lp discography - covers & lyrics

This fascinating program presents Johnny Cash as singer and narrator in an imaginative travelogue across America. Ride This Train is not, as might be supposed, a collection of train songs. It is a provocative tour of the country through narration and song. Through the background runs the haunting sound of the now-vanishing steam locomotives and their whistles, sounds that used to echo through the nights of small towns and across the empty plains. Most of the people this story tells about are vanished now, too, but they have left their mark on America, and Johnny Cash sings about them with uncommon artistry and sympathy.

The travelogue begins with a recital of place-names of America, majestic in their artless poetry, and continues with the thundering names of the Indian tribes who lived here first. Then Johnny Cash boards the train, stopping first at a small town in the mining country of Kentucky. He presents a brief character sketch of a boy whose father is a minerwhen he comes home "nothing is clean but the whites of his eyes"and whose ambition is to follow that calling. Loading Coal tells the story of a miner who never expects to get rich, but still follows the tradition of his family.

The train then moves westward onto the prairies, where we meet the outlaw John Wesley Hardin, whose murderous life is described with candor. Then we meet another Westerner, a saddle tramp who rides an old Paint. His life is nearly spent, he misses his daughters and wife, but he tries to keep on singing (Slow Rider).

Johnny Cash next takes us still farther west, to Oregon, into lumberjack country, and outlines a young man's first day as a high-climber. Among the lessons he learns is "don't cut timber on a windy day" (Lumberjack). Then the fabulous engine carries the train south and east, to the swamps and forests of Louisiana, where the Acadians settled in 1788. Johnny Cash presents his own composition, a tragic ballad of Dorraine of Ponchartrain, the black-eyed beauty who was lost in a boat amid the choppy waves of the lake.

Now the train goes northward, up to Mississippi and its levees and the constant fight against flood waters. In this sequence Johnny Cash sings his own version of Going to Memphis, a striking song of the convict workgangs with a remarkable contrast between the abjection of its lyrics ("My brother was killed for a deed I did, but I disremember what"), and its urgent rhythm. Eastward, now, to South Carolina. Here Johnny Cash sketches the delights of going to a county fair in a buckboard, and the pleasure of a child in listening to dance music after the judging events are concluded. The song is Johnny's own When Papa Played the Dobro, the dobro being an old-fashioned metal-stringed instrument, similar to the guitar. Papa didn't know much about music by real musical standards, but when he played it was worth sitting up for!

Arkansas is the next stop in this remarkable journey. Johnny Cash describes the cotton land, particularly the old days of tall cotton, through the eyes of an enlightened slave owner, and sings a worksong about a good boss, Boss Jack, and his kindness to the people who worked for him. Once more the train rumbles across America, stopping at last in Iowa, where t~ influx of Irish immigrants is noted, with special accent on the interdependence of arrivals in the New World. The story of Old Doc Brown is recited by Johnny Cash, and although the trip is now over, echoes of the American past remain vivid.

