Good morning America how are you? Don't you know me I'm your native son,

[underpants]

The City of New Orleans
by Steve Goodman

Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin' trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

CHORUS:
Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car.
Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score.
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor.
And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel.
Mothers with their babes asleep,
Are rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.

CHORUS

Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.

Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

©1970, 1971 EMI U Catalogue, Inc and Turnpike Tom Music (ASCAP)

[underpants]

1. A slice of real Americana

[Wickerman]

2. That is such a wonderful song

His version and Willie's - I can listen to either any time. Best to the City of NO today.

[ET Awful]

3. Arlo's will always be my favorite version.

Willie's doesn't suck, but Arlo's is just so . . . Guthrie :)

[underpants]

7. Yeah it is

a real slice of American life- railroad or not.

[havocmom]

4. That one has been my earworm for the past 24 hours

Hoping for the survival of the city and its people.

[underpants]

5. I was thinking about it this morning

on my run. I figured it was a nice way to encapsulate what is going on -all those effected is what I meant not just New Orleans (which the media is focusing on for obvious reasons).

[blondeatlast]

6. I LOVE trains and that song and I'm praying for New Orleans

to do well in this.

This is a good start to a Monday morning that is otherwise clouded by tension and doubt.

[Bridget Burke]

8. Steve Goodman wrote "Cit of New Orleans"

Steve was great in performance & had some fine records, but was best known as a songwriter. Arlo was the first to cover the tune.

It's a fine song & Willie Nelson needed no excuse to record it. But his version came out about the time that Steve Goodman's leukemia relapsed. He died too soon to accept the Grammy, but the royalty money probably helped with medical expenses.