City of New Orleans
Words & Music by Steve Goodman
Sung By John Denver
on All Aboard! (1997)
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 mails
All along a south-bound odissey the train pulls out of Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields
Passing trains that have no name freight yards full of old black men
the graveyards of the rusted automobiles
Singing Good Morning A-merica, how are you?
Saying 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 days is done
Dealing cards with the old men in the club car
Penny a points ain't no one keeping score
pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
feel the wheels a rumbling 'neath the floor
And the sons of pulmann porters and the sons of engineers
Ride their fathers' magic carpet made of steel
And mothers with their babes asleep rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel
Singing Good Morning A-merica, how are you?
Saying 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 days is done
Nighttime on the City of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennesse
Halfway home, we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness rolling down the sea
But all the towns and people seems to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain't heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again the passenger will please refrain
This train has got the disappearing railroad blues
Singing Good Morning A-merica, how are you?
Saying 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 days is done