{"id":175053