“City of New Orleans” (Steve Goodman/Arlo Guthrie)

Today’s classic song that mentions Memphis in the lyrics of the day is actually named for a different city, sort of. The song is “City of New Orleans,” written by Steve Goodman and performed in its most well-known version by Arlo Guthrie.

The City of New Orleans mentioned in the song isn’t actually the city of New Orleans, its a train called the City of New Orleans. The train, originally on the Illinois Central Railroad (and now part of Amtrak), runs from Chicago to New Orleans and back again. The route started way back in 1947 and in 2018 still carried more than 200,000 passengers a year.

In 1971, the City of New Orleans was switched from a daytime to nighttime route and took the name of the previous Chicago-to-New Orleans train, the Panama Limited. Amtrak brought back the original name in 1981, although it retained its new overnight schedule.

In case you’re wondering, the route of the City of New Orleans runs from Chicago Central Station to Cairo, Illinois; to Fulton, Kentucky; to Memphis, Tennessee; to Jackson, Mississippi; to New Orleans, Louisiana. The train leaves Chicago at 6:00 in the evening Central time and arrives in New Orleans mid-afternoon the next day. The route takes 19 1/2 hours and covers 934 miles.

Songwriter Steve Goodman wrote the song in 1971, right as the old name was getting ready to change, while traveling on the City of New Orleans to visit his wife’s family. Goodman later ran into fellow (and more famous) folksinger Arlo Guthrie at the Quiet Knight bar in Chicago and asked to play him the song. Arlo said okay, Steve played the song, and Arlo loved it. Mr. Guthrie put it on his 1972 album Hobo’s Lullaby and released it as a single. The public loved it, too, propelling “City of New Orleans” to #18 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 on the Easy Listening chart.

The song “City of New Orleans” is a nostalgic look at the declining art of train travel and the cities the trains traveled through. You can hear the journey in the lyrics:

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
But all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain’t heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
The passengers will please refrain
This train got the disappearing railroad blues

Steve Goodman was a Chicago native. “The City of New Orleans” was his most successful and famous song, but he wrote a lot of good ones in his short life. He passed away of leukemia in 1984 at the young age of 36. Arlo Guthrie, who forever was attached to the song, has had a long and storied career singing folk songs of his own and from others. He’s still out there singing today at 75 years of age.

Let’s leave this one with the memory of Steve Goodman himself singing his song:

Good night, America, how are you?
Say, 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