Songs I Play: City of New Orleans

​I was playing music with my friends Jim & Christan the other day and Jim played an old John Prine song called Souvenirs. Great ballard by a master storyteller. I got interested in the song and later did a search on YouTube. The version I came across that intrigued me was a duet JP played with another musician I had never heard of... Steve Goodman. There were several other videos of Steve so I looked him up on Wikipedia (this is the information age after all!). His is quite a story. He grew up in Chicago in the early 60’s (interesting sidenote: he had a classmate named Hillary Rodman) and was an amateur musician before being diagnosed with Leukemia in college. Living on borrowed time, he decided to to cast out and try and make it in the music world. He had quite a prolific career before succumbing to the disease at the painfully young age of 36. One of them being The City of New Orleans, a tale about a popular train line that ran from Chicago to New Orleans. When I used to sing this song I would always say “this next number is by Arlo Guthrie from the movie Alice's Restaurant!” As the story goes, Steve met Arlo in a bar one time and tried to pitch the song to him. Arlo said he would only give Steve the time it took for him to finish a beer; AND Steve had to provide the beverage. Arlo was taken by the song and his, and another version by Willie Nelson, later went on to earn Steve a Grammy posthumously. It has become an American standard and has been recorded by legendary artists such as John Denver, Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, among many others. It was also a huge hit in France and the Netherlands by several notable European artists. Steve toured with Kris Kristofferson and later recorded several demos for Paul Anka. A long-time Chicago-an he was a die hard Cubs fan and wrote Go, Cubs, Go! that is still played after each home field win at Wrigley Field. He was asked to sing the Star Spangled Banner for a Cubs playoff game in 1984 but sadly died 8 days before. Jimmy Buffett sang in his honor. I’ve started playing City of NO again at Island Brewery which is right alongside the busy railroad tracks in Carpinteria. And now I know who to give proper credit to. No beer required. :)