PITTSBURGH IS A GREAT OLD TOWN

Pittsburgh town is a great old town, Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh town is a great old town, Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh town is a great old town
Solid steel from McKeesport down
Pittsburgh, Lord God, Pittsburgh

2.        Pittsburgh is a smoky old town, Pittsburgh!
Pittsburgh is a smoky old town, Pittsburgh!
Pittsburgh is a smoky old town,
Coal piled high in great big mounds.
Pittsburgh is a smoky old town, Pittsburgh!

3.        Pittsburgh is a river town,
Two rivers meet at the Point downtown.

4.        Pittsburgh is a hilly old town,
Her streets and roads go up and down.

George Korson, Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949), pp. 440-441, "Pittsburg Is a Great Old Town" (1 text, 1 tune)


Notes from Korson:
Pittsburgh Is a Great Old Town
(Sung by Matt Gouze at Pittsburgh, 1947. Notated by Jacob A. Evanson.
Used by permission of People’s Songs, Inc.)

According to Peter Seeger, ballad singer, this song was inspired by the spectacle of Pittsburgh during the war boom:
The song was made pretty much by Woody Guthrie, the Oakies’ balladist. That was back in the summer of 1941 when he and I and two other fellows—The Almanac Singers, a jalopyful of modern troubadours—stopped in Pittsburgh on a country-wide junket. The early war boom was on, and Pittsburgh was an awesome sight. This song, with a somewhat different text, was the result of communal effort, but mostly Woody Guthrie’s.
Its popularity increased when Alan Lomax used it in 1943 on his C.B.S. broadcast. “Trans-Atlantic Call-People to People.” At least four different versions are now in circulation. Pittsburgh public-school children sing one form in which the stanzas are telescoped into one:

Pittsburgh is a river town, Pittsburgh!
Pittsburgh is a hilly old town, Pittsburgh!
Pittsburgh is a smoky old town, Solid steel from McKeesport down. Pittsburgh is a great old town, Pittsburgh!