JOHNNY CASH

RIDE THIS TRAIN

Columbia CS-8255
September/1960
Produced by Don Law & Frank Jones
Luther Perkins - guitar
Shot Jackson - steel/dobro
Marshall Grant - bass
Buddy Harman - drums
Gordon Terry - fiddle
Recorded:
Feb 14-16/1960 at Bradley Film & Recording Studio, Nashville
Ride this train up and down and across a strange wonderful land
It's almost like a fairyland when you to think about it
You go through places with names like Tuscaloosa Kokomo Muskogee Oshkosh Saginaw
Eureka Bandera Battle Creek Sioux City Chattanooga
Hattiesburg Lynchburg and Baltinare Arkansas
You see I'm a million different people from all over the world
And I've been coming to this country for hundreds of years
This was the Promised Land for me
But let's not forget that when I came here
There were already millions of people living in teepees along the rivers
And hunting deer and buffalo for food and shelter
And it's with a little regret that I think of how I pushed them back
And crowded them out to claim this land for myself or for another country
But the Indians' hearts must have been full of music
For they left names with me that seem to sing
Names like Mohawk Mandan Kickapoo Cree Yacoma Seminole Crow Shawnee
Choctaw Delaware Fox Paiute Winnebago Cheyenne Blackfoot
Navajo Ute Comanche Quapaw Creek Apache Sioux Chippewa
Ardua Hupa Shoshone Mow Hicano Sage Menomini
Shinouk Arapaho Nez Perce Iroquois Pony Cutenai
Flathead Chickasaw Pueblo Yuma Pima Pomo Caddo
Well a lot of them are still with me and I'm glad
It's for sure their names will always be with me
But let's look a little at the heart and muscle of this land
A few things you don't read in books things that aren't taught in school
Now you take this little town we're goin' through here this is Beach Creek Kentucky
And right down there in the valley that's where our house used to be
It was a little shotgun shack with a spring out back
And a smokehouse and another little bitty house and that's about all
My pa was a coalminer like most ev'rybody in Mulenberg County
Worked in the mines all his life
I guess he didn't have much ambition to do anything else
Cause they say coalminin' kinda gets in your blood
Matter of fact pa said if they ever drained the blood outta him
I'd be blacker than black strap molasses
When I was a kid I used to sit at the fireplace there with ma
And we'd wait on pa to get in from the mine
And we'd sure get anxious if he was ever late
Ma would rock back and forth and watch the clock listin' for pa to hit the front porch
Then he'd come in nothin' clean but the whites of his eyes
And he'd reach for that lye-soap and starts scrubbin'
And I'd stand back and watch him and say to myself
Boy I'll be glad when I get big enough to work in the mines
Ride this train to any little trail in the West you may find me riding alone late at night
My poor old horse don't understand why I ride at night and sleep in the daytime
Or why we ride in the bushes and hide every time I hear a noise
Well that's all I've done for months now running and hiding
You see my name is John Wesley Hardin no I'm not proud of the name anymore
They say I've killed forty men they tell a lot of different stories about me
Of course I guess I'm to blame for a lot of it
I killed the first time when I was fifteen to save my life but then I had to do it again
Then every bum in the country that was fast with the gun started lookin' for me
They called me the fastest gun alive and I guess I was fast or I wouldn't be alive now
I got to where I couldn't walk down a street or in a saloon
Without some trigger-happy cowpoke
Wantin' to prove he could outdraw old John Wesley Hardin
Maybe I got a little bitter and didn't care whether I killed or not for a while
And I never quite forgot when the authorities in Huntsville prison
Dragged me up in the snow naked and horsewhipped me
Well that's why I'm ridin' at night I want to go where no one has ever seen me
Where I won't even have to wear a gun
Maybe I can settle down in a quiet little town somewhere
Even get a job on the right side of the law who knows
Maybe in a new town people will let me forget
Ride this train to Roseburg Oregon now there's a town for you
And you talk about rough
You know a lot of places in the country claim Paul Bunyon lived there
But you should have seen Roseburg when me and my daddy come there
Ev'ryone of them loggers looked like Paul Bunyon to me
Cause I's a skinny kid about sixteen
And I was scared to death when we walked into that camp
None of the lumberjacks paid any attention to me at first
But when my pa told the boss that me and him wanted a job
A lot of 'em stopped their work just to see what was gonna happen
That big boss walked around me looked me up and down and said
Mister I believe that boy is made out of second growth timber and I guess I was
Ev'rybody but me and pa had a big laugh over it
Pa got kinda mad and the boss finally said he might start me out as a high climber
I didn't know what a high climber was boy I sure learned fast
That steel corded rope cut my back and that axe
I thought it was gonna break my arms off but I stuck with it
It wasn't long till I learned that a man's got to be
A lot tougher than the timber he's cuttin'
Finally I could swing that crosscut saw with the best of them
Ride this train to Bogaloosa Louisiana see these swamps and forest
Man's never set foot in a lot of it
You'll find aligator mink coon possum squirrel otter and the lakes're full of fish
You'll find places so virgin and fresh
That you'd think the Lord just created it yesterday
As a matter of fact some people say when this world was made
A whole lot of it just must have looked like southern Louisiana does now
In 1788 I left Halifax Nova Scotia with about two hundred other Acadians
We made a long tiring journey south
