Posted On: Tuesday - August 1st 2023 8:40PM MST
In Topics: Music
Our post on the passing of ex-Eagles band member Randy Meisner included one of the songs he wrote and sang for the band. While conversing in the internet threads about best Eagles songs, I listed Midnight Flyer as one of my very top favorites. A few seconds later, I asked myself "who else could that voice be, but Randy Meisner".
This is my favorite by this artist, but Mr. Meisner didn't write Midnight Flyer. It was written by a songwriter named Paul Craft, who, I just found out, also wrote another favorite song of mine. It was also recorded by the famous Osborne Brothers bluegrass band a year or two before the Eagles did. I'll put that one up later this week.
For younger readers, yes, there were trains carrying people around America, not called Amtrak, not THAT awfully long ago. Steve Goodman-written, Arlo-Guthrie performed City of New Orleans is a beautiful song, the title of which is not the name of what was a specific train (as in, the same locomotive(s) and passenger cars) but a specific route. That song laments the passing of the classic passenger railroads in America. They had a long very good run, as did songs about trains.
Readers could probably name 100s of songs about trains, or with trains in the lyrics, but there are also quite a few that mention those old famous specific train lines of yesteryear.
Midnight Flyer is obviously a name for some route there was somewhere. (Seems too great a name to have not been.*) In just the one Grateful Dead song alone, Jack Straw from Wichita, there is the mention of two trains, "Catch the Detroit Lightning out of Santa Fe... the Great Northern out of Cheyenne, from sea to shining sea ..."
I caught up with The Eagles's music well after their "hell will freeze over ..." break-up. On the Border, on which Midnight Flyer was found, was the first album I bought by them, on vinyl. I'd put their 4 country-rock albums in this order of my liking:
1) On the Border
2) Desperado
3) The Eagles (debut, self-titled album)
4) One of These Nights
The old trains were very romantic, but not necessarily the best way to go for America. The music, however, yeah, we should have stuck to the kind of music heard here, like that old country-rock Eagles with Don Henley, Glen Frey, Randy Meisner, and Bernie Leadon.
PS: Amtrak did keep this train route naming thing alive, with a City of New Orleans, a Coast Starlight, etc. It's not the same with the Feral Gov't running the show... not the same at all...
PPS: Again, I forgot that I'd featured this song before. Too good to be new to Peak Stupidity.
* Yeah, it was. One "instance" of the Midnight Flyer was involved in a crash in Winslow, Arizona 101 years ago.
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[UPDATED 08/02 evening:] Mr. Hail noted that the Osborne brothers, one of the most famous bluegrass "combos" recorded this one. Also, I realized I'd post this song before.
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Comments:
Jimbobla
Wednesday - August 2nd 2023 5:18PM MST
PS The City of New Orleans? The train route? You must mean “The Chicken Bone Express”. Leave New Orleans with a 16 piece bucket of KFC wedged between your knees and get to Chicago with a pile of chicken bones under your seat. THAT is the earned nickname of that route.
Moderator
Wednesday - August 2nd 2023 3:32PM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, yes, the trucker craze - not the driving of big rigs by lots of independent truckers, or course, but the movies, songs, etc. was a fad, one might call it, of the mid-to-late 1970s. Truckers were greatly respected by the young people, anyway. I didn't know that song at the time, but Lynyrd Skynryd's "Truck Drivin' Man", a dedication of sorts from Ronnie Van Zant to his Dad, is one of the best, but not so well known:
https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=261
Part of that whole trucker craze was the popularization of CB radio. (Citzen's Band) Young people of today couldn't imagine, but you just weren't in touch with other people unless you made some effort. I imagine the CBs were in the hands (cabs) of truckers well before C.W. McCall's "Convoy" - also on this blog - but all of a sudden all the kids had to get one installed in their parents' cars. Being able to reach someone else while both or one of you on the road was the coolest thing.
