Night Train (song)
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- For other uses of the term "Night Train" see Night Train (disambiguation).
"Night Train" is a twelve bar blues instrumental standard first recorded by Jimmy Forrest in 1951. Other famous recordings of the tune were made by James Brown and Oscar Peterson.
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[edit] Origins and development
"Night Train" has a long and complicated history. The piece's familiar opening riff was first recorded in 1940 by a small group led by Duke Ellington sideman Johnny Hodges under the title "That's the Blues, Old Man." Ellington used the same riff as the opening and closing theme of a longer-form composition, "Happy-Go-Lucky Local," that was itself one of four parts of his Deep South Suite. Forrest was part of Ellington's band when it performed this composition, which has a long tenor saxophone break in the middle. After leaving Ellington, Forrest recorded "Night Train" on United Records and had a major rhythm & blues hit. While "Night Train" employs the same riff as the earlier recordings, it is used in a much earthier R&B setting. Forrest inserted his own solo over a stop-time rhythm not used in the Ellington composition. He put his own stamp on the tune, but its relation to the earlier composition is obvious.
Like Illinois Jacquet's solo on "Flying Home" and Don Byas's solo on "Harvard Blues," Forrest's original saxophone solo on "Night Train" became a veritable part of the composition, and is usually recreated in cover versions by other performers.
[edit] Lyrics
Several differet sets of lyrics were subsequently written for the tune of "Night Train". The earliest, written in 1952 by Oscar Washington and Lewis P. Simpkins,[1] was a typical blues lament of a man who regrets treating his woman badly now that she's left him. Eddie Jefferson recorded a version with more optimistic lyrics about a woman returning to her man on the night train.
James Brown's recording of "Night Train" (which he made in 1962) credited Washington and Simpkins but replaced their lyrics with a list of American cities (mostly in the Southern United States) which Brown shouted out along with many repetitions of the tune's name.
[edit] Appearances in film
- "Night Train" is played by the band at the high school dance in Back to the Future.
- "Night Train" is played in the bar fight scene in Rush Hour.
- James Brown performs "Night Train" in his segment of The T.A.M.I. Show.
