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Let’s ride the City of New Orleans one more time — 45 Comments

1. 1. This is one of the definitions of a classic – a song that can sustain reinterpretation.

   2. Something similar with another slightly older song: most people prefer Judy Collins’ earworm version of Clouds to Joni Mitchell’s more brooding original. It’s called “Pop” because it’s accessible and hews to popular taste.

   3. Mitchell and Dylan and the Gershwins and Cole Porter and…. Many song writers have their originals eclipsed by covers. Maybe other performers can assess the song more objectively.

2. Here’s a version of CONO by someone y’all may or may not heard of in a non-musical context. This is the Bay Area band Moonalice fronted by Roger McNamee who is not a professional musician.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg0qQjcoFQ4

   Roger is an insanely wealthy Silicon Valley venture capitalist, early investor in Facebook and mentor to Zuck, who became critical because FB wasn’t leftist enough in the Trump years. Seriously. He is the author of the book entitled “Zucked.” He’s donated gazillions to the Democrats, their politicians, their causes. A lifelong Deadhead, he’s been able to indulge his musical passions for a couple decades now.

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg0qQjcoFQ4

   He’s an amateur musician who has gotten better through hundreds of gigs, who can afford to hire the world-class musicians with him — John Molo (drums), Pete Sears (bass/keys), Barry Sless (guitar/pedal steel). To give him credit he can afford to commission a free poster for every performance, and he live streams every performance. Actually he has done some sort of live stream every single day since the covid restrictions began from his expansive property.

   He’s now expanded the band to a ten-piece called Full Moonalice which includes the T Sisters who I shared in one of Neo’s posts on sibling harmony singing, and Lester Chambers and his son Dylan. Remember the Chambers Brothers?

   He has another band called Doobie Decibel System. Yes, he’s a big cannabis promoter, although I don’t know if he has business interests there.

   Ben David: The Joni Mitchell song is entitled Both Sides Now.

3. Gosh, the Goodman lyrics are a surprise that I missed previously. Willie Nelson keeps the chorus the same throughout, Arlo includes one Goodman variation at the end and sings “Goodnight America how are ya,” but the Goodman ending really changes the tenor of the whole song.

   Goodman:
   Goodnight America how are ya
   Don’t ya know me I’m your native son
   I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
   I’ll be gone a long, long time when the day is done

   He decelerates the tempo for the “long, long time” to emphasize the elongation of time and so you don’t miss the lyric change.

   It’s rather unique that he chose an up-tempo happy tenor for a song that finishes by being an elegy for passenger railroading.

4. I’ve heard Roger McNamee and Moonalice many times performing in my area. They chose the Arlo Guthrie ending.

5. I heard Steve Goodman play live twice when I was very young and had no idea who he was, because he was the opening act for the artists I had actually gone to see: storytelling folkie Harry Chapin, and, surprisingly, comedian Steve Martin (back when he was doing huge concert tours). Goodman was fantastic both times, and I became a big fan.

   Some of the songs he wrote way back in the 1970s could be considered highly predictive of our modern era: social media (“If Your Life Was on Videotape”), sexual politics (“Men Who Love Women [Who Love Men]”), and the new millennium (“The 20th Century Is Almost Over,” which was covered by Johnny Cash).

6. Ted:

   I’ve been planning to do a post on “Men Who Love Women…”. The guy was so ahead of his time, really a genius I think. He had it all: voice, guitar chops, songwriting, great lyrics, could do funny or sad or touching equally well. That song “My Old Man” is so good.

   I read something someone wrote about Steve G. who first saw him open for Steve Martin. He said that although he’d come for Martin and had never even heard of Goodman before, within a few minutes he felt that if Martin never appeared and Goodman just kept playing, it would be perfectly fine.

   Kris Kristofferson said that after a while he stopped having Steve Goodman open for him because the comparison made it clear that Goodman was better.

7. TommyJay:

   My guess is that they didn’t know the Goodman ending, just the Guthrie one.

