Rosetta Tharpe This Train Lyrics
Rodney Liuzzo
"This Train", also known as "This Train Is Bound for Glory", is a traditional African-American gospel song first recorded in 1922. Although its origins are unknown, the song was relatively popular during the 1920s as a religious tune, and it became a gospel hit in the late 1930s for singer-guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe.[1] After switching from acoustic to electric guitar, Tharpe released a more secular version of the song in the early 1950s.
The song's popularity was also due in part to the influence of folklorists John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, who discovered the song while making field recordings in the American South in the early 1930s and included it in folk song anthologies that were published in 1934 and 1960. These anthologies brought the song to the attention of an even broader audience during the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.[2] Another song, called "The Crawdad Song", uses the same melody.
The earliest known example of "This Train" is a recording by Florida Normal and Industrial Institute Quartette from 1922, under the title "Dis Train".[3] Another one of the earliest recordings of the song is the version made by Wood's Blind Jubilee Singers in August 1925 under the title "This Train Is Bound for Glory". Between 1926 and 1931, three other black religious groups recorded it. During a visit to the Parchman Farm state penitentiary in Mississippi in 1933, Smithsonian Institution musicologist John A. Lomax and his son Alan made a field recording of the song by black inmate Walter McDonald. The next year the song found its way into print for the first time in the Lomaxes' American Folk Songs and Ballads anthology and was subsequently included in Alan Lomax's 1960 anthology Folk Songs of North America.[2]
In 1935, the first hillbilly recording of the song was released by Tennessee Ramblers as "Dis Train" in reference to the song's black roots.[2] Then in the late 1930s, after becoming the first black artist to sign with a major label, gospel singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe recorded "This Train" as a hit for Decca. Her later version of the song, released by Decca in the early 1950s, featured Tharpe on electric guitar.
In 1955, the song, with altered lyrics, became a popular single for blues singer-harmonica player Little Walter Jacobs as "My Babe". This secular adaptation has since become a rock standard recorded by many artists, including Dale Hawkins, Bo Diddley, Cliff Richard (three times), and the Remains.
Over the years, "This Train" has been covered by artists specializing in numerous genres, including blues, folk, bluegrass, gospel, rock, post-punk, jazz, reggae, and zydeco. Among the solo artists and groups who have recorded it are Louis Armstrong, Big Bill Broonzy, Brothers Four, Hylo Brown, Alice Coltrane, Delmore Brothers, Sandy Denny, D.O.A., Lonnie Donegan, Jimmy Durante, Snooks Eaglin, Bob Gibson, Joe Glazer, John Hammond Jr., Cisco Houston, Janis Ian, Johnny Cash, Mahalia Jackson, Ella Jenkins, Sleepy LaBeef, The Limeliters, Trini Lopez, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Ziggy Marley, The Alarm, Ricky Nelson, Peter, Paul & Mary, Utah Phillips, Pete Seeger, The Seekers, Roberta Sherwood, Hank Snow, David Soul, Staples Singers, Billy Strange, the Tarriers, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Hank Thompson, Bradley Nowell of Sublime, Randy Travis, The Verlaines, Bunny Wailer, Nina Hagen, Girls at Our Best!, Buckwheat Zydeco, The Paul Mirfin Band, Jools Holland, Indigo Girls, The Au Go Go Singers, Vaneese Thomas for the character, Grace the Bass from the children's TV show "Shining Time Station, and Lifetree Kids.[2][4]
The song provided the inspiration for the title of Woody Guthrie's autobiographical novel Bound for Glory.[2] Guthrie also provided a version of this song referring to the fate of the dust bowl refugees who often had to illegally use freight trains to make their way west. The book was subsequently used as the basis for director Hal Ashby's 1976 film Bound for Glory on Guthrie's life, which starred David Carradine.
In mid-1970s in the USSR, Dean Reed made a TV clip version of "This Train" as a "gospel" of a kind in praise to the BAM - a grand Soviet Trans-Siberian railroad that was being built in that period.[5]
Sister Rosetta Tharpe's song "This Train" is a powerful gospel anthem that uses the metaphor of a train to convey a spiritual journey towards salvation and purity. The repeated phrase "this train is a clean train" emphasizes the idea that the path to spiritual enlightenment and redemption is one that requires moral integrity and a commitment to living a righteous life. The train, in this context, symbolizes a communal journey where everyone is united under the banner of faith, specifically in Jesus' name. This imagery is both inclusive and exclusive, inviting everyone to join but setting clear moral standards for those who wish to be part of the journey.
