Railroad Songs and Ballads

Recording Laboratory AFS L61 Railroad Songs and Ballads From the Archive of Folk Song Edited by Archie Green Library of Congress Washington 1968 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number R67-3179 A vailable from the Library of Congress Mu sic Division, Recorded Sound Section Washington, D.C. 20540 PREFACE Few folksong collectors in the United States se lf a former Norfolk and Western employee , added have not encountered at least one railroad song, and a bit of oral wisdom to the program. He indicated few scholars have resisted the temptation to com· that firemen used to knot red bandanas around their ment on the meaning of such material. For a cen necks to keep from being burned by cinders before tury and a half the iron horse raced across the diesel fuel supplanted coal. The Stonemans sang continent; this journey was as mu ch in the imagina fo lksongs; "Pop" related a folk belief to the televi tion as it was over the land. When a train is seen in sion announcer. All folkSingers ought to be given a oral or written literature and music as a mythical similar opportunity to bedeck songs with custom steed it effaces human riders and han·dlers. Yet in and belief, for every folksong deserves a protective life each train is directed and cared for by muscle bandana as its own kind of pennant. and nerve. Hence . railroad lore fuses the sounds of A disciplined collector asks folksingers questions machines with the emotions of workers. Right-of which go beyond songs. In a sense, the folklorist way construction hands as well as operating and "flags" a song almost as a signalman flags a train. A maintenance craftsmen perceive locomotives, ca seemingly peripheral anecdote may reveal much booses, roundhouses, or track-sections as other about a ballad's background or meaning. Such con mechanics view their own work sites. But a railroad textual data are best presented when folksongs is more than a place to earn a living. Precisely be appear in printed or sound-recorded anthologies. cause a train is an artifact in cu lture which can be Ideally, each collector should edit phonograph labeled "iron horse ," it is a highly important symbol albums following his own field work, for he can best in folk tradition. recall a singer's stance or feelings. Bu t an au tside There may have been a legendary time when editor who presents other fieldworkers' songs labors only railroaders sang their songs and told their under a seve re handicap_ Although I am fortunate stories. But today their lore belongs to all Ameri enough to have gathered railroad lore from tradi cans. No industrial lore is as widespread as that of tional singers, in this Library of Congress recording I the rail s; it seems as much the possession of editors am working entirely with other collectors' findings. and teachers as of car knockers or hoggers. Conse Hence, I open the brochure for L6l with a brief quently, bankers and Boy Scouts feel quite familiar comment on how the re cording was put together. with "Casey Jones" and "John Henry." We are all in The first curator of the Archive of Folk Song in debt to authors Ben Botkin, Frank Donovan, Alvin the Library of Congress was Robert Win slow Gor Harlow , Freeman Hubbard, and Archie Robertson don , a man who knew railroaders and their songs for a rich presentation of railroad folklore in their intimately. During the 1920's Gordon conducted an books. We are also fortunate that the commercial "old songs" column in Adventure Magazin e. He was phonograph industry offered train songs to the pub in constant touch with boomers who opened their lic almost from the inception of sound recordings. hea rts to him. Gordon was the first folklorist to In the 1890's "A Night Trip to Buffalo" was popu collect a rail labor union song, "The ARU ," dating lar in cylinder catalogs. In 1966 RCA Victor re from the Pullman strike of 1894. I desired to use leased a serious anthology , Th e Railroad in this song but, unfortunately, Gordon did not record Folksong. it, although he did make many cylinder recordings One illustration of the ubiquity of railroad bal before the Archive perfected portable battery and ladry tells something of its function even on the electrically driven disc equipment in the 1930's. contemporary sce ne . On Easter Sunday, 1967, the Gordon's successor in the Archive was John Stoneman Family- an Appalachian string-band Avery Lomax. Hi s work is well represented on this group with deep roots in tradition - presented an all album_ J ohn Lomax and his son Alan ga thered train-song concert to a tremendous television enough material for many rail road records. They audience. The Stone mans could well have per used these songs in all their printed anthologies and formed an all-sacred program, but perhaps their consequently played a significant role in populariz sponsors felt that the train itself was a hallowed ing occupational material. enough object to be honored at Easter. Not only It has been the constant poli cy of the Archive to were the numbers presented with verve , but Ernest encourage field workers not on the staff to contri V. "Pop" Stoneman, the fam ily patriarch and him bute their findin gs to the Library of Congress. Hence this LP contains 20 songs, one chant, and one which it could be put, but instrumentalists impro instrumental recorded by 16 different collectors be vised train imitations in which the performer him tween 1936 and 1959. It is unlikely that any other self became the clicking, pulsating juggernaut. The editor would have lighted on these exact songs; in mouth-harpist, fiddler, guitarist, or pianist was the short " my" gathering is highly personal_ It is base d train; he brought the engine's snort directly in to hi s on listening during 1965 and 1966 to a fair sample cottage or boardinghouse room. One se nses in listen of the thousands of available pieces deposited in the ing to the great body of rail music that Meade Lux Archive. However, I have excluded fr om this record· Lewis' classic piano solo, "Honky Tonk Train," tells in g those rail road songs alre ady released on previous as specific a story as the widely recorded "Wreck of Library of Congress phonograph re cords. (This list is the Old Ninety-Seven." Folklorists place narr ative found in the appendix to the brochure.) ballads in quite separate categories from lyric instru The items presented on L61 are intended to mentals. Yet there seems to be a tracklike thread represen t a broad array of type and style as weU as a which connects the countless rail narrative songs to wide range in time and space. Neverthele ss, not the most poignant blues and floating lyric folksongs. every aspect of railroadiana is repre se nted. Train I use the term "·countless" de liberately. The men sang bawdy songs because such pieces were earliest identified railroad music is a piano piece fun , and also because so much rail const ruction published at Baltimore in 1828, but no one knows took place in workcamps isolated from "polite" when or where the first railroad worker put together society. Scholars and scholarly institutions have not his own song or train imitation. One can only specu yet learned to present occupational erotica in con late about the "first" railroad number- formal or tex t. Also excluded from this re cording are songs folk-which entered tradition. The melody, and pos not in English. Every immigrant group to America sibly some stanzas, of "I've Been Working on the helped tamp ties, shovel coal, or load freight. The Railroad" ("Dinah") goes back to pre-Civil War min Archive does contain a handful of occupational strel days. "Poor Paddy Works on the Rail way" songs in fo reign languages, but to put toge ther such dates itse lf in the period 1841-47; it became a folk a railroad anthology today would require fre sh song at least a cen tury ago. recordings of material that is little known. A fin al A fa scinating problem can be posed on the ques and obvious omission from thi s re cording is any tion of the origin of American railroad songs. Many song of spedfic industrial relations (trade union or welled directly out of the experiences of workers tycoon) con tent. Although railroad workers were, and were composed li te rally to the rhythm of the and are , highly organized and have made a substan handcar. Others we re born in Tin Pan Alley rooms tial contribu tion to laborlore, only one of their or bars. But regardless of birthplace , songs moved uni on songs, to my knowledge, was deposited in the up and down the main line or were shunted onto Library of Congress. Similarly, only one deposited isolated spur tracks. This recording, of course , ball ad po rt rays a railroad entrepreneur in a heroic brings together numbers of complete anonymity as role. Neither of these du al commentaries was avail well as recen t compositions traceable to particular able to me for this anthology. sheet music prin tings or records. Side One of the recording focuses on the con By analogy this LP is a train made up of widely st ruction of the railroad and railroading as a craft. different boxcars which are loaded with assorted Side Two features the symbolic values found in the freight and consigned to scattered destinations.

Load more