8. Now do Mr. Bojangles.

9. BenDavid:

   I heard Judy Collins’ version of “Both Sides Now” and liked it. But a bit later, when I heard, Mitchell’s, I preferred it to the other.

   Much like preferring Goodman’s to Guthrie’s.

   I even kind of prefer Erma Franklin’s “Piece of My Heart” to Janis Joplin’s, depending on my mood. I can’t quite decide; I really like them both, but when I wrote this post comparing the two versions, I preferred Janis’.

   I did a similar comparison with two versions of “Killing Me Softly” in this post.

10. Nice analysis. Goodman uses his guitar playing here as an effective counter to his singing. It recedes a bit when he is singing, and pushes out in a percussive manner in the gaps, so a dynamic style. Many guitar players are very uniform in their playing, and thus, while competent, aren’t very interesting to listen to. It’s what separates the pros from the amateurs. The guitar is an instrument that has a percussive quality when strummed forcefully. Goodman clearly is masterful at that approach.

11. Steve Goodman recorded “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request” in 1983, one year before he died of leukemia. It is a humorous, melancholy celebration(?) of the Cubs perennial ineptitude. Like my wife, he was a long-suffering Cubs fan.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xBxZGQ1dJk

12. Neo: your love for this song and its singers is infectious. And your patient exegesis is a great help, even as we all understand that you cannot catch lightning in a jar; the experience escapes our naming of it. Thanks.

13. I was very familiar with the song and Goodman’s original before you brought this all up but it is “This train got the disappearing railroad blues.” All the towns still have names even if the rider doesn’t know them. At least the City of New Orleans has a name. Most of the disappearing trains don’t even have that.

    The Milwaukee Road doesn’t go through Two Dot, Montana, Avery, Idaho or Beverly, Washington anymore but those places are still there.

14. Chases Eagles:

    It’s not my impression that Goodman meant the towns literally have no names in some book of all the place names in the US. The way I see the lyric is that he’s writing about the railroad’s route, and the railroad passes towns with no stations and without their place names being written so that you can see them as you pass – therefore, to the railroad and to its passengers they have no names.

15. I’m happy to hear “New Orleans” remains a special song today for so many people, especially a song so folkish.

    I check into Arlo, now and then. He’s still a leftie at heart, though more nuanced — he endorsed Ron Paul in 2008 and called himself a Republican for a while!

    I most appreciate that he’s not now and never was a hater. He is not far from that genial, goofy narrator of “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.”

16. Of course Arlo’s version came out in the early 70’s and had to conform to the Easy Listening sensibilities of the time. If I was hearing it on AM radio (like I remember, painting houses in the early 70’s) it would be different. If I was there live, I’d prefer Mr. Goodman’s more soulful version. And Arlo’s version reminds me of the other classical southern ballad from that time, The Night They Rode Old Dixie Down from The Band (and Joan Baez’s version too).

17. Having seen both of these guys live, I’m a fan of them both. But, I would have no trouble choosing Steve Goodman as my favorite of the two. He was like a shooting star who burned brightly, but was gone much too soon.

18. Neo,
    I know it is poetic, I like Arlo’s version better. This particular lyric is one that resonates with me. Now that I think about it, Goodman might mean “no-name” in the pejorative sense.

    Here is a map of the Illinois Central from 1968
    https://www.american-rails.com/images/IC_Map1968.jpg
    Names aplenty and well signed so the engineer knows where he is but hicksville for sure.

19. Nawlins, hawrt.

    New Orleans accent is a bear to describe. Not Cajun, not Southern, almost like the Bronx but not as hard. It’s dying out which is a shame.

    Wher y’at, Cap?

