Railroad Song Still on Tracks.

Gordon sang the story back in the day. . . "So they looked to the future, and what did they see? They saw an iron road running from the sea to the sea." His anthem filled in the gaps of railroad travel, Canadian style, but the story was the same on the southern side of that continental network. American restlessness sparked a 19th-century impulse to "go west, young man." Yankee ingenuity and gilded wealth launched American wanderlust onto a westbound track. Vanderbilt, Rockefeller and all their hired help laid down the tracks from Boston to Baltimore, Schenectady, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco and the the gold in them-there California streams. The US Army Corps of Engineering working out the mechanics and logistics along the way, onward, westward to Promontory Point, Utah, where the golden spike was driven into history and the gilded age glided into antiquity. A network of classic American folklore, story and song laid the groundwork for a treasure trove of railroad literature and song, from Mark Twain to Woody Guthrie, Casey Jones . . . Bill Anderson wrote the classic railroad ballad that sparked my generation's wanderlust: "500 miles". My memory hangs on Peter, Paul and Mary. But there were so many recordings of that song. . .Chet Atkins, Glen Campbell, Kingston Trio, probably 500 or more. Somewhere back in the tracks, Woody Guthrie had hopped on the line; his son Arlo made Steve Goodman's song, "Ridin' on the City of New Orleans" a classic. Dylan hammered his railed legacy into the eternal realm with his Slow Train Coming album, connecting the earthly track to the eternal, the divine track that lead to a heavenly destination that had been established 2000 years ago by Jesus, long before any man even thought about a railroad or an American legacy.

Back there in the caboose of technology, history and music, an  underground railroad rides again, and can be heard blowing smoke, song and trumpet into the eternal realm. King of Soul