Sun 7 Feb 2010
Big Road Blues Show 2/7/10: Railroadin’ Some – Those Railroad Blues Pt. 1
Posted by Jeff under Playlists, Topical Blues
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| ARTIST | SONG | ALBUM |
|---|---|---|
| Blind Lemon Jefferson | Sunshine Special | The Complete Classic Sides |
| Black Ivory King | The Flying Crow | Black Boy Shine & Black Ivory King 1936-1937 |
| Jack Ranger | T.P. Window Blues | Dallas Alley Drag |
| Kelly Pace | Rock Island Line | Field Recordings Vol. 2 |
| Leadbelly | Midnight Special | Alabama Bound |
| Bukka White | Streamline Special | The Vintage Recordings 1930-1940 |
| Cripple Clarence Lofton | Streamline Train | Cripple Clarence Lofton Vol. 1 1935-1939 |
| Henry Thomas | Railroadin' Some | Good For What Ails You |
| Leroy Carr | Memphis Town | Sloppy Drunk |
| Charlie McCoy | That Lonesome Train Took... | Charlie McCoy 1928-1932 |
| Furry Lewis | Kassie Jones | Before The Blues Vol. 3 |
| Jesse James | Southern Casey Jones | Piano Blues Vol. 1 1927-1936 |
| Two Poor Boys | John Henry | American Primitive Vol. II |
| Lucille Bogan | T& NO Blues | Lucille Bogan Vol. 2 1930-1933 |
| Sparks Brothers | I.C. Train Blues | The Sparks Brothers 1932-1935 |
| Little Brother Montgomery | A. & V. Railroad Blues | Little Brother Montgomery 1930-1936 |
| Eddie Miller | Freight Train Blues | Down On The Levee |
| Hound Head Henry | Freight Train Special | Cow Cow Davenport - The Accompanist 1924-1929 |
| Trixie Smith | Freight Train Blues | Trixie Smith Vol. 2 1925-1939 |
| Martha Copeland | Hobo Bill | Martha Copeland Vol. 1 1923-1927 |
| Will Bennett | Railroad Bill | Sinners & Saints 1926-1931 |
| Sam Collins | Yellow Dog Blues | When The Levee Breaks |
| Robert Johnson | Love In Vain | The Road to Robert Johnson |
| Willie Brown | M&O Blues | Screamin' & Hollerin' The Blues |
| Roosevelt Sykes | The Train Is Coming | Roosevelt Sykes Vol. 5 1937-1939 |
| Cow Cow Davenport | Railroad Blues | Cow Cow Davenport Vol. 2 1929-1945 |
| Sylvester Weaver | Railroad Porter Blues | Sylvester Weaver Vol. 2 |
| Sleepy John Estes | Special Agent (Railroad Police Blues) | I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More |
| Billiken Johnson | Sun Beam Blues | Dallas Alley Drag |
| Andrew and Jim Baxter | KC Railroad Blues | Violin, Sing The Blues For Me |
| George Noble | The Seminole Blues | Chicago Piano 1929-1936 |
| Pink Anderson & Simmnie Dooley | C.C. and O. Blues | A Richer Tradition |
| Blind Willie McTell | Travelin' Blues | The Classic Years 1927-1940 |
Show Notes:
When a woman get the blues, she goes to her room and hides (2x)
When a man gets the blues, he catches a freight train and rides
(Trixie Smith, Freight Train Blues)
For southern Blacks the appeal of the railroads has always been both a real and a symbolic one. For them the train was a symbol of power, of freedom and escape. As blues historian Paul Oliver wrote: “In the slavery periods when they were unable to travel between districts without written ‘bonds’ from their owners, the snorting engines, with brilliant furnaces traces their progress and clouds of black smoke that hung in the still air above the tracks long after the screaming whistles had died away, inspired them in awe which their descendants still retain.” This image carried on, in the hard times of the 1920′s and 1930s’, when the southern Blacks struggled to make a living and saw the northern cities as their saviors, where work was plentiful and a better life was to be had. As the blues developed, the railroad featured prominently in the songs. Numerous songs were sung about individual trains such as the Flying Crow, the Sunshine Special and the Panama Limited, many simply
abbreviated like the C&O (Chesapeake and Ohio), T&P (Texas Pacific) or the L&N (Louisville and Nashville), many songs dealt with the hobos who rode the rails, others dealt with working for the railroad while other songs retold the famous railroad ballads of John Henry, Railroad Bill and Casey Jones. Today’s show will spotlight all of these types of railroad blues.
