Artist: Little Junior's Blue Flames
Author: Herman Parker/Sam Phillips
Label: Sun
Year: 1953
Lured Elvis to Sun. There's a Greil Marcus book with that title, a Jim Jarmusch film and - why not? - life itself. More than Elvis', this was Sam Phillips' song, who cowrote it and cut an earlier version on Little Junior Parker, Al Green's cousin. It's a small world there in Memphis.
Covers:
Elvis Presley [his fifth and final Sun single; according to Sam the greatest thing he did on Elvis; played as the last song on Sam's funeral]
Doors [in Black Train Song, including a piece of People Get Ready]
Band [first on Moondog Matinee, later in film The Last Waltz]
Tommy Conwell & The Young Rumblers [as Guitar Trouble]
P.P. Michiels [as Trein]
Danny Gatton [in medley with My Baby Left Me and That's All Right]
Johnny Hallyday [as Train sans espoir, recorded in '75]
Shawn Camp & Billy Burnette [The Bluegrass Elvises]
T-Model Ford & GravelRoad [as Same Old Train]
Ronnie Earl [as I Met Her On That Train]
Anthony 'Big A' Sherrod & The Cornlickers [as Train]
See also: Love My Baby, Mystery Train's second original. Make that four: lyric lines come literally from Blind Lemon Jefferson's Right Of Way Blues and Worried Man by The Carter Family, a blues song and a country song. No wonder Elvis cut it. In both Blind Lemon's as the Carters the train was 18 coaches long.
If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors, please let us know by contacting us:
Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)