20. Oh noes! too many songs popping up!
    CONO; I have to disagree about the lyric changes from Goodman to Guthrie. I agree with Chasing Eagles that ‘trains that have no names’ draws an effective contrast between a train that still retains some of the ‘old glory’ of the railroad heyday, and trains that have already lapsed into insignificance.
    Same goes for ‘father’s’ rather than ‘daddy’s’. The use of the more formal ‘father’s’ give the line historical weight.
    When I listened to the Goodman version I thought he said ‘magic carpets made of steam’ which rhymes with ‘dream. When I looked up the lyrics, it is ‘steam’. Steam, dream, steel, feel – it’s all good.
    ‘Both Sides Now’; I first heard the Judy Collins version and loved it, so when someone told me to listen to the version by the actual songwriter I did and that began a lifelong love for Joni’s music. I agree JM’s version is not as accessible, (as a child my son couldn’t bear her voice – Mom, that lady is giving me a headache!) but her later live version on Mile of Aisles is wonderful. Voice and interpretation more mature and she had obviously gotten voice training – although she claimed it was the cigarette smoking that deepened her voice.
    A ‘Mr. Bojangles’ post? Yes. And how about ‘Stagger Lee’?
    ‘I was standin’ on the corner when I heard my bulldog bark
    He was barkin’ at two men who were gamblin’ in the dark’
    Can’t get enough genuine Americana at this moment in time.
    ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’; I used to think the lyric about the brother was ‘You can’t raise a Caine back up when he’s in the feed’. Instead of ‘when he’s in defeat’. I thought it was a double entendre referring to sugar cane. Sugar cane used to be grown in the South. Made sense to me.
    ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’; I’ve got 4 versions on the playlist and can’t decide which is best. I know, I know, the one I’m listening to now.
    Dylan
    Peter, Paul and Mary
    Joan Baez
    Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson
    If anyone wants to add to the competition, I’m all ears.

21. DaveindeSwamp, Louis Armstrong had a New Orleans accent. If you have a recording where he talks you’ll hear the accent. I was very surprised when I learned that because I’d always thought he was from the Bronx. It turns out he grew up in New Orleans and started his musical career playing in the local whore houses.

22. Re: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by Joan Baez
    Her version always slightly bugged me because of the “so much cavalry came” vs “Stoneman’s cavalry came”. She said years later that she had learned the song by listening to it didn’t know she got it wrong and I understand she sings the Stoneman line now.

23. }}} The song itself is one of those instant classics that are almost universally loved.

    Its underlying theme is about the end of an era, the passing of things one has known all one’s life. It thus touches a chord in anyone short of an x-opath (socio, psycho, whatever) for the reality of the world: “Opportunity Costs” — every choice you make closes off alternatives. We’ve chosen cars and planes over trains, for individual travel. There are good reasons for doing that, but we also appreciate the lost opportunities of riding the rails and experiencing the country out the railcar window.

24. }}} Re: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by Joan Baez

    A mondegreen. Amusingly named because it IS a mondegreen itself.

    The lyric “Laid him on the green” was misheard as “Lady Mondegreen” by the woman who popularized that name for it.

25. The Beatles, or Sonny and Cher? ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’

    🙂

26. Re: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by Joan Baez

    Hasn’t she been canceled for that yet?

27. Its underlying theme is about the end of an era, the passing of things one has known all one’s life.

    OBloodyHell:

    Good observation!

    John Hartford wrote such a song for his “Aero-Plain” album about the end of one venue of the Grand Ole Opry. It made me miss the Opry, even though Hartford himself was as close as I got to such music in those days.

    Hartford also wrote “Gentle On My Mind,” a big hit for Glen Campbell.
    _______________________________________

    They’re gonna tear down the Grand Ole Opry
    They’re gonna tear down the sound that goes around our song
    They’re gonna tear down the Grand Ole Opry
    Another good thing, is done gone on, done gone on

    Verse:
    Well there were campers and there were busses
    Parked all around, where there used to be a door
    But that place called the Grand Ole Opry
    It just ain’t there just ain’t there no more / Chorus

    Spec:
    Right across from the wax museum they used to line up around the block
    From east Tennessee and back down home again
    All of a sudden there’s nothing to do where there once was an awful lot
    Broad Street will never be the same

    Verse:
    I’ve been in love with the Grand Ole Opry
    And I guess I have now for a good many years
    When I hear the Grand Ole Opry
    It makes me sad that it’s gonna disappear, gonna disappear

    –John Hartford, “Tear Down The Grand Ole Opry” (1971)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1FFyyJz8wc

28. “Re: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by Joan Baez
    Her version always slightly bugged me because of the “so much cavalry came” vs “Stoneman’s cavalry came”. She said years later that she had learned the song by listening to it didn’t know she got it wrong and I understand she sings the Stoneman line now.” – Chases Eagles

    Folk song collectors are well aware of the transmogrification of lyrics as songs get passed around orally. Even once they are written down, there are rival versions.
    As the Welsh say about their discrepancies: “In my village we sing it this way.”

    I recently hunted down the lyrics for “English Country Garden” (which is actually an “authored” song of relatively recent origin) and was amused to see that several of the singers memorialized on-line recited the names of some flowers incorrectly, because they most likely were not familiar with the actual names and just parroted back what they thought they heard.

    Part of the alteration of lyrics is deliberate (I suspect Guthrie explicitly chose to differ from Goodman’s original, possibly for the reasons cited above or something else), but most changes result from substituting a familiar word for an unfamiliar one (as also noted above).

    Art Linkletter had an ongoing column called “Kids Say The Darndest Things” and many of his articles (I almost said posts) were about the prevalence of mondegreens among children, as one would expect.

    When one of our boys was very small, he insisted on wearing his tuna-fish shoes, because we had those sandwiches often, but we did not play tennis.

29. Re: Mondegreens…

    OBloodyHell, AesopFan:

    On the Beatles’ “When I Get Home,” I always heard John singing:

    “I’ve got no time for tripping through the trees” instead of
    “I’ve got no time for trivialities.”

    I imagined John swinging on a vine a la Tarzan. Made sense to me when I was 12. It seemed like something John might say. We had an understanding.

    There’s a fun book on mondegreens titled, “Excuse Me, While I Kiss This Guy” instead of Jimi Hendrix’s “Excuse me, while I kiss the sky.”

30. The railroad is more organic, more a part of the land. Even when it is gone you can see the scars left behind. Scar sounds more negative than I mean.

    Out of curiosity, I was looking at the Illinois Central map compared to Google Earth. The first place on the map as “the train pulls out at Kankakee” is Otto. There is nothing at Otto but a rather small graveyard of the rusted automobile.

31. Chases Eagles, I grew up on the MILWAUKEE ROAD mainline. It bothered me, when the HIAWATHA stopped being a 100 mph luxury passenger train, and the name wound up on a high speed trailer on flat car train. I miss the MILW, ALL HAIL ORANGE AND BLACK!

32. Guthrie’s production…all those backups…sort of kills the lone troubadour schtick. I prefer his version but I think Goodman’s lyrics are more apt.

    Everything has ups and downs, prices and profits. That includes railroads. Having had little to do with trains, I don’t have an emotional attachment to the thing, so there’s no loss to me. But the downsides were imposed on somebody; the noise, the coal smoke and ash flying…. I used to do some business in a small town where emergency services had to be prepared to go the long way around while a train–the back end of it, maybe twenty cars–sat on the track running through the town. There is, or is supposed to be a law about how long a train can block a street. But I’ve heard it’s never enforced.
    These costs and others were imposed upon people who hadn’t asked for them.

    That said, I took the song to be part of the folk scene’s then emphasis on moving on. Somebody was always leaving, moving on and not stopping, going over the next hill, being begged not to go. Ian and Sylvia’s first hit was one of those, iirc. I didn’t see an issue with disappearing railroads.

    I figure the towns that have no name is a reference to what the passenger sees and knows by looking out the window.

    Decades ago, at the airport in Nashville, I saw a Guard C130 with “City of Memphis” on the vertical stabilizer. I wondered if that was even regulation. Presumed there were other “City Of….” on other aircraft. Struck me as a method of solidarity, and kind of parochial. “We’re Tennesee…..” Which, in fact, the Guard is. For all the confusing term, the Guard is an air force and an army which belongs to the state. And in the reserve component, that’s where you go when you need an actual combat formation. Which may be kept in mind.

