Title: [Appreciation] | The 23 Best Train Songs Ever Written—Maybe, by Kevin Baker | Harper's Magazine
Headings: The Twenty-Three Best Train Songs Ever Written—Maybe
The Twenty-Three Best Train Songs Ever Written—Maybe
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Content: Downbound Train,” by Bruce Springsteen. In which trains serve beautifully as both metaphor for, and reality of, the collapse of working-class America. 13. “ Rock Island Line.” The great folk archivist Alan Lomax first captured a recording of this song on an Arkansas prison farm in 1934. Lomax credited it to Kelly Pace, the convict who sang it for him, but it’s almost undoubtedly older than that. Once again, there are kick-ass versions by Leadbelly and Johnny Cash, while Lonnie Donegan released a sped-up version that set off the skiffle craze in England in 1954. The line in question — the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific — never got farther west than the Mississippi. 14. “ Paddy on the Railway.”