On July 21, 1877, the Great Railroad Strike ignited in Pittsburgh, as striking Baltimore & Ohio Railroad workers gathered at the 28th Street crossing in the Strip District to protest wage cuts.<\/p>\n
As local and state authorities attempted to quell the demonstrations, the standoff spiraled into one of the most destructive and violent labor uprisings in American history.<\/p>\n
Over the next two days, angry crowds and striking workers burned the Pennsylvania Railroad\u2019s Union Depot, destroyed over 100 locomotives and 500 rail cars, and torched 39 buildings.<\/p>\n
Rioting resulted in approximately 61 deaths across the city as local National Guard units and federal troops were able to restore order.<\/p>\n
To mark the anniversary, here are some of the many American songs about the country\u2019s fascination and relationship with rail transportation. But first, here\u2019s some background on the events surrounding the strike, courtesy of the Civics & Coffee Podcast.<\/p>\n
Grateful Dead, \u2018Big Railroad Blues\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to the depot, never got there on time\/Well my train done left, she\u2019s a-rollin\u2019 down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally an old blues song by Noah Cannon\u2019s Jug Stompers, \u201cBig Railroad Blues\u201d was updated as a rollicking, high-energy cover by the Grateful Dead, making regular appearances in the band\u2019s setlist over the years.<\/p>\n
Flatt & Scruggs, \u2018Big Black Train\u2019<\/p>\n
Lester Flatt has had enough of his woman. She\u2019s worn him down and told him lies, and there\u2019s only one thing left to do: Hop a big black train and head out of town. Bluegrass has a great way of making sad songs sound like fun, and this is a perfect example.<\/p>\n
Vashti Bunyan, \u2018Train Song\u2019<\/p>\n
Bunyan is an English singer-songwriter who got her start in the mid-1960s. \u201cTrain Song\u201d tells the story of her riding the rails to meet a romantic partner, with no idea what she\u2019ll even say when she gets there.<\/p>\n
Elvis & the Jerry Garcia Band, \u2018Mystery Train\u2019<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s an interesting juxtaposition. The Grateful Dead covered a wide variety of songs throughout their half-century of playing music, from Chuck Berry to Janis Joplin.<\/p>\n
One of them was a song originally popularized by Elvis. \u201cMystery Train\u201d tells the story of trying to find your lady, only to discover she\u2019s hopped a train and left town. Elvis\u2019 version swings with the rockabilly style that characterized his early music.<\/p>\n
In sharp contrast, Garcia\u2019s version takes the oddly metered, two-and-a-half-minute song and stretches it out beyond the 20-minute mark, adding in some funky piano and blues harmonica by Mark Kelly at this New Year\u2019s Eve 1976 show in Berkeley, Calif.<\/p>\n
Lynyrd Skynyrd, \u201cRailroad Song\u2019<\/p>\n
Coming from \u201cNuthin\u2019 Fancy,\u201d Skynyrd\u2019s 1975 album and the band\u2019s first to crack the U.S. Top 10, \u201cRailroad Song\u201d tells a simple story about the local police politely asking a railroad hobo to get back on the train and get out of town.<\/p>\n
Blackfoot, \u2018Train, Train\u2019<\/p>\n
Is this a thinly disguised cover of \u201cMystery Train\u201d? There\u2019s a long tradition in music of hearing an old song and adapting it in a more-modern context, even if that includes changing the lyrics and structure a little bit. Blackfoot\u2019s Rickey Medlocke (who also played in Lynyrd Skynyrd at one point) isn\u2019t around to ask, but it\u2019s hard to listen to \u201cTrain, Train\u201d and not think that they were listening to \u201cMystery Train\u201d at some point.<\/p>\n
\u2018This Train,\u2019 Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins & Jerry Lee Lewis<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s close things out with a world-destroying line-up of old-school music icons.<\/p>\n
The old spiritual \u201cThis Train,\u201d by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, gets some upbeat treatment on an old episode of \u201cThe Johnny Cash\u201d show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On July 21, 1877, the Great Railroad Strike ignited in Pittsburgh, as striking Baltimore & Ohio Railroad workers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-248361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}