There were/are (they are still around but not sure about the frequency band staying similar) 40 channels or so on the Citizen's Band, but everyone remembers 19, the one the truckers, yes, and the Smokies, used the most. Well, this could be a whole post.
Regarding wildcat strikes by truckers, I've got a post that I can't find for the moment (!) on some Australian strike in the 1970s. It was serious business. It was uplifting to see the big convoy parked in Ottawa 1 1/2 years back. Those big rigs can cause a lot of havoc whether moving or not moving. Unfortunately, being an independent driver with one's own rig does not enable as decent a middle-class lifestyle as it did 45-50 years back. I don't think there are nearly as many in proportion to the JB Hunt, Dominion, etc. drivers.
I have a friend who drove OTR (Over the Road) for some years, but mostly as a P&D (Pickup and Delivery) driver who has filled me in on all this. He was already retired at the time of the strike in Ottawa - there was an American one, but the narrative switched to Ukraine/Russia right then, and they got almost no coverage. I don't know if he had already retired by the beginning of the PanicFest, but I do need to call him anyway, so I'll ask a few questions...
https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=261
Part of that whole trucker craze was the popularization of CB radio. (Citzen's Band) Young people of today couldn't imagine, but you just weren't in touch with other people unless you made some effort. I imagine the CBs were in the hands (cabs) of truckers well before C.W. McCall's "Convoy" - also on this blog - but all of a sudden all the kids had to get one installed in their parents' cars. Being able to reach someone else while both or one of you on the road was the coolest thing.
There were/are (they are still around but not sure about the frequency band staying similar) 40 channels or so on the Citizen's Band, but everyone remembers 19, the one the truckers, yes, and the Smokies, used the most. Well, this could be a whole post.
Regarding wildcat strikes by truckers, I've got a post that I can't find for the moment (!) on some Australian strike in the 1970s. It was serious business. It was uplifting to see the big convoy parked in Ottawa 1 1/2 years back. Those big rigs can cause a lot of havoc whether moving or not moving. Unfortunately, being an independent driver with one's own rig does not enable as decent a middle-class lifestyle as it did 45-50 years back. I don't think there are nearly as many in proportion to the JB Hunt, Dominion, etc. drivers.
I have a friend who drove OTR (Over the Road) for some years, but mostly as a P&D (Pickup and Delivery) driver who has filled me in on all this. He was already retired at the time of the strike in Ottawa - there was an American one, but the narrative switched to Ukraine/Russia right then, and they got almost no coverage. I don't know if he had already retired by the beginning of the PanicFest, but I do need to call him anyway, so I'll ask a few questions...
Moderator
Wednesday - August 2nd 2023 3:11PM MST
PS: Yes, "Orange Blossom Special" is probably one of the top 10 or even top 5 bluegrass banjo classics. That should have come to the forefront for me in a list of train-name songs.
Mr. Hail, I know I have this bluegrass band's most well-known song "Rocky Top" somewhere on this blog. I need to add that they recorded "Midnight Flyer" before the Eagles. Thanks for the info on the song, including that there'd been a previous song with the title.
Mr. Hail, I know I have this bluegrass band's most well-known song "Rocky Top" somewhere on this blog. I need to add that they recorded "Midnight Flyer" before the Eagles. Thanks for the info on the song, including that there'd been a previous song with the title.
Hail
Wednesday - August 2nd 2023 12:41PM MST
PS
-- The rise of Vivek Ramaswamy? --
Related to the Florida textbook scandal (if that is the right word), a continuation of some discussion in this comment-section in the past week:
The backlash, or frontlash, against what was painted to be the cruelly pro-slavery views held by DeSantis and his inner circle who forced textbooks to insert humiliating anti-Black content and celebrated slavery (in the histrionic and dishonest account of those pushing it), resulted in a drop in DeSantis confidence in the betting-markets. Some bettors perhaps assumed that the whole textbook scandal was a coordinated hit to take out DeSantis' already declining campaign "down, for the count." This resulted in the strange candidacy of Vivek Ramaswamy trotting on past DeSantis, for three or four days during the height of the anti-Black-racism textbook scandal. See here on this, and a small profile of the political-life of Ramaswamy over the past three years:
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2023/05/27/the-2024-republican-nomination-betting-market-update-may-2023-trump-50-desantis-28-other-22/#comment-51413
(search for: "Update, early August 2023: What to make of the Ramaswamy rise")>
-- The rise of Vivek Ramaswamy? --
Related to the Florida textbook scandal (if that is the right word), a continuation of some discussion in this comment-section in the past week:
The backlash, or frontlash, against what was painted to be the cruelly pro-slavery views held by DeSantis and his inner circle who forced textbooks to insert humiliating anti-Black content and celebrated slavery (in the histrionic and dishonest account of those pushing it), resulted in a drop in DeSantis confidence in the betting-markets. Some bettors perhaps assumed that the whole textbook scandal was a coordinated hit to take out DeSantis' already declining campaign "down, for the count." This resulted in the strange candidacy of Vivek Ramaswamy trotting on past DeSantis, for three or four days during the height of the anti-Black-racism textbook scandal. See here on this, and a small profile of the political-life of Ramaswamy over the past three years:
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2023/05/27/the-2024-republican-nomination-betting-market-update-may-2023-trump-50-desantis-28-other-22/#comment-51413
(search for: "Update, early August 2023: What to make of the Ramaswamy rise")>
Hail
Wednesday - August 2nd 2023 12:29PM MST
PS
-- 1970s themes all over the place, and the Trucker movement --
Call-backs to the early-1970s seem to be a big theme around here these days, this one and the Rockford Files to name just the last two posts here at Peak Stupidity.
I am still a little in the early-1970s mindset from the work I did getting that "Sexual Suicide" essay (July 1973), and reaction-commentary, online in late July, which was a bigger project than I anticipated.
The "Sexual Suicide" essay has been well received. Any time you find a nearly-5000-word essay from fifty years earlier getting so much interest, there's something of real interest there.
Also on the early-1970s theme: I ended up seeing much of a lecture last week on CSPAN about 1970s U.S. "culture," by two White-male professors; which really meant movies, music, and related things. They stressed the rise of "trucker culture" as one important movement of the time. The idea of the long-haul trucker as rebel, or right-wing, pro-White-male symbol, and also a cool or heroic figure, like that "Convoy" song. They said this kind of trucker culture, in its pop-culture relevance, only really dates to the 1970s.
Of course trucking as a profession long predated that and horse-drawn-cart "teamsters" go back to antiquity, but something crystallized around the Trucker in the 1970s.
This is a historical perspective that puts the Freedom Convoy Movement of Canada back in early 2022 in an interesting historical light.
They also totally-offhandedly remarked that beginning in the 1970s, small handfuls of big-rig truckers would sometimes coordinate brief wildcat blockades, just to show their strength or defiance, to make a statement, and lift them after a few minutes. Later versions of this kind of protest are seen today as with the Dutch farmers protesting the Green regulations that would shut down half of them. Ironically, the birthplace of the trucker protest, the USA, has adapted effective strategies to totally cripple most such actions, but they remain very effective elsewhere.
-- 1970s themes all over the place, and the Trucker movement --
Call-backs to the early-1970s seem to be a big theme around here these days, this one and the Rockford Files to name just the last two posts here at Peak Stupidity.
I am still a little in the early-1970s mindset from the work I did getting that "Sexual Suicide" essay (July 1973), and reaction-commentary, online in late July, which was a bigger project than I anticipated.
The "Sexual Suicide" essay has been well received. Any time you find a nearly-5000-word essay from fifty years earlier getting so much interest, there's something of real interest there.
Also on the early-1970s theme: I ended up seeing much of a lecture last week on CSPAN about 1970s U.S. "culture," by two White-male professors; which really meant movies, music, and related things. They stressed the rise of "trucker culture" as one important movement of the time. The idea of the long-haul trucker as rebel, or right-wing, pro-White-male symbol, and also a cool or heroic figure, like that "Convoy" song. They said this kind of trucker culture, in its pop-culture relevance, only really dates to the 1970s.
Of course trucking as a profession long predated that and horse-drawn-cart "teamsters" go back to antiquity, but something crystallized around the Trucker in the 1970s.
This is a historical perspective that puts the Freedom Convoy Movement of Canada back in early 2022 in an interesting historical light.
They also totally-offhandedly remarked that beginning in the 1970s, small handfuls of big-rig truckers would sometimes coordinate brief wildcat blockades, just to show their strength or defiance, to make a statement, and lift them after a few minutes. Later versions of this kind of protest are seen today as with the Dutch farmers protesting the Green regulations that would shut down half of them. Ironically, the birthplace of the trucker protest, the USA, has adapted effective strategies to totally cripple most such actions, but they remain very effective elsewhere.
Hail
Wednesday - August 2nd 2023 12:17PM MST
PS
-- The "Midnight Flyer" and the Osborne Brothers --
It seems that the first song titled "Midnight Flyer" was released by Nat King Cole in 1959. A different, original song titled "Midnight Flyer," with maybe-similar theme but not really a cover or adaptation of the 1959 song, was recorded in 1972 by a sensational country-bluegrass group of the day, the Osborne Brothers.
The Eagles covered the Osborne Brothers' "Midnight Flyer" around late 1973, about a year after the original appeared. This Eagles cover-version of the Osborne Brothers' "Midnight Flyer" appeared on the Eagles' March 1974 studio album, and a remastered version of that recording is the one you have linked to on Youtube.
Here is the original studio version of the Osborne Brothers' "Midnight Flyer" song, released Oct/Nov 1972, the lead track of one of their many albums of the period:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWL0bvMBrJE
The Osborne Brothers' version is good; the genre is different than what the Eagles were going for. The original Eagles members were all born in a specifically narrow "Baby-Boomer" window of 1946-1948. One in 1946, several in 1947, one laggard in 1948.
The Osborne Brothers (the two leading figures of their band, the "brothers," being born 1931 and 1937), meanwhile, cultivated a kind of rock-influenced traditional style. There is a ten-to-fifteen-year age gap but an obvious generational gap there, that is harder to find in later eras.
-- The "Midnight Flyer" and the Osborne Brothers --
It seems that the first song titled "Midnight Flyer" was released by Nat King Cole in 1959. A different, original song titled "Midnight Flyer," with maybe-similar theme but not really a cover or adaptation of the 1959 song, was recorded in 1972 by a sensational country-bluegrass group of the day, the Osborne Brothers.
The Eagles covered the Osborne Brothers' "Midnight Flyer" around late 1973, about a year after the original appeared. This Eagles cover-version of the Osborne Brothers' "Midnight Flyer" appeared on the Eagles' March 1974 studio album, and a remastered version of that recording is the one you have linked to on Youtube.
Here is the original studio version of the Osborne Brothers' "Midnight Flyer" song, released Oct/Nov 1972, the lead track of one of their many albums of the period:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWL0bvMBrJE
The Osborne Brothers' version is good; the genre is different than what the Eagles were going for. The original Eagles members were all born in a specifically narrow "Baby-Boomer" window of 1946-1948. One in 1946, several in 1947, one laggard in 1948.
The Osborne Brothers (the two leading figures of their band, the "brothers," being born 1931 and 1937), meanwhile, cultivated a kind of rock-influenced traditional style. There is a ten-to-fifteen-year age gap but an obvious generational gap there, that is harder to find in later eras.
MBlanc46
Wednesday - August 2nd 2023 9:22AM MST
PS Train songs: The fiddle-players’ national anthem, “The Orange Blossom Special:.
I did take Amtrak across the country on 2 separate occasions in the long-ago past. I wish I could remember the name of those 3 lines (one had a connection in Chicago). It was fun, but I was young, and I didn't have to be anywhere at any specific time of day - like morning, afternoon, or evening.