← Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
The long strange history of “Casey Jones” by the Grateful Dead
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Janda
97.1Fm the drive presents the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda it's just one of those songs that gets stuck in your head driving that train high on cocaine. Casey Jones, you better watch your speed Casey Jones by the Grateful Dead, with music written by Jerry Garcia and lyrics by Robert Hunter, is one of the band's more popular songs for good reason. A favorite among Dead fans and casual listeners alike, this story song with a super catchy melody has a history that goes back to early 1900s Americana to a real life folk hero whose heroic act inspired a ballad and then a vaudeville act, and was further immortalized when Robert Hunter scribbled that first line on a piece of paper and stuck it in his pocket, ultimately becoming the album close on the Working Man's Dead album released in 1970. As with all things Grateful Dead, there's a story there, so let's get into it in this episode of behind the Song. And if you like this episode, give us a like at the end. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Casey Jones was a real life train engineer born John Luther Jones in Mississippi in 1864. His family moved to Casey, Kentucky when he was a boy and the name of the town became his lifelong nickname. He became a skilled, dependable locomotive engineer for the Illinois Central Railroad and was known for being very punctual with his arrival times. On the fateful night of April 30, 1900, he had taken over for another engineer who was out that day, basically working a double with very little sleep, operating a heavy passenger train known as the Cannonball, southbound from Memphis to Canton, Mississippi. He was about an hour and a half late for his destination. Unknown to him, there was another train broken down directly on his line around Vaughan, Mississippi, and some say the switchman on duty was asleep. The broken down train up ahead became visible to Jones just in time for him to tell his fireman to jump to to safety while he stayed on to slow down the engine. His train did collide with the stopped train, but all of his passengers made it out alive. It was Casey Jones who died in the crash, the sole fatality in effect giving his life to save his men and those passengers on board. It's an epic story in the history of the American railroad, giving Casey an almost Paul Bunyan like status as a legend. Wallace Saunders, a railroad worker and friend of Jones, started singing a work song about Casey Jones shortly after the crash and soon that song was being sung up and down the Illinois central line. One IC engineer had two brothers who were vaudeville performers, Frank and Burt Layton, who took the song and added a chorus to it, performing their version in theaters all the country. The song changed as time went on and was finally published as a ballad by T. Lawrence Siebert and Eddie Newton, another set of vaudeville performers as Casey Jones, the brave engineer in 1909. Parodies and subsequent versions followed, eventually becoming known as the Ballad of Casey Jones, which poet Carl Sandberg said was the greatest ballad ever written. Versions of the Casey Jones legend have been sung by everybody from Johnny Cash to Pete Seeger and then some. Truly an American hero put to song. The name Casey Jones and the general mystique of trains that's always captured the American imagination filtered its way from a folk ballad sung by workers up and down the tracks to blasting out of the wall of sound with thousands of Deadheads swirling to the Dead's version of the Casey Jones mythos in concert. Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics for Casey Jones as he did for so many of the Grateful Dead's most lyrically vivid songs. His partnership with the Grateful Dead, and more specifically with Jerry Garcia, began when the two were barely more than teenagers in the 60s living in Northern California. The two friends began playing music together, but eventually Hunter's interest and talent in writing and books outweighed his skill as a musician. While Garcia's focus was in pursuing, perfecting and playing music, Garcia went on to form a band, first called the Warlocks in 1965, which was soon renamed to the Grateful Dead. Meanwhile, in the early 60s, Robert Hunter was one of the volunteers who participated in Stanford University's psychedelic chemical experiments. The experiments, which Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg also volunteered for, were conducted by the CIA to test the effects of LSD and other psychedelic drugs. And after that, Hunter traveled around, wandering to Los Angeles and New Mexico writing stories and song lyrics, and eventually he ended up back in Northern California and eventually lived in a house with his friend Jerry Garcia. And those close quarters spawned a fruitful working partnership. The two collaborated on songs in the same way that Bernie Taupin and Elton John worked together. Hunter wrote the lyrics and Garcia wrote the music. That collaboration led to Hunter being asked to become a full fledged member of the Grateful Dead as their lyricist, and he and Jerry Garcia wrote songs together for over 25 years. It was an incredible friendship that yielded some of the Dead's most enduring work, including Casey Jones. Hunter says the opening line came to him out of the blue, and he wrote it down quickly and then put it in his pocket, not knowing what he would do with it at the time. When he realized that it was a song he was carrying around, he finished the lyrics and the song starts with the chorus like this. Driving that train high on cocaine Casey Jones, you better watch your speed. Trouble