The title of today’s program comes from the song by Henry Thomas. Thomas, nicknamed “Ragtime Texas”, was born in 1874 in Big Sandy, Texas. The 1874 date marks him as one of the eldest-born blues performers on record. Thomas was the archetypal rambling musician who went wherever the railroads would take him. According to Mack McCormick, as told to him from a former railroad conductor, “Ragtime Texas was a big fellow that used to come aboard at Gladewater or Mineola or somewhere in there. I’d always carry him, except when he was too dirty. He was a regular hobo, but I’d carry him most of the time. That guitar was his ticket.” Speaking of his famous “Railroadin’ Some”, William Barlow calls it the most “vivid and intense recollection of railroading” in all the early blues recorded in the 1920’s.
Among the famous railroad songs featured today are two associated with Leadbelly, “Rock Island Line” and ‘Midnight Special”, and the folk ballads Casey Jones, John Henry and Railroad Bill. John Lomax recorded “Rock Island Line” at the Cummins State Prison farm, Gould, Arkansas, in 1934 from its convict composer, Kelly Pace. Leadbelly, who was with Lomax at the time, rearranged it in his own style, and made commercial recordings of it in the forties. The song refers to the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. Lyrics appearing in the “Midnight Special” were first recorded in print by Howard Odum in 1905. The song was first commercially recorded on the OKeh label in 1926 as “Pistol Pete’s Midnight Special” by Dave “Pistol Pete” Cutrell and the following year by bluesman Sam Collins. In 1934 Lead Belly recorded a version of the song at Angola Prison for John and Alan Lomax, who mistakenly attributed it to him as the author. Leadbelly recorded at least three versions of the song, including the one we feature with the Golden Gate Quartet.
John Luther “Casey” Jones was an American railroad engineer from Jackson, Tennessee who worked for the Illinois Central Railroad. On April 30,
1900, he alone was killed when his passenger train collided with a stalled freight train at Vaughan, Mississippi on a foggy and rainy night. His dramatic death trying to stop his train and save lives made him a folk hero who became immortalized in a popular song. We spin two versions on today’s program: “Kassie Jones Pt. 1″ by Furry Lewis and “Southern Casey Jones” by Jesse James.
John Henry is an American folk hero, notable for having raced against a steam powered hammer and won, only to die in victory with his hammer in his hand. He has been the subject of numerous songs, stories, plays, and novels. The truth about John Henry is obscured by time and myth, but one legend has it that he was a slave born in Missouri in the 1840s and fought his notable battle with the steam hammer along the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in Talcott, West Virginia. On today’s show we play a version by the duo The Two Poor Boys.
The legend of Railroad Bill arose in the winter of 1895, along the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad line in southern Alabama. Based loosely on the exploits of an African American outlaw known as “Railroad Bill,” tales of his brief but action-filled career on the wrong side of the law have been preserved in song, fiction, and theater. He has been variously portrayed as a “Robin Hood” character, a murderous criminal and a nameless victim of the Jim Crow South. He was never conclusively identified, but L&N detectives claimed he was a man named Morris Slater. Today we spin “Railroad Bill” by Will Bennett.
Featured today are several songs about specific trains or railroad lines. Our opening track “Sunshine Special” by Blind Lemon Jefferson refers the train of the same name which was inaugurated by the Missouri Pacific Railroad on December 5, 1915, providing service between St. Louis, Little Rock, and destinations in Texas. The Sunshine Special served as the flagship of Missouri Pacific Railroad’s passenger train service. Several songs make reference to the Flying Crow, a train line connecting Port Arthur, Texas to Kansas City with major stops in Shreveport and Texarkana. Black Ivory King, Carl Davis & the Dallas Jamboree Jug Band, Dusky Dailey, Washboard Sam and Oscar Woods all recorded songs about the train. Other songs dealing with specific trains featured today include Jack Ranger’s “T.P. Window Blues” ( Texas Pacific Railroad), Lucille Bogan’s “T& NO Blues” (Texas and New Orleans Railroad), Sparks Brothers‘ “I.C. Train Blues” (Illinois Central Railroad), Little Brother Montgomery’s “A. & V. Railroad
Blues” (Alabama & Vicksburg Railroad), Willie Brown’s “M&O Blues” (Mobile and Ohio Railroad), Billiken Johnson’s “Sun Beam Blues” (Sunbeam was a named passenger train operated from 1925 to 1955 between Houston and Dallas by the Texas and New Orleans Railroad), Andrew and Jim Baxter’s “K C Railroad Blues” (Kansas City Southern Railway), George Noble’s “The Seminole Blues” (Seminole Gulf Railway), and Pink Anderson & Simmnie Dooley’s “C.C. and O. Blues” (Chesapeake and Ohio). Sam Collins’ “Yellow Dog Blues” seems to refer to two trains. In 1903 W.C. Handy related how he heard a lean, raggedy, black guitarist in Tutwiler’s railroad depot, singing of going to where the “Southern cross the Yellow Dog.” The “Southern” was the Southern Railway which began operations in 1894.“The Dog” was the Yellow Dog, a name for the Yazoo Delta Railroad which opened in 1897.