    And I come around to the point that you couldn’t write this song about Run Twenty-seven. You need “city of”.

33. There’s an interesting book, ‘Metropolitan Corridor’ by John Stilgoe, about the emotional meaning of the railroad in American life, especially for people in small towns. Excerpt:

    “So magnificent was the Illinois Central crack express–The Panama Limited–that every day for twelve years the Sixth Mississippi District Court at Vaiden recessed so that everyone could watch it come through the station..Until the 1920s, such trains represented prosperity and the promise of greater prosperity, luxury, futuristic design, and urbanity. To some Depression-era watchers, the expresses announced good times returning; to others, they advertised an unequal distribution of wealth. Long before and well into the Depression, however, the fast trains bespoke a peculiarly American strassenromantik, one centered on cities flashing across farms and forests, attracting the wondering admiration of children and adults…Every railroad right-of-way shared in the glamor that lingered like a whiff of coal smoke left after the all-Pullman express had passed. In the remotest corners of rural American, in suburbs of broad lawns, in small towns, the luxury express advertised the crackling energy of urban industrial zones.”

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/8923.html

34. david foster.

    Lucius Beebe said something like that and wrote a good deal about it. He practically invented cafe society so he’d have something to write about. This was in the days when society writers attended the arrival of passenger liners from Europe to see which big shots got were traveling.

    It would follow that trains would be subject to some of the same kind of interest.

    But, then, Glen Campbell’s character in “Gentle On My Mind” was a bum in a trainyard. I worked in a field project in the late sixties. Two of my female colleagues would mist up when that came on the radio. So it wasn’t the lure of first class solely.

35. An old friend in Illinois is a train and streetcar buff. He has a 1941 stationmaster’s book for all of the passenger rail lines in the United States, as well as passenger airline flights. It’s as thick as two old big city phone books put together. The point is, in 1941 you could get from anywhere to anywhere in this country by rail. For example, you could step onto a streetcar in the middle of the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, transfer to an interurban railroad at the Illinois Traction System station in downtown Champaign…

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

    …ride the interurban to Peoria at one end or St. Louis on the other, and you were on your way to anywhere in the U.S.

    In the part of the country I grew up in, there was an interurban streetcar line in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that connected villages, small towns, and cities along the Connecticut River Valley in western Massachusetts and southern Vermont. You can find old stretches of track in the woods. Information on interurbans:

    https://www.american-rails.com/interurbans.html

36. Arlo has always been a better humorist/storyteller than a musician, in my opinion. Not only Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, but also live versions of songs like “Motorcycle Song” (did you wonder why he didn’t want a pickle? Answer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvLtNBm1yyA).

    Follow that link and it will also lead you to an Arlo’s Soundstage concert featuring Arlo, Steve Goodman, and another great storyteller lost at an early age, Hoyt Axton.

    Following a rabbit-hole on Hoyt Axton then might lead you to his appearance in one of my favorite movies, The Black Stallion. I am always mesmerized by the film’s use of soundtrack and film to tell a story without words in the beach/water scenes with Alec and The Black.

    Then, before you know it, a half-a-day has come and gone. And you have to put a lid on it.

37. Another very good book on railroading is ‘On the Rails’ by Linda Niemann, who got a PhD in English but, after “the fancy academic job never materialized” took a brakeman job with the old Southern Pacific. (known to its employees as the ‘Suffering Pathetic’.) Exceptionally-good writing, which has been compared to Melville.

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/50445.html

38. Richard Aubrey,
    Here in the west, if the RR goes through the middle of town it is because the town grew up around the RR. In many cases, no RR, there would have been no town. Yes it is aggravating. Trains are longer than they used to be. 180 cars long. Nothing impacts loading and unloading the Edmonds Ferry north of Seattle more than 180 car train stack train moving at about 2 MPH blocking the ferry ramp.

