Page 52 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2021

All around the water tank, waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
I walked up to a brakeman to give him a line of talk
He said “If you’ve got money, I’ll see that you don’t walk”
I haven’t got a nickel, not a penny can I shill
“Get off, get off, you railroad bum”
He slammed the boxcar door
Rodgers was honored with a marker on the Mississippi
Blues Trail in his hometown of Meridian, MS.
“Men also sang of trains, reflecting their affinity with the
railroad as a way of hoboing around the South – a method of
travel favored by just about every itinerant musician, including
Robert Johnson,” wrote author and journalist Richard Havers
in “Train Songs, Freedom, The Blues and Country Music.” 2
Haunting "Jim Crow" passenger/freight car LN 109 found in Kentucky along some Trains were used to ferry blues performers and Black
unused train tracks. Built in 1882, it was designed to separate whites and Blacks migrants from the Jim Crow South to the urban areas in the
during the segregation era, with U.S. mail and freight separating the two.
Photo by Amber Flowers Ÿ Soul Gaze Photography, LLC ii North. The “Peavine,” a branch of the Yazoo and Mississippi
Valley Railroad, was a well-utilized one. As the “Peavine
a railroad ticket and they left with the intention of staying.” 1 Branch” Mississippi Blues Trail Marker in Boyle, MS, reads,
Trains were symbolic of any type of journey – whether “From the late 1890s through the 1930s, the ‘Peavine’
getting onboard the Gospel Train, the train to glory or the provided reliable transportation for bluesmen among the
3
funeral train – you’d better get on the “right track.” plantations of the Mississippi Delta.” Charley Patton, known
as the “King of the Delta Blues,” lived and performed for
This train is solid black, oh, this train nickels and dimes at the Dockery Plantation where the Peavine
This train is solid black, oh, this train wound through.
This train is solid black, The Yazoo Delta Railway is featured in many blues songs
When you go there you don’t come back as the “Yellow Dog,” a nickname used by locals, according
Oh, this train is built for glory, this train to W.C. Handy, due to the letters Y.D. painted on the passing
- “This Train,” Sister Rosetta Tharpe, 1939 yellow freight trains. The junction of the Southern railroad
The Underground Railroad was a symbolic term for the and the Yazoo Delta Railroad (a.k.a Yellow Dog) crosses at
safe houses and secret routes used to help slaves escape out Moorhead, MS, a well-known intersection in the Delta that is
of sight from the persecution and danger they experienced a perfectly aligned North and South against an East and West
in the South. Spirituals and work songs often had hidden compass.
meanings at the time, to guide them on their journey. If a slave Big Bill Broonzy’s “Southern Blues” (circa 1935) contains the
heard this song in the South, they knew that it was time to famous lyric about where, “the Southern cross the Dog,” referring
prepare for escape. to Moorhead, where that line crosses the Southern Railway.
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home
Swing low, sweet chariot
Coming for to carry me home…

I looked over Jordan, and what did I see
Coming for to carry me home
A band of angels coming after me
Coming for to carry me home
- “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” credited to Wallace Willis,
circa 1840s
Trains were also a means of travel for many impoverished
hobos who hitched rides on boxcars during the Depression
era, looking for work wherever they could find it. The poignant
“Waiting for A Train,” by country, blues, folk picker Jimmie
“The Singing Brakeman” Rodgers, expressed this dispiriting Freedom train to Alabama accepting contributions for Selma victims in 1965.
reality well. Photo by Peter Pettus iii

50 Blues Festival Guide 2021