Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town

Subject: Train That Carried My Girl From Town ^^^
From: harpgirl
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 10:23 PM

The Train That Carried My Girl From Town
by Ola Belle Reed

Where were you when that train left town
Standin on the corner, head a hangin down
Hey, lord I hate the train that carried my girl from town
Wish to the lord the train would wreck
Kill that engineer and break that varmint's neck
Hey Lord, I hate the train that carried my girl from town
Well the ration's on the table
Coffee's gettin' cold
Some old rounder stole my gal and gone
Hey lord I hate the train that carried my girl from town
Where were you when the train left town
Standing on the corner head a hanging down
Hey lord I hate the train that carried my girl from town ^^^


Ola Belle does this tune on the banjo,tuned in D tuning F#DF#AD and was probably learned from the original 78 by Frank Hutchison. It can be found on: Traditional Music on Rounder: A Sampler

---

It's nice to have a different version, but this is quite close to the song we have in the Digital Tradition. I think I won't harvest it.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town ^^
From: Stewie
Date: 15 Apr 01 - 11:02 PM

For the sake of comparison, here is how Hutchison sang it:

TRAIN THAT CARRIED THE GIRL FROM TOWN (sic)

Tennessee raised, Alabama bound
If that girl leaves me gonna move to town

Refrain:
Hey, Lord, hate that train that carried my girl from town

Hate that train that carried my girl from town
If I'd knowed her number, sure flagged her down

Where was you when the train left town?
Standing on the corner head a-hanging down

Wish to the lord the train would wreck
Kill the engineer, break the fireman's neck

Hello Central, give me 609
Just want to talk with that brown of mine

Grits on the table, coffee's getting cold
Some old rounder stole my jelly roll

Want no grease mixed in my rice
That girl of mine took my appetite

There goes my girl, somebody call her back
She's got her hand in my money sack

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
Show me the woman a man can trust

Source: Transcribed from Frank Hutchison 'Complete Recorded Works Vol 1 1926-1929' Document DOCD-8003. Hutchison first recorded 'Train' (acoustically) on 28 September 1926 in New York City and rerecorded it (electrically) in St Louis on 29 April 1927.

The Ola Belle Reed version supplied by Harpgirl and the Doc Watson version in DT both stem from the Hutchison recording, as do versions by Wade Mainer and Fields Ward. Tony Russell noted in the insert to the Document CD that Hutchison learned this and a few other songs from Bill Hunt, a disabled black singer/guitarist. Mark Wilson has found one version of 'Train' that he says might possibly be independent of the Hutchison recording – by James Cotrell and given in 'Folksongs of Central West Virginia'.

--Stewie.


^^

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: harpgirl
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 12:04 AM

...thanks Stewie. Ola Belle probably said "fireman" instead of "varmint" but I have trouble understanding these scratchy old reissues...I'm glad you put that up. It's a great song in the original by Frank Hutchison and wonderful for old time banjo. hg

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 12:56 PM

Thanks for reminding me of this wonderful old song HG. Prompted me to dig out Ola Belle Reid (Her ALBUMS!!) and give a few more listens.

Actually I like "Kill the engineer, break that "Varmint's" neck." Have you noticed that in many ballads the poor old Fireman ALWAYS gets it along with the engineer? Maybe this time he got off Scot free.

Doc Watson does a great little 12fth fret finger slide (in D tuning). Says he "never uses a slide" 'cause he has enough trouble just carryin' a thumbpick around in his pocket". If anyone listens to his treatment of the song you can hear a lot of Josh White's style. Wonder if Doc heard any of Josh White?

Rick

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 04:09 PM

Well, McNeely got to jump off the train in Almeda Riddle's version of "Al Bowen", Rick!!
I only have one of Olla Belle's FL albums but I sure do like it! For a beginning banjo player like me the songs can light up my three chord Pete Seeger style fingering. (See Florida Old Time Music Championship web site for this year's beginning banjo winner!)
I have that Doc Watson record. I'll have to listen to it! I just love my old record collection. But of course my mother can't understand why I keep three hundred pounds of records around my house!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 17 Apr 01 - 11:49 AM

refresh (with hope)

even the Joey Ramone thread's got at least 7 interested people at this point.

uniportant note. For years I sung this song as "Heyyy" that train....." Yoicks, "hate" makes a lot more sense. 'Course, most of us sing "see you in my dreams" in Leadbelly's "Irene", when he actually sung "kiss" or "gets". Little more visceral.

