M.T.A.
Created on 04/02/2006Latest update on 04/08/2022
Artist: Arnold Berman
Author: Bess Hawes/Jacqueline Berman-Steiner
Year: 1949
AKA The Boston Subway Song, reissued on Bear Family box set Songs for Political Action: Folk Music, Topical Songs and the American Left. Written by Bess Hawes (related with the Lomaxes) as a campaign song for Walter F. O'Brien, Communist Party candidate in Boston's majoral elections of 1949. Like some red Rosa Parks avant la lettre, Walter led a one-man protest against raised fares on the Boston subway system (Metropolitan Transit Authority). He took the train with hardly enough pocket money for the old fare and unless producing the extra penny, wasn't allowed to leave the system. In the song he was doomed to ride the subway forever.
Covers:
- 1957:
Will Holt [Coral single triggering negative reactions in Boston over the deification of what they called a local radical]
- 1959:
Kingston Trio [hit US from their n°1 album At Large; the name Walter is changed in George to avoid showing Commie sympathies; their most requested song apart from Tom Dooley]
- 1959:
Set to the melody of The Wreck Of The Southern Old 97 (see there). The real Walter O'Brien moved back to his homestate Maine in '57 to become a school librarian and bookshop keeper.