Several songs like Bukka White’s ” Special Streamline” and Cripple Clarence Lofton’s “Streamline Train” refer to streamliners. A streamliner is any vehicle that incorporates streamlining to produce a shape that provides less resistance to air. The term is most often applied to certain high-speed railway trainsets of the 1930′s to 1950′s. For a short time in the late 1930s, the ten fastest trains in the world were all American streamliners.
Other trains immortalized in blues songs will be featured in the sequel to today’s show; trains such as the Cannon Ball (an Illinois Central passenger train routing between Chicago and New Orleans, now known as the City of New Orleans), the Santa Fe (Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway), the Seaboard (The Seaboard Coast Line Railroad), the Katy (the Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Texas line), the Big four (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad ) and the New York Central among others.
figures, social issues, civil rights and more. “The blues, contrary to popular conception, are not always concerned with love, razors, dice, and death,” Richard Wright wrote in 1941. Wright, argued that the blues was by its nature a protest music, and many other writers concur. Mostly it was veiled in verses like “You don’t know my mind/ When you see me laughing, I’m laughing just to keep from crying.” A smaller percentage of blues deals directly with more overt protest and many more were commentaries about community events. There were numerous songs about natural disasters such as floods, drought, storms and fire; songs about cultural figures like Joe Louis, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King and John Kennedy; songs about politics, war, urban renewal, prostitution and even racism; and of course countless songs about the depression, hard times and welfare. Taken together these songs form an oral history of black America at a time when black Americans had few outlets for self-expression. Although it’s outside of our scope, it should be noted that many of the same themes can be found in gospel records and sermons of the same period.
After the twin bombings in August 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a slew of songs in all genres took up the
Today’s shown revolves around blues songs relating to presidents and politics. Overt political commentary was rare in recorded blues and gospel prior to the 1960′s. Some of the most moving political songs were tributes for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, who had great appeal to African Americans. One theme running through today’s show is several songs dealing with the death of president Kennedy who was assassinated 45 years ago yesterday. There were also quite a number of gospel songs written on the topic, and although we normally don’t play gospel we make an exception today. Roosevelt was considered the “poor man’s friend” and the lyrical evidence suggests he was viewed “as a benevolent and powerful patron or ‘bossman’” while Truman was seen as much more fallible and “unresponsive to the economic plight of black people as well as their growing demands for equal rights.” Kennedy’s reputation, particularly in the early years, was rather ambivalent but his death, as the lyrical evidence makes clear, “virtually eradicated any criticism of his international or political policies and left him an unadulterated hero.” These last quotes come from scholar Gudio Van Rijn who has written the books Roosevelt Blues, The Truman & Eisenhower Blues and
A running thread throughout today’s show is some remarkable songs on the death of President Kennedy. In the wake of John Kennedy’s assassination, Pete Welding recorded over a dozen acoustic blues tributes to the late president for the compilation Can’t Keep from Crying: Topical Blues on the Death of President Kennedy in late 1963 and early 1964. Several other songs come form Kennedy’s Blues. Not surprisingly Kennedy’s assassination provoked an outpouring of memorial songs where “the deceased president emerges as a near-saint.” As Rijn notes, “the blues and gospel singers’ president was in heaven now. Like Christ he had died for our sins.” Indeed Kennedy’s death is often compared to the crucifixion of Christ a theme hammered home in several gospel songs. Among the moving performances are Otis Spann’s impassioned “Sad Day In Texas”, his voice choked with emotion, Jim and Fannie Brewer’s simply but deeply moving “I Want To Know Why” and Perry Tillis’ “Kennedy Moan.” There are several strong gospel performances including Ronda Mitchell & Mrs. Lovell magnificent “J.F. Kennedy’s Reservation”, The Southern Bell Singers’ soaring “The Tragedy Of Kennedy” and the Dixie Nightinglaes’ haunting “Assassination.”
While Rijn has yet to write his book on Nixon (I have no doubt he will) there were a number of songs about Nixon and as you would imagine they were not very flattering. Watergate is a topic taken up by Howlin’ Wolf on “Watergate Blues” on his final album The Back Door Wolf while Big Joe is back with his “Watergate Blues.” Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown addresses Nixon directly in “Please Mr. Nixon” to “Don’t cut off your welfare line.” Other songs that directly addressed the president were several songs that came along at the same time including Roy C’s “Open Letter To The President” and his more explicit “Impeach The President, King Solomon’s “Please Mr President” the Angels Of Joy’s gorgeous plea “Mr President.”
Then there’s Louisiana’s Red surreal, hilarious “Red’s Dream” where he goes “to the U.N. and set the whole nation right”, threatens Castro with a “Georgia shave” (slit his throat) and is finally summoned to the White House by the President where he plans to install some “soul brothers” in the senate like Ray Charles, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley and Big Maybelle! Then of course there’s Louis Jordan’s “Jordan For President.” After announcing that he is ready to move “… from the phonograph record to the ‘Congressional Record’”, Jordan promises to help listeners “… get straight on all the candidates” and “… make the proper selection in the coming election.” Jordan’s hoping you’ll vote for the swing ticket: “For an administration that’ll move you, groove you, and keep you fit” and “… to walk on the sunny side of the street with the candidate with the beat … vote for Jordan for President!” Jordan’s electoral promises: “Every American will get his portion – after I get mine” and “… we’ll all serve – time!.” I Don’t Want To Be President” by the ever philosophical Percy Mayfield takes a Nixon era slant:
legal system. Unfortunately even today the prison system has a disproportionate number of African-Americans and tales of being unfairly targeted by the criminal system all too common.
outside of recorded music. In The Land Where The Blues Began, Lomax had this to say regarding prison songs: “They tell us the story of the slave gang, the sharecropper system, the lawless work camp, the chain gang, the pen.” Bruce Jackson, who recorded in southern prisons in the 1960′s and 70′s, explained: “Southern agricultural penitentiaries were in many respects replicas of nineteenth-century plantations, where groups of slaves did arduous work by hand, supervised by white men with guns and constant threat of awful physical punishment . . .. It is hardly surprising that the music of plantation culture — the work songs — went to the prisons as well.” A New York Post reporter wrote as late as 1957: “The state penitentiary system at Parchman is simply a cotton plantation using convicts as labor. The warden is not a penologist, but an experienced plantation manager.”
Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 which resulted in the film and book,
Discovered in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Robert Pete Williams became one of the great blues discoveries during the folk boom of the early ’60s. In 1956, he shot and killed a man in a local club. Williams claimed the act was in self-defense, but he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He was sent to Angola prison, where he served for two years before being discovered by folklorist 


Truman became President in 1945. Inflation was a major reason Truman’s popularity dropped from 87% after his election to 32% by the time he was up for re-election. In addition, after the war prices began to rise and opportunities lessen. Prices rose 38% between 1946 and 1948.Among the songs that deal with this period are Jimmy Witherspoon’s “Money’s Getting Cheaper” (1947), Louis Jordan’s “Inflation Blues” (1947), Roosevelt Sykes’ “High Price Blues” (1945), Sunnyland Slim’s “Bad Times (Cost of Living)” (1949), Smokey Hogg’s “High Priced Meat” (1947) and Ivory Joe Hunter’s “High Cost Low Pay Blues” (1947).
President Roosevelt established the country’s first “peacetime draft” when he signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 following the fall of France to the Nazis. More than 10 million men were drafted during World War II. More than 2.5 million blacks were registered for the draft in World War II, and about 909,000 served in the Army. At its peak in In 1944 there were over 700,000 blacks in the Army. Segregated troops remained official U.S. Army policy throughout World War II.
In 1948 the draft was re-instated. It was expanded by the Universal Military Training and Service Act in 1951, in response to the manpower needs caused by the Korean War. African-Americans served in all combat and combat service elements during the Korean War and were involved in all major combat operations, including the advance of United Nations Forces to the Chinese border. In June 1950, almost 100,000 African-Americans were on active duty in the U.S. armed forces. In October 1951, the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment, a unit established in 1869, which had served during the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II and the beginning of the Korean War, was disbanded, essentially ending segregation in the U.S. Army.