Rick

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: GUEST,Arnie
Date: 18 Apr 01 - 11:15 AM

One of my favorite recordings of this was by Mike Seeger who did the Hutchinson's version, but if memory serves me well with harmonica, fiddle, and slide guitar (possibly played by Ry Cooder). An absolute gem of a cut!

Subject: Train That Carried The Girl From Town
From: Stewie
Date: 19 Jul 01 - 08:34 PM

The request in a current thread for 'Train That Carried' was fulfilled by someone pointing to the Doc Watson version in the DT. As all recorded versions of the song stem ultimately from Frank Hutchison's 1926 original, I thought it may be of interest to post that for purposes of comparison. I thought I had done this previously, but a phrase supersearch of the Forum indicates I have not. Note that the title on Hutchison's 2 recordings of the song is: 'Train That Carried The Girl From Town'. Most later recordings have it as: 'The Train That Carried My Girl From Town'. Additional notes follow the transcription - the refrain repeats after each stanza.

TRAIN THAT CARRIED THE GIRL FROM TOWN

Tennessee raised, Alabama bound
If that girl leaves me going to move to town
Refrain: Hey, Lord, hate that train that carried my girl from town

Hate that train that carried my girl from town
If I'd knowed her number, sure flagged her down

Where was you when the train left town?
'Standing on the corner, head a-hanging down'

Wish to the lord the train would wreck
Kill the engineer, break the fireman's neck

'Hello Central, give me 609
Just want to talk with that brown of mine

Grits on the table, coffee's getting cold
Some old rounder stole my jelly roll

Want no grease mixed in my rice
That girl of mine took my appetite

There goes my girl, somebody call her back
She's got her hand in my money sack

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
Show me a woman that a man can trust

Source: transcription on sleeve of Frank Hutchison 'The Train That Carried My Girl From Town' Rounder LP 1007.
Hutchison recorded the song twice: he rerecorded it a couple of months after initial recording, probably because the original was made by the acoustic process which Okeh dropped between his first and second recording sessions. Both the acoustic and electrical recordings are available on Frank Hutchison 'Complete Recorded Works Vol 1 1926-29' Document DOCD-8003. The acoustic side was recorded in New York City on 28 September 1926 [OK 45064] and the rerecording in St Louis, Missouri, on 29 April 1927 [OK 45114].

Note: the song was recorded subsequently by numerous country singers including Doc Watson, Wade Mainer, Ola Belle Reed, Fields Ward etc. Mark Wilson commented in his excellent notes to the Rounder LP issue that all versions stem from the Hutchison recording. It is pretty certain that Hutchison did not play a large role in the composition of this and other songs – they were taken from the general store of white and black folksong traditions – but his recordings represent virtually the only remaining specimens of several songs. Wilson further noted that the general structure of 'Train' and its use of 'D' tuning on guitar and banjo would seem to relate it to the 'Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home' tune family and that the only version he had encountered that might be independent of Hutchison's recording was one by Jenes Cotrell given in 'Folk Songs of Central West Virginia'.

In his notes to the CD reissue on Document, Tony Russell points out that Hutchison 'got a lot of his blues knowledge from a disabled black singer-guitarist named Bill Hunt who had been around Logan County since Hutchison's boyhood'. It was Hunt 'who gave him the idea of playing slide guitar, "makin' it cry", though another black musician, Henry Vaughan, has also been mentioned as an early model. Hutchison's debut recordings, "Worried Blues" and "Train That Carried", were both learned from Hunt'.

