully to the times we live in as it did to his own. His songs remain vital, uncompromising, and true. His message endures — a message he refused to abandon even in the darkest of times. If he were alive today, he’d urge us to keep on pushing, to never give up, to get ready for something better. He wouldn’t be able to help himself.”

“So people get ready
For the train a-comin‘
You don’t need no ticket
You just get on board” – People Get Ready (Mayfield) © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music

Sources:

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_(music)

https://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brown/folkexpression.htm –

https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2015/08/folklore-of-trains-in-usa-part-two/

https://www.hopechannel.com/au/read/people-get-ready

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

“Train, train, comin’ down, down the line
Train, train, comin’ down, down the line
Well, it’s bringin’ my baby ’cause she’s mine, all mine” – Mystery Train (Herman Parker Jr. / Sam Phillips) © Sony/ATV Music

Born on his parents’ 200 acre farm near Florence, Alabama, the youngest of eight children, Sam Phillips was no stranger to hard work. Though his parents owned their farm, it was heavily mortgaged, and everyone in the family was expected to do their share to keep the enterprise solvent. It was in the fields that young Sam was first exposed to the work songs of the black laborers, leaving a lasting impression on his mind.

Music was always a part of Sam’s life. He played sousaphone, trombone and drums in high school, where he conducted the school’s marching band; yet he never imagined that music would be his vocation. He has been quoted as saying that as a youth he desired to be a criminal defense lawyer, “because I saw so many people, especially black people, railroaded”.

A defining moment in Phillip’s life came in 1939, when the family was travelling together to Dallas, and made a stop in Memphis. Arriving in the middle of the night, in a pouring rain, 16 year old Sam was able to sneak away to Beale Street, where he was captivated by the lights and music, finding the street alive with people. It was this experience that would prove to be a foreshadowing of his life’s work.

Beale Street yesterday
. . . and today

Bankrupted by the Great Depression, Sam Phillip’s father died in 1941, forcing Sam to leave school to care for his mother and aunt. He worked a succession of jobs, including as a disc jockey at radio station WLAY in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he met his future wife, Rebecca Burns. Sam married “Becky” in 1943 – a union that would produce two children – and remained married for 60 years, until his death in 2003.

The impression that Memphis had left upon Phillips as a teenager would eventually draw him and his wife to the city in the mid 1940s, where he would spend four years working as an announcer and sound engineer at radio station WREC. It was there that Sam began experimenting with microphone placement and other new recording techniques to enhance the sound of live performances that the station would record for future broadcast. This experience would prove consequential in Sam’s future recording endeavors.

On January 3, 1950, Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service in a former auto repair shop located at 706 Union Ave. Getting started was a challenge for the aspiring entrepreneur, and to bring in business he was known to record conventions, weddings, choirs, funerals, or anything else that created revenue. He operated the venture with an open door policy, allowing anyone to, for a small fee, make their own record. The studio’s slogan was, “We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.”

B B King
Junior Parker
Howlin’ Wolf

His willingness to work with amateurs enabled Phillips to make the first recordings of artists such as B. B. King, Junior Parker and Howlin’ Wolf. While he recorded many different styles of music, his first love was the blues. He was quoted as saying, “The blues, it got people—black and white—to think about life, how difficult, yet also how good it can be. They would sing about it; they would pray about it; they would preach about it. This is how they relieved the burden of what existed day in and day out.”

Sun Records — 706 Union Ave, Memphis, TN

At the time, recordings by black artists had only recently begun being referred to as “rhythm & blues” releases, as opposed to “race” records, and while there were some artists who were known for their ability to cross over to the pop charts, it was more common for white artists to record their own versions of black hits. Sam Phillips felt that this practice left most of the songs sounding bland and watered down.

Marion Keisker, Phillips’ receptionist stated, “Over and over I remember Sam saying, ‘If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'” In his book, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll, author Peter Gurlanick writes, “[Phillips] didn’t believe in luck necessarily, but the moon had to be in the right place, the wind had to be blowing in the right direction. . . . He just hoped he would still be in business when that day finally arrived.”

That day finally arrived for Phillips in 1953, when a young Elvis Presley – barely eighteen years old – walked through the doors of Memphis Recording Service, ready to pay his four dollars to record a song or two for his mother. Phillips saw (and heard) in Presley, exactly what he had been searching for. Elvis was listening to all the stuff that Phillips was recording: B. B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner; and he believed that with a little coaching Elvis could be that crossover artist who could bring African-American music to a white audience. Signing Elvis Presley to a recording contract for his Sun Records label, Phillips cut a number of sides for the singer during the period 1954 -55, one of those tracks being “Mystery Train”, which was originally released as the “B” side of Elvis’ version of “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”.

“Train I ride, sixteen coaches long
Train I ride, sixteen coaches long
Well, that long black train got my baby and gone” – Mystery Train

Written by Junior Parker, “Mystery Train” had been recorded & produced by Sam Phillips in 1953, and released by Sun Records as a single for Little Junior’s Blue Flames. Performed by Parker in the style of a rhythm & blues number, the song featured lyrics similar to those found in the Carter Family’s “Worried Man Blues”, which was based on an old Celtic ballad.

Sam Phillips, Elvis, Marion Keisker
Sam & Elvis

Presley’s Sun Records recording of “Mystery Train” – featuring Elvis on vocals & rhythm guitar, Scotty Moore on lead guitar, and Bill Black on bass – went on to become an early rockabilly standard, with Moore claiming to have borrowed the guitar riff from Junior Parker’s “Love My Baby” (the “B” side to Parker’s recording of “Mystery Train”).

Having acquired the song with the purchase of Presley’s contract, RCA Victor re-released the recording in November of 1955, when it peaked at number 11 on Billboard’s Country Chart, making Elvis a nationally-known country music star. Now considered an “enduring classic”, the song has been ranked by Rolling Stone Magazine at #77 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time; ranked the third most acclaimed song of 1955, by Acclaimed Music; inspired Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 independent film Mystery Train, as well as Greil Marcus’ widely lauded book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music.

Note: In 1986 Sam Phillips was part of the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and his pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. He was the first non-performer inducted. In 1987, he was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. He received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1991. In 1998, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame; in October 2001 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; and in 2012 he was inducted into the inaugural class of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

“Train, train, comin’ ‘round the bend
Train, train, comin’ ‘round the bend
Well, it took my baby, but it never will again . . .” – Mystery Train

Sources:

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/januaryfebruary/statement/the-birth-rock-%E2%80%98n%E2%80%99-roll-found-sam-phillips%E2%80%99s-sun-records

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

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

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

Tag: Rolling Stone

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