In our party of two hundred there was this beautiful girl
That I just haven't quite been able to forget
Dorraine was her name and Dorraine and I were
Well we were kinda pledged to each other
And then we said when we got to the promised land
We'd build us a house and someday we'd have
The biggest sugar-cane plantation in the country
And I used to make Dorraine blush
When I'd tell her we'd raise the biggest family in the country too
Ride this train to Pineridge Mississippi see that levee there
It's built to hold back the waters of Ol' Man River when he gets on a rampage
And he gets on a rampage believe me
One of these days he's gonna come right over that levee
And we're gonna have to head for the hills again
And you know how that levee was built Mister
Not with machines it is built with elbow grease
They got the men off the farms out of the houses
Even out of the honky tonks on Saturday night
I don't hardly know how it happened to me it happens fast
I just remember I was in the Green Lantern in Natchez one Saturday night
And somebody pulled a knife and somebody threw the bottle
And the next thing I knew I had a chain on my leg and a shovel in my hand
It seemed like the whole world come down on me
They whipped us like mules and when they did feed us
There was always a fight or a killin' over who's gonna get the biggest piece of meat
Whereas the boss man did't care about the killin'
That is less you killed a good worker then you get killed
If you complain about anything they just liable to give you a chance to get away
You know what I mean
They take the chains off your legs and beg you to run so they can shoot you
Ride this train to any country fair in this land now here's a hard workin' happy people
Mrs Jones baked the finest pie for the contest this year
And Mr Brown's got the biggest fattest old sow you ever saw
And all the kids are eatin' popcorn and cotton candy
This is Chester South Carolina and that year at the fair
My papa brought us all down in a wagon
And on the way down we picked up another family that lived up the creek
I was just a little boy but I remember I kept askin' papa
How much farther is it how much farther is it
We had a young heifer tied to the wagon that papa just knew
Was gonna take first prize
I didn't have no doubt about that heifer winnin' first prize
But the main thing I was interested in
Was somethin' else papa had under his seat at the front of the wagon
And that was an old dobro that I thought papa played like nobody else in the world
I guess by real musical standards papa didn't know too much about music
But I'll tell you that night at the fair when he played in the dance band
I just had to stay awake sat up there and listen to papa play the dobro
Ride this train to Dyess Arkansas see this cottonland
Some of us are so poor now you'd have to sell 'em a sack of fertilizer
To raise an umbrella
They grade the cotton accordin' to the length and strength of the fibre
And they been raisin' a lot of fair to middlin' grade here which ain't good
But there was a time
Yeah there was a time when the cotton grew tall
Not far from here I had the finest plantation you ever saw
About 600 acres of the finest cottonland in the country
Now I believe this was about 1855 and I had a bumper crop that year
I had the best bunch of slaves you ever saw and I treated 'em right
Well a lot of em even stayed with me after the war
But gettin' back to what I was gonna tell you
See I have a rule that all the slaves got to be back in out of the fields
And accounted for by sundown ev'ry day
And one day when they came in there was one short
Well I found out right away that it was old uncle Moses that was missin'
And figured somethin' might have happened to him old as he was
So I went out into the cottonfield to look for him
Well uncle Moses was way down at the end of the row sittin' on his cottonsack
Well I walked up and said Uncle Moses don't you know the rule
That you're supposed to be punished if you're not back in and accounted for by dark
And he said Boss Jack I know that sir
But I was pickin' along on my row
And all of a sudden somethin' seemed to come over me
And the finest words started comin' through my head and the finest music
So I rememorized them words and that music till I had it all in my head
Now that I got the song all through I guess Boss Jack
I's ready to take my punishment
Well I didn't hardly know what to say
But I asked Uncle Moses to sing that song for me
And he stood up there and for the first time he sang Swing Low Sweet Chariot
Well after that I kinda laid old Uncle Moses off and let him piddle around the house
And ev'ry night at dark you could hear him sing
And he sang another song once in a while that made me feel awful proud
Ride this train let me show you a land of rolling hills and tall corn
A land of hard working people where rewards are often very small
This is Pella Iowa
My mother and father brought me here in 1847 we came from Cork Ireland
We had a potato famine over there and things had been pretty rough for us
I remember during the potato famine in Ireland I'd trail along at father's feet
And we'd try to find enough potatoes for a meal
And we'd take em back in to mother and she'd cook em coats and all
Well finally we gave up and somehow we made it to America
Well our new neighbors here in Pella loaned father oxen
And ploughs to make his first crop with
And you never saw taller corn that year than it was on our place
The next season why we even were lendin' out ploughs and oxen to other farms
That's the way it was here in the new land
Ev'rybody helped ev'rybody out if you got sick ev'rybody came to visit
Even the doctor wouldn't take pay if he thought you couldn't afford it
But old Doc Brown was always there if you ever needed him