| "Casey Jones" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song by Grateful Dead from the album Workingman's Dead | ||||
| Released | June 14, 1970 | |||
| Recorded | Pacific High Recording Studio San Francisco, California |
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| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 4:24 | |||
| Label | Warner Bros. | |||
| Writer | Robert Hunter | |||
| Composer | Jerry Garcia | |||
| Producer | Bob Matthews Betty Cantor Grateful Dead |
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| Workingman's Dead track listing | ||||
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"Casey Jones" is a song by the American rock band the Grateful Dead. The music was written by Jerry Garcia, and the lyrics are by Robert Hunter. The song first appeared on the Dead's 1970 album Workingman's Dead. Subsequently it was included on a number of their live albums.[1]
The Grateful Dead played "Casey Jones" in concert on a regular basis from June 1969 through October 1974. After that, they continued playing it live, but less often. In total they performed the song in concert more than 300 times.[2]
"Casey Jones" is about a railroad engineer whose train crashes. It was inspired by the story of an actual engineer named Casey Jones. The engineer's exploits were also sung of in an earlier folk song called "The Ballad of Casey Jones", which the Grateful Dead played live several times.
"Casey Jones" has received significant airplay on progressive rock, album-oriented rock, and classic rock radio stations over the years, and so is one of the Dead's songs that is more recognizable by non-Deadheads. It includes the line, "Drivin' that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones you better watch your speed."[3]
The song was released as a downloadable track for the game Rock Band on March 4, 2008.