    Again here in the west, the RR generally owns the right-of-way. It is private property. Their rights are superior.

    On the other hand, when the Milwaukee died, they donated a lot of their right of way to the State of Washington in lieu of paying back property tax. This how they created the Iron Horse and John Wayne trail system. Interesting though at least part of trail system is “rail banked” meaning it is in reserve and could be returned to RR use.

39. SCOTTtheBADGER’
    Both the Milwaukee and the Rock Island were regulated into extinction by the retards in the Federal Government. Both roads spent about the last 20 years of their lives trying to get bought out or merge with someone else but they were unable to get past the Feds. At one point the Milwaukee tried to merge with the Rock Island. The Union Pacific finally wanted to buy the Rock Island. After 10 years while the Rock fell apart and the Feds fiddle-f@rted around, when they finally gave approval, the Rock was in such bad shape the UP didn’t want them anymore and they liquidated instead.

40. Today’s listeners may not catch the 3 references to race. The first is obvious: “freight yards full of old black men.” The second is a little more subtle: “sons of Pullman porters (black) and the sons of engineers (white) ride their daddies’ magic carpets made of steel” (the train as a means of uniting?). A third reference has become obscure: “changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee” (as the train passed into the Deep South, passengers knew to rearrange their seating to accommodate local Segregation).
    When, in the early 1970’s, John Denver co-opted (bowdlerized) the song into an upbeat, feel-good pop song, he sidestepped any perceived controversy by changing the lyrics to “old gray men” and eliminated the “changing cars” altogether.
    To Denver’s credit, on his final album “All Aboard” (a posthumous Grammy award winner), he redeemed himself by singing the original lyrics as written…and sang very nicely: https://youtu.be/XzGJLWMCw3A. A fun album with lots of other good train songs, too.
    This IS a deep dive so one more factoid: “the conductor sings his song again: ‘the passengers will please refrain’” refers to plumbing. Train toilets emptied directly onto the tracks so, when in the station, passengers were requested to refrain from flushing. Out of delicacy, the conductor didn’t complete the phrase…passengers all knew what he meant. Added realism, I suppose.
    P.S. really enjoying the BeeGees!!

41. Chases Eagles; SCOTTtheBADGER:

    The Rock Island Line.

42. Ruth:

    Thanks! There’s another video I plan to post one of these days. Those stories are discussed in it, including more detail about Denver’s change of lyrics.

    Since I’m old enough to remember, I caught all the references except the Memphis one. But in 1970, when Goodman wrote it, segregation was no longer in force de jure in the south; I don’t know about de facto.

    I also am old enough to know the “please refrain” reference. In 1970 when it was written, most of the audience would have known it as well. No more.

    My grandfather used to ride the rails quite often for work. I have a poem he wrote around 1907 while on the train. He sent it to my grandmother in a letter. It’s quite funny, and it references that “passengers will please refrain” rule. He wrote advertising jingles for his job.

43. Dear Neo
    After lurking for free for years, I just sent you some cash (when you were dropping Amazon). This is why.
    Thank you for all these life changing small things not of the political persuasion.
    You know, I never heard of Steve Goodman, and this is one of my favorite songs. I love his rendition of 16 Tons (which I always thought belonged to Tennessee Ernie Ford) and the sheer energy of Steve’s performances. My grandfather was a conductor on the railroad in Georgia US. We have ridden railroads in Kenya Nairobi to Mombasa, Russia Moscow to St. Petersburg and all over Italy Frecciarossa and Frecciaargento. Also all over Switzerland up and down Mountains, but not thru the Gotthard tunnel. Yet.

44. fiona:

    Thanks!!

    Goodman’s rendition of “Sixteen Tons” is indescribable and so entertaining. The song apparently was originally written and sung by Merle Travis in 1947.

45. Looks up ’16 Tons’ (it’s been a while).
    Mondegreens, hmmm.
    The ‘donzer lee light’?
    Now do ‘Louie,Louie’.

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