Recorded in New York in 1929, From Galway to Dublin by Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band is a truly eccentric record made in the scratchy days long before DJ Shadow and the studied craft of cut-and-paste. That said, it's a work of some technical genius, featuring bells, whistles, yahoos, fiddles and a conductor who calls the stations as the train rolls merrily from Galway to Dublin.
Like a lot of train songs, it describes a real journey. Bob Wills, the Stanley Brothers, Milton Brown and others did the very same thing - laying down a rhythmic musical accompaniment that mimicked the train itself while a shouter described the journey from A to B. In the 1960s, as Sonny Liston punched the heavy bag in preparation for the young Cassius Clay, he listened incessantly to James Brown's Night Train with Miami and Atlanta replacing Athenry and Maynooth. But it was the same compelling mix of toponymy and beat.
Initially, the musical attraction of the train was simply a matter of that hypnotic rhythm. It was a seductive pulse that started slow, gathered speed and eventually reached its relentless, rolling drive. It therefore lent itself to evocative instrumentals and provided something of a showcase for the virtuoso. Down the years there have been countless compositions based entirely on the sounds and rhythms of railroad - often played on particularly effective instruments like harmonica or, in the case of Orange Blossom Special, fiddle.
Perhaps the most famous composition on the railroad theme is Take The A-Train -a descriptive piece of Ellingtonia which its composer, Billy Strayhorn, recalled as coming to him quicker than the train itself. "It was born," he once said, "without effort, like writing a letter to a friend." It happened, he remembered, when Ellington gave him the subway directions to his pad in Harlem and, eager to impress the great man, Strayhorn arrived with a new composition based on the journey and on those directions. And so the A-Train was not only the direct route uptown, it was also a rapid way into the good books of the Duke.
But train songs were not always about physical journeys. Artists like Leadbelly picked up on a symbolism already well developed in earlier blues music. In this way, the train could be used very effectively to reveal much about society itself - America was, after all, built around the railroads and countless migrations along the lines. In fact the social history of the place could be told by following the tracks. And so a song like Leadbelly's Midnight Special achieves its special power. When he sang "Midnight Special shine your light on me", it referred to a train which would actually take him north to freedom - in his case, it would take him from the actual prison in which he found himself.
But the train also represented escape from the more general condition in which southern blacks lived, and its symbolic significance had been part of black consciousness from the worst days of slavery. In fact, the organised escape routes were known as "the underground railroad". The stations were safe houses along the way, and the conductors were those who helped escaped slaves on their way.
Woody Guthrie may never have known slavery, but he knew poverty well enough, and often sang of the trains which formed such a central part in the lives of the travelling poor. In fact he jumped many a train himself and his songs have faithfully commemorated those hobos who "nailed a rattler", travelled the county and slept in illegal encampments known as hobo jungles. All of it these days has huge romantic resonances but it was, in reality, a brutal and dangerous life - waiting for a bend in the line which would partially obscure the view of that mean old fireman and cruel old engineer, and then clamber aboard.
Hobos were shot at, maimed and killed - and those who clung to brake rods and axles, as the wheels roared around them, were often ferociously hosed with water. Later that night, wet clothes frozen solid, they would lose their grip and fall to their death or very serious injury. Blues singer Peg Leg Howell was among the lucky ones. He survived his adventures but, like many hobos, paid dearly for not having a ticket, earning his nickname the hard way.
And so the railroad produced many of its own romantic heroes - the hoboes, the brakemen and the men who laid the tracks. John Henry was a steel-driving man; Jimmie Rodgers, the father of country music, really was a brakeman, and engineers such as Cassie (or Casey) Jones eventually made their way into schoolroom songbooks around the world. And although those American railroads were unquestionably an enormous network of suffering for those who built them, not for nothing did small boys dream of being train drivers or singing brakemen.
And so the train and its great steel wheels became one of the most romantic images in American culture - and certainly the one most loaded with meaning. The songs in both blues and country are full of references to The Kaycee - the Kansas City Southern Line, The Yazoo and Mississippi Valley, The C & O, the T & P and the L & N - the Louisville and Nashville line which features in Jean Ritchie's song The L & N Don't Stop Here Anymore.
Even individual trains like the Dixie Flyer in the Randy Newman song, the Old 97, which Johnny Cash sings about, and The Wabash Cannonball which ran "from the great Atlantic ocean to the wide Pacific shore" would all in due course become the stuff of folklore. It was as if the train itself was alive - some kind of supernatural being which rolled through the night.
But perhaps the most important aspect to the train's place in music has been its religious significance. There are literally hundreds of gospel songs about riding that glory train to the promised land. It was a righteous train bound for glory and all God's chillun were expected to get on board - a perfect image for a thundering, unstoppable direct route to salvation. As Sister Rosetta Tharpe put it back in 1947 it was a righteous train indeed - a "clean train" which didn't pull no jokers, no tobacco chewers, no cigar smokers, no crap-shooters, no whiskey drinkers and (believe it or not in a religious song) no wankers.
IN the 1960s, the notion of the righteous train and the train to freedom took on a further and very powerful meaning. As part of the civil rights struggle in the US, the train once again became a central image as soul musicians, born out of gospel music, began to tackle the politics of the day. The Staples Singers sang passionately about a "a slow train, but it's moving on". And Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions came up with People Get Ready - one of the finest songs of the period - a single which, in February 1965, was soon taken up as an anthem for the civil rights movement.
Let's not forget either that the big romantic appeal of the train is often a personal one - especially in America, where a train journey is often one of overwhelming distance. Once a train pulled away from the station, your next stop might be a thousand miles away. Everything you wanted to leave behind was gone for good - and everything you wanted to find in life might be waiting for you at the other end. Things were often pretty final in those days, and a long-distance train might as well have been a rocket to the moon.
Herman Junior Parker knew it well when he wrote and recorded a spooky song called Mystery Train back in 1953. His train was almost a ghost train and he was quite powerless against it. That extraordinary recording was followed by the Elvis Presley version which pulled out of the same studio in 1956. Presley's take was different. While the original version tells of a train which took Parker's baby away, and was going to do it again, the hyper Presley sings that even though it took his baby, it never would again. These two recordings represent two of Sun Records' finest moments and saw the train take its rightful, righteous place at the thundering heart of rock'n'roll.