Pat works on the railway lyrics archive#
Pat works on the railway lyrics professional#

For a century and a half the iron horse raced across the continent this journey was as much in the imagination as it was over the land.” He wrote, “Few folksong collectors in the United States have not encountered at least one railroad song….

Pat works on the railway lyrics archive#

In 1968, folklorist Archie Green penned the preface for Railroad Songs and Ballads, a compilation of twenty songs dating back to the 1930s culled from the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song. In just a few decades, trains had become enshrined in American culture as symbols of both progress and greed, leisure and labor, liberation and disaster. By the 1920s, around two million people worked in some fashion for the railroads, making it one of the country’s largest employers. Barely twenty years later, with Native communities dispossessed of much of their ancestral lands, about 100,000 more miles of track marbled the nation. Constructed between 18, the Transcontinental Railroad was at the time the largest and most expensive infrastructure project undertaken by the country-and its impact was enormous. The extension of rail service across the continent enabled growth of the United States as a nation through the transport of goods, materials, and people. The building of the railroad is an iconic American tale about physical mobility and technical prowess, but it’s also a story about labor, migration, American conquest, and empire. There are many experiences-achievements and consequences-that hinge off this giant physical undertaking to “unite” the country and continent.

This 1,700-mile stretch of continuous track from the Central Pacific terminus in Sacramento, California, to the Union Pacific terminus in Omaha, Nebraska, connected the West Coast to the existing network of eastern railways. on May 10, 1869, the United States’ first Transcontinental Railroad was completed as the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines were ceremoniously joined on Promontory Summit, Utah.

Mainly Norfolk gives a flavour of its history in folk.At around 12:45 p.m.

The earliest reference I can find is 1858, from the evidence presented at a prosecution of an unlicensed Music Hall: Morning Chronicle (London) Dec 27 1858 I have at least one report of it being sung as a sailor’s work song.

Pat works on the railway lyrics professional#

I have found articles in British newspapers showing that a song called Paddy on the Railway was being sung by amateur and professional singers from the beginning of the 1860s. It may be this which led him to being described as “an Irish stage singer”. I can find no evidence that he visited America, but he may well have performed this song in a way which played up the stereotypes of Irish labourers which were prevalent at the time.

We know that JB Geoghegan came from Salford, and lived in the North of England for most of his life. I have not been able to find a copy of this… Norman Cazden in Folksongs of the Catskills suggests a song of this name “was popularised by the Irish stage singer JB Geoghegan” and that sheet music was published by Oliver Ditson in Boston 1854-56. However there is some evidence that it was originally written and/or performed by JB Geoghegan. It is often referred to as being “traditional” or written by an anonymous author. This is a song appears regularly in the repertoire of both North American and British folk singers, sometimes as a shanty. Bad cess to the luck that brought me through