Those interested in further information about Hutchison should seek out Tony Russell's essay in 'Old Time Music' Magazine #1 Summer 1971. Information may also be had in Russell's 'Blacks, Whites and Blues', a Studio Vista book that had been out of print for ages. 'Blacks, Whites and Blues', together with 2 other long out-of-print classics on the blues - Paul Oliver's 'Savannah Syncopators' and Godrich and Dixon's 'Recording the Blues' - have been reissued in a single volume, accompanied by new essays: Russell, Oliver et alia 'Yonder Comes the Blues' Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 78777 7.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried The Girl From Tow
From: Oversoul
Date: 19 Jul 01 - 11:53 PM

Old Frank was an original. His contribution to our musical heritage has been tarnished as "just another White guy that stole the genius of the Black guy" by snobs from the folk mafia. Relatively few would care, but I take exception to this nonsense and resent these implications. Where are the snobs to point out Reverend Davis' variations on White sacred songs? If you want be correct be just that, for evereybody.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried The Girl From Tow
From: Stewie
Date: 20 Jul 01 - 12:34 AM

Davecoje, no one is saying that at all. Frank was an original and his contribution was immense. Russell's proposition is that there was considerably more interaction between black and white muscicians, particularly in West Virginia, than had been acknowledged. Also, from Aunt Jennie Wilson's account (she played banjo with Hutchison for a couple of years), Hutchison travelled outside his home area and listened to black recordings. Nothing is taken away from Bill Monroe's skills and contribution because he had interaction with, and was influenced by, black musicians - the same applies with Hutchison, Justice, Harvey and others. It seems to me that you are setting up a man of straw. I doubt if anyone has done more than Russell to highlight Hutchison's considerable contribution to American music.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 10 Aug 16 - 11:41 PM

The "Where was you when," "train would wreck," and "Hello Central" bits were all around as floating lyrics.

Another blues with a third-line refrain with "Lord" in it is "Knife-Song," collected by Howard Odum before 1909. Three-line stanzas with third-line refrains were very common in black songs (from "Railroad Bill" to "The Carrier Line" to...), so not surprising at all that Bill Hunt would use one.

Andrew Everett (born about 1892) had "Hello Central give me 209" and "hate" in the same song. Charlie McCoy had the fireman and the engineer in his "That Lonesome Train Took My Baby Away." "Mamie's Blues" by Jelly Roll Morton had "The 2:19 took my baby away"; he learned it from Mamie Desdumes, who died in 1911.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 10 Aug 16 - 11:49 PM

"Oh! where was you when the rolling mill burned down?
On the levee camp about fifteen miles from town" -- from the song "The Railroad Blues" (1912 article by Will Thomas)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 11 Aug 16 - 02:41 AM

Charley Jordan, born 1890: "the Big Four is a mean old train to ride/She took my babe away and left me dissatisfied."

Lucille Bogan, born 1897: "I hate that train... it took my baby away...."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: leeneia
Date: 11 Aug 16 - 01:09 PM

"Wish to the lord the train would wreck
Kill the engineer, break the fireman's neck"

Nice insight into the criminal mind. Hate everybody, hurt everybody, whether they ever hurt you or not.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Aug 16 - 08:55 PM

Yeah, Doc Watson sang it Fireman, too. Varmint makes it the engineer who took the girl - the other, it's just the train she's on and everybody can just die that's involved.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Train That Carried My Girl From Town
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 12 Aug 16 - 04:43 AM

"insight into the criminal mind" Not just poetic hyperbole?

Subject: Lyr Add: THE TRAIN THAT CARRIED MY GIRL FROM TOWN
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 17 Aug 16 - 09:03 AM

THE TRAIN THAT CARRIED MY GIRL FROM TOWN
As recorded by Roscoe Holcomb.

Yonder goes that train carryin' my girl from town.
If I knowed that number I'd go flag 'er down.
Must 'a' been the fast train that carried my girl from town.

There goes my girl; somebody call her back,
'Cause she's got a hand in my money sack.
Must 'a' been the fast train that carried my girl from town.

Supper on the table, food(?) a-gettin cold.
Some old rounder stole my jelly roll.


[I don't think the word he sings is really "food" but I can't make out what it is.]