We’re living in pretty scary times. Up is down, black is white, and 2 plus 2 equals 5. And terrifyingly, we’re probably not even at peak stupid yet. With that in mind, I’m going to do something different here from time to time, just to remind myself - and hopefully readers - of the greatness that human beings are capable of.
Many of you have written thanking me for my song links, and since I’m a big fan of all genres of music*, I figure you might appreciate more of the same. I call this “Sunday Songbook,” along with the occasional “Tuesday Tunes.” Each installment will have a thematic focus - love, power, war, sex, dreams, aging, childhood, motherhood, fatherhood, fear, jealousy, pride, anger, art, writing, photography, colonization, reincarnation, hospitalization, medicine, cars, houses, buildings, fire, madness, happiness, night, dogs, drink, surveillance…and whatever else I can find a tune or two for. Today we start with trains.
Let me know what you think in the comments. And as always, thanks for reading and listening.
-Geoff
*with the exception of rap, death metal, hard-core country, and all things Taylor Swift.
Film producer Mark Johnson was on his way to work one day when he heard two monks playing music in a New York subway. One played a nylon guitar and the other was singing in a language the producer didn’t understand. In a PBS interview, Johnson recalled that a few hundred people had gathered around, spellbound by these robed figures. He said he was struck how all of these strangers, all travelling their separate ways, had been brought together by music.
In 2005, Johnson was walking in the streets of Santa Monica when he heard a black street musician. Moved by the performance he approached the singer, Roger Ridley, and asked if he could return with some recording equipment and some cameras. He told Roger that he would love to take this song around the world and add other musicians to the mix.
Johnson says he isn’t sure if he chose Ben E. King’s classic ballad, “Stand By Me,” or if it chose him. Travelling around the world with Ridley’s bare-bones vocal performance of the song, he enlisted others to contribute, from blues singers in post-Katrina New Orleans to a South African choir to a Moscow chamber group. Adding their multiple layers of instruments and vocals, Johnson built the voice of one unknown street musician into a polyrhythmic hymn of shared humanity. Playing for Change continues to this day.
And that brings us to the theme for today’s inaugural episode of Sunday Songbook: trains.
(Oh, and do yourself a favour…DON’T listen to these tracks on a smart phone, at least not without good quality headphones or earbuds! Fire up the stereo if you can…AND PLAY IT LOUD.)
Playing For Change, “Peace Train”
Gladys Knight and The Pips, “Midnight Train to Georgia”
Train imagery has long been a fixture in popular music, beginning with gospel and the blues. Long before transportation was dominated by motor vehicles, passenger trains represented escape, hope and new horizons, particularly among African Americans.
The Impressions, “People Get Ready”
Train journeys offered lyrical shorthand for spiritual and religious longing. In the US civil rights movement, the gospel message of upward movement to a higher plane was hitched to the railway dream of lateral movement toward a better land.
Curtis Mayfield’s 1965 hit with the Impressions, “People Get Ready,” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. According to Wikipedia, Martin Luther King Jr. named the song as the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement and often used it “to get people marching or to calm and comfort them.”
“People Get Ready” has been covered by other artists, including this stellar intepretation by Rod Stewart and the late, great Jeff Beck.
Bruce Springsteen, “Land of Hope and Dreams”
Here’s another riff on “People Get Ready.” Rock singer Bruce Springsteen was in a fallow period until he penned the 1998 track, “Land of Hope and Dreams.” He performs the song here with the E-Street Band in Barcelona as the tour’s thunderous closer. It was structured in part around Curtis Mayfield’s big hit, but it also works in elements of the traditional gospel song “This Train” - not the version by Woody Guthrie, but the one by Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
In the Boss’ interpretation, this train accepts all - not just “the righteous and the holy” in Sister Rosetta’s version, but “saints and sinners”, “losers and winners,” and “whores and gamblers.” (No word if “arms merchants and pharmaceutical reps” had tickets.)
Rickie Lee Jones, “Night Train”
Train journeys can represent escape from as well as to, with an attached fear of failing or being caught. Here’s a heartrending example from 1979. Is the character fleeing from an abusive marriage? Is she kidnapping the child? All we have to go on is the fiercely professed love of a young mother in this track from Rickie Lee Jones’ brilliant eponymous debut album.
Richard Hawley, “Midnight Train”
Here’s the Sinatra-smooth Sheffield singer-songwriter Richard Hawley confessing to a bit more subdued form of escape on “Midnight Train,” from his 19th album, 2019’s Further.
Stephen Emmer, “Passengers”
Steven Emmer’s meditative 2007 piece reads like a love letter to trains, but with a poignant signature. Narrated by America’s poet laureate of rock n’ roll dysfunction, Lou Reed.
Hugh Masekela, “Stimela (Coal Train)”
In this electrifying performance, South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Maskela whistles, growls, shrieks, and toots his horn about a coal train. With the singer’s references to hard labour and disposable lives, the song echoes back to the seeds of pain planted in the New World by the slave trade - seeds of intergenerational trauma that germinated and flowered into jazz, blues and rock.
The O’Jays, “Love Train”
The Ojay’s no. 1 hit, “Love Train,” which invites nations to come together in joyous harmony, appropriately entered the top 40 charts on the same day that the Paris Peace Accords were signed, bringing the Vietnam War to a close. Though some consider “Love Train” to be one of the first disco songs, I prefer to think of a it as a high-water mark for Philly soul and an early seventies bookend to Cat Steven’s 1971 hit, Peace Train.
Below, The OJay’s believably lip-sych their big hit on - where else? - Soul Train.
Bonus Song…Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “Didn’t It Rain”
I love this video, and though the song doesn’t references train per se, it’s performed on a railway platform by a legendary female blues singer. Good enough! In 1964, Granada Television filmed Sister Rosetta Tharpe shredding her electric guitar on “Didn’t It Rain” at a disused train station in Manchester, England, to clapping spectators.
Love, love, love it all from the Pips dancing in their madras plaid jackets, to all these wonderful expressions of song. For being reminded of Ralph's book, "Come By Train" and all the happy times brought back into the present by hearing this music again. Can't stop dancing! Bless you forever! ❤️. 💙. 💚 💜 🧡
I'm working on it but it is running away with me...