"Chattanooga Choo Choo" is a 1941 song that was written by Mack Gordon and composed by Harry Warren. It was originally recorded as a big band/swing tune by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra and featured in the 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade. It was the first song to receive a gold record, presented by RCA Victor in 1942, for sales of 1.2 million copies. The B-side of the single was "I Know Why (And So Do You)", which at first was the A-side.

The song opens up with the band, sounding like a train rolling out of the station, complete with the trumpets and trombones imitating a train whistle, before the instrumental portion comes in playing two parts of the main melody. This is followed by the vocal introduction of four lines before the main part of the song is heard.

The main song opens with a dialog between a passenger and a shoeshine boy:

:"Pardon me, boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?"

:"Yes, yes, Track 29!"

:"Boy, you can give me a shine."

:"Can you afford to board the Chattanooga Choo Choo?"

:"I've got my fare, and just a trifle to spare." The transcription of this award ceremony can be heard on the first of three volumes of RCA's "Legendary Performer" compilations released by RCA in the 1970s. In the early 1990s a two-channel recording of a portion of the Sun Valley Serenade soundtrack was discovered, allowing reconstruction of a true-stereo version of the film performance.

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The composition was nominated for an Academy Award in 1941 for Best Song from a movie. The song achieved its success that year even though it could not be heard on network radio for much of 1941 due to the ASCAP boycott.

In 1996, the 1941 recording of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Inspiration

thumb|[[Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel|Terminal Station in Chattanooga, now known as the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel]]

The song was written by the team of Mack Gordon and Harry Warren, allegedly while traveling on the Southern Railway's Birmingham Special train. This was one of three trains operating from New York City via Chattanooga. The Tennessean continued to Memphis while the Pelican continued to New Orleans via Birmingham. The Southern Railway operated these trains in cooperation with the Norfolk and Western Railway and the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Details in the song do not align with The Birmingham Special, however, which suggests that the writers took some artistic license. Specifically:

  • The train is described as departing from Track 29 in Pennsylvania Station. At the time, the facility only had 21 tracks. It is not impossible that there was some confusion here with the train number, as the Birmingham Specials number was 29.
  • "You leave the Pennsylvania station 'bout a quarter to four", but The Birmingham Special departed at 12:30&nbsp;p.m.
  • "Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer than to have your ham 'n' eggs in Carolina", but none of these three trains passed through the Carolinas. They passed through western Virginia directly to East Tennessee.

Personnel

On the May 7, 1941 original recording by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra in Hollywood on RCA Bluebird, the featured singer was Tex Beneke, who was accompanied by Paula Kelly, the Modernaires (vocals), Billy May, John Best, Ray Anthony, R. D. McMickle (trumpet), Glenn Miller, Jim Priddy, Paul Tanner, Frank D'Annolfo (trombone), Hal McIntyre, Wilbur Schwartz (clarinet, alto saxophone), Tex Beneke, Al Klink (tenor saxophone), Ernie Caceres (baritone saxophone), Chummy MacGregor (piano), Jack Lathrop (guitar), Trigger Alpert (bass), and Maurice Purtill (drums). The arrangement was by Jerry Gray.

Notable renditions

<!-- Deleted image removed: thumb|RCA awarded its first "gold record" award to Glenn Miller and His Orchestra in 1942 for selling one million copies of their recording of "Chattanooga Choo Choo". -->

The song has been recorded by numerous artists, including Taco, Beegie Adair, the Andrews Sisters, Ray Anthony, Asleep at the Wheel with Willie Nelson, BBC Big Band, George Benson, John Bunch, Caravelli, Regina Carter, Ray Charles, Harry Connick Jr., Ray Conniff, John Denver, Ernie Fields, Stéphane Grappelli and Marc Fosset, John Hammond Jr., the Harmonizing Four, Harmony Grass, Ted Heath, Betty Johnson, Susannah McCorkle, Ray McKinley, Big Miller, the Muppets, Richard Perlmutter, Oscar Peterson, Spike Robinson, Harry Roy, Jan Savitt, Hank Snow, Teddy Stauffer, Dave Taylor, Claude Thornhill, the Tornados, Vox and Guy Van Duser.

Other notable performances include:

  • Cab Calloway and His Orchestra recorded a cover version of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" for Conqueror Records in 1941.
  • Carmen Miranda recorded a cover on July 25, 1942, and sang it in the movie Springtime in the Rockies.
  • Bill Haley & His Comets released a cover of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" as a 45 single on Essex Records in 1954.
  • Pianist Floyd Cramer recorded a single version on RCA Records in 1962.
  • UK instrumental group the Shadows recorded a version of the song for their album Dance with the Shadows, which reached number two in the UK album charts in 1964.
  • The American musical group Harpers Bizarre released a cover version of the song, which reached No. 45 on the U.S. pop chart and spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Easy Listening chart in 1968. In Canada, the song reached No. 34.
  • An instrumental version of the theme was released 1975 in Germany under the name "Maddox", produced by Dicky Tarrach.
  • In the 1974 film Young Frankenstein, when Dr. Frederick Frankenstein asks a local boy for directions to the Transylvania Station, their dialogue closely follows the song's lyrics.
  • In 1978, the jazz-influenced disco group Tuxedo Junction recorded a disco version that hit the American Top 40; it peaked at No. 32 Pop and No. 18 on the Easy Listening chart. In Canada, it reached No. 55 on the Pop charts and No. 6 on the Dance charts.

German and Dutch versions

  • The tune was adopted twice for German songs. Both songs deal with trains, and both songs start with (different) translations of "pardon me". The first was created and performed in 1947 by the German pop singer Bully Buhlan (Zug nach Kötzschenbroda). The lyrics are humorously describing the bother of a train ride out of post-war Berlin: no guarantee to arrive at a destination due to coal shortage, passengers traveling on coach buffers, steps and roofs, and never-ending trip interruptions including a night stop for delousing.
  • The second, Sonderzug nach Pankow, created by the German rock musician Udo Lindenberg in 1983 became very popular and had various political implications. Lindenberg was a West German singer and songwriter with a suitable fan community in East Germany.

Nevertheless, Lindenberg finally succeeded in getting an invitation to the East German festival Rock for Peace on October 25, 1983, on the condition that Lindenberg would not play Sonderzug nach Pankow at the concert. Honecker, a former brass band drummer of Rotfrontkämpferbund, and Lindenberg exchanged presents in form of a leather jacket and a metal shawm in 1987. Lindenberg's success at passing the Inner German border peacefully with a humorous song gave him celebrity status as well as a positive political acknowledgement in both West and East Germany. In addition, the athletic mascot of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga was, for a time, a rather menacing-looking anthropomorphized mockingbird named Scrappy, who was dressed as a railroad engineer and was sometimes depicted at the throttle of a steam locomotive.

Choo Choo DME, a radio aid to navigation, is sited near Chattanooga at .

See also

  • List of train songs
  • List of number-one adult contemporary singles of 1968 (U.S.)
  • Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy

References

it:I Know Why/Chattanooga Choo Choo#Chattanooga Choo Choo