ahead, trouble behind. And you know that notion just crossed my mind. Now for the record, there is no evidence at all that the most famous rail engineer in US history was high on anything at all at the time of his fateful crash. It is interesting that the term Jones in the language of addiction speaks to the constant craving for a drug. A tongue in cheek coincidence that fit well within the context of the Dead's Casey Jones, considering the well documented chemically enhanced lifestyle of Garcia Hunter and the Dead with their roots in Ken Kesey's Pranksters and the Beat poets and their experimentation with mind altering substances. And the song goes on. This old engine makes it on time Leaves Central station about a quarter to nine hits River Junction at 17 two at a quarter to 10 you know it's traveling again. This part of the song draws from the original ballad of Casey Jones sung by Wallace Saunders and later popularized by Mississippi John Hurt and others that I mentioned previously. From that original version, a chronicle of what happened to the real Casey Jones. Goes left Memphis Quarter Till 9 Vaughan, Mississippi Right on time Got within a mile of the place A big headlight stared him in the face Shout to the firemen, jump for your life Give my love to my children say goodbye to my wife Casey said just before he died There's a lot more railroads that I'd like to ride. The Dead's version borrows from this accounting in the original ballad. There's a cautionary tale against pushing the use of cocaine and other drugs too far, based on the imagery of the locomotive crash that became a legend in the Deads version. The chorus repeats and then it's on to the next verse. Trouble ahead the lady in red Take my advice, you'd be better off dead switchman Sleeping train 102 is on the wrong track and headed for you. Conventional wisdom here is that the lady in red is the barbiturate Seconal known as a Red or a Red Devil. It was a sleep medication that was used to counter the effects of stimulant drugs popular at the time Hunter wrote these lyrics. The reference to the Switchman sleeping on the job is part of the original storyline, but the mention of the 102train, like the cocaine reference throughout the song. And the lady in red is Robert Hunter's poetic License at work for the Dead's version, the chorus repeats again and then the song goes on. Trouble with you is the trouble with me Got two good eyes but we still don't see Come round the bend, you know it's the end. The fireman screams and the engine just gleams. This part of the song borrows from the real incident too, in which Casey Jones was going too fast to make up for lost time and was unable to stop his train from colliding with the one stopped on the tracks ahead of him through Hunter's filter. In the lyrics of the Deads version, it becomes a parallel to living too fast to avoid a crash, perfectly lining up with historical fact from the legendary folk tale. It's genius, really. And the chorus repeats with the last line and you know that notion just crossed my mind repeated at the very end of the song. At some concerts, Jerry Garcia changed this last line to sing and you know that notion just cost my mind. Referring to the downside of using cocaine, being unable to stop something bad once you start. In an interview with Charles Reich and Jan Wenner published by Rolling Stone called Garcia a signpost to a new space. Jerry Garcia was asked about the song and whether he ever got tired of it. In his response, he said that it's a pretty good musical picture of what cocaine is like. A little bit evil, hard edged, and also that sing songy thing. Because that's what it is, a sing songy thing. A little melody that just gets stuck in your head. The Grateful Dead would sometimes include the original ballad in their concerts, and played their version heavily in concert from 1969 to 1974. Besides, on Working Man's Dead, Casey Jones can be found on several live recordings, including on the Steal youl Face double live album released in 1976, their last album released on the original Grateful Dead record label. But they performed the song very Little Live after 1984, and many speculate that this was part of an agreement Garcia made to not play it due to the cocaine references as part of a plea bargain stemming from one of his drug arrests. After Jerry Garcia's death at age 53 from a heart attack while in a rehab clinic in 1995, the Dead disbanded. This was just a year after they were inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame, and lyricist Robert Hunter was inducted with them as a member of the band. He went on to collaborate on songs with, among others, Bob Dylan, who said that the two of them could write 100 songs together. Hunter died at his home in San Rafael, California, in 2019 following surgery in 2015, Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia were inducted into the Songwriters hall of Fame and their legacy will always be intertwined, Garcia's music and Hunter's lyrics giving air to a counterculture viewpoint that became canon in American pop culture and gave legions of fans all over the world music to be blown away by and then to find a kind of home in that persists to this day. In the parlance of dead fans looking for that miracle ticket for transportation out of the mundane, a uniquely American band and their uniquely American story. Songs that will no doubt keep on truckin'forever I'm Janda and this has been behind the song. Special thanks as always to Christian Lane for the music you hear on these podcast episodes. If you like it, don't forget to hit subscribe and you can check us out on TikTok too. Find Me on the air weekdays from 9 to 2 Central in Chicago at 97.1 FM the Drive, Chicago's classic rock and@wdrv.com on the way, much more classic rock and rol.