The lyrics also highlight the universal nature of this spiritual journey, stating that the train "takes on every nation." This suggests that the message of salvation and purity is not limited by geographical or cultural boundaries, but is a universal call to all of humanity. The train has "left the station," indicating that the journey has already begun, and those who wish to join must do so by adhering to the moral and spiritual guidelines set forth. The emphasis on redemption and holiness is clear, as the song repeatedly mentions that only the redeemed and holy can ride this train.
Furthermore, the song sets strict moral guidelines for those who wish to be part of this journey. Lines like "this train don't pull no jokers, no tobacco chewers and no cigar smokers" serve as a metaphor for the rejection of sinful behaviors and vices. The train is described as the "prettiest train" and one that is "bound for glory," reinforcing the idea that the destination is a place of ultimate spiritual fulfillment and divine reward. Sister Rosetta Tharpe's powerful delivery and the repetitive, almost hypnotic nature of the lyrics drive home the message of spiritual purity and the importance of living a life in accordance with religious principles.
As a very young child growing up in Detroit I pieced together my own liberation theology. From Sunday School and Vacation Bible School songs and hymns ("Jesus Loves Me This I Know," "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands"). From the Bible text my father quoted far more often than any other (Romans 8:31: "If God be for us, who can be against us?"). From recordings of spirituals my aunt played on the hi-fi in the dark of the early morning (Rosetta Tharpe's "Didn't It Rain" and "This Train").
I was worried for my abusive mother, and for Lester Maddox, who I was told over and over again stood at the school house door with a hatchet in his hands waiting, I deduced, to behead black girls just like me who wanted to get an education. And I was worried about the white policeman holding a leash of a German Shephard lurching at a brave black boy.
I knew my mother, the policeman and Lester Maddox were all headed to the fiery pits of hell, where they would drink burning lava, and scream as their throats were scorched. I knew that even if Maddox chopped off the brown girl's head, seconds later she would be in heaven on a cloud drinking milk and honey at the welcome table telling Black King Jesus just what Lester Maddox did. My theology kept me soul-safe, if not body safe.
When I was sixteen I was raped. I was no longer soul-safe. "Lord help me make another day." I prayed that prayer and God sent me the memory of Rosetta Tharpe's voice and then a Sister Rosetta Tharp album.
If I started to lose my memory and I lost the most precious truth last, the final thing I would remember is I love my daughter. And the second to last thing I would remember would be a little portable record player and Rosetta Tharp, gospel's first superstar, coming for to save me when I thought no one was coming. And she came riding a song called "This Train."
"This train is a clean train," the first line of my favorite Rosetta Tharp song, seems simple but it isn't. After telling us that the train is bound for glory she makes a true list of who can't ride the train: liars, false pretenders, backbiters. After a riveting guitar break she follows the true list with a false list. My father's family loved popular music. They bought hi-fis, singles and albums, and they frequented the showbars and concerts, and they had told me that Rosetta winked while singing the train doesn't pull winkers; mimed shooting crap while singing it didn't pull crap shooters; mimed throwing back a shot of whisky just before or after singing it didn't pull whiskey drinkers; pushed her tongue into the side of her cheek just after singing,"this train don't pull tobacco chewers." It was a joke even a kid could get with her family exuberantly describing the gestures, how Rosetta joked all the way through the chorus while singing the train didn't pull jokers.
By the end of the song we know Rosetta's train is a "her" and it a clean train but not the way most folks define clean. Rosetta train is a clean train because it is true, because it is authentic, because it hauls everybody but the liars, false pretenders, and back biters. Sin is not pleasure; it's lying about identity.
On a bridge called Rosetta's voice I moved from trauma to transcendence. As I got older and YouTube was invented, I got to see Rosetta's "This Train" gestures, with my own eyes. I was still building sane every day, but now I didn't just have Rosetta's voice I the sight of her, of her hands playing her guitar, her unashamed sweat, but best, her audacious sound that carried me back to passion when I was quit of it, a hundred different times.
I am not the only one she came for. Rosetta, she never forgot the southern rural audience. She started singing in a church in Chicago, she played in Detroit, but the autoworkers and the urban numbers players were not her cornerstone. She played for those who got left back South, for 20th century cotton pickers and house maids, women who had nothing but a church and a radio when they woke up in the morning with the task of making a sane day.
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