The Big Easy Top Ten: City of New Orleans (#5)

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What? I’m up early AGAIN??? Yeah, I know. I have a podiatrist appointment in an hour, so I’m going to play with my fingers on the keyboard before I get my toes played with. I’m sure that, when I said I’d be honoring New Orleans in song, this is one of the first songs that popped into your mind. Of course it’s here, and of course it’s top ten. #5: City of New Orleans - Steve Goodman Back when I used “Mr. Bojangles” I said that there were some people who seemed born to give us a “song for the ages.” Steve Goodman gave us this song. Case closed. (Fun fact: this isn’t even close to my favorite song by him, just like “Mr. Bojangles” isn’t my favorite Jerry Jeff Walker song. So they did do much more than “the song.”) Goodman was a newlywed, and he and his wife hopped on a passenger train named the City of New Orleans for a ride from Chicago down to southern Illinois to visit Goodman’s grandfather-in-law, who was in a retirement home. They left early, so while his wife slept, Goodman wandered around the train. Then he came back to his seat and wrote what he saw. By the time this song came along, passenger trains were fading (“this train’s got the disappearing railroad blues”), so this song probably sounds a lot older than it actually is. Amtrak’s Chicago-to-New Orleans route is still called the City of New Orleans. The clip is Goodman playing with his neighbor/friend Jethro Burns on an Austin City Limits episode, filmed about a year before Goodman finally lost his battle with leukemia in 1984. In one of those sad ironies of life, the day Goodman died, Willie Nelson’s cover of this song was #1 on the country chart. Kris Kristofferson told Johnny Cash that this is “the best damn train song ever written.” I can’t disagree with that. City of New Orleans Written by Steve Goodman Recorded by Steve Goodman From Steve Goodman, 1971 (Also famously covered by Arlo Guthrie, Willie Nelson, and about 150 others) NEW ORLEANS LYRICS: title The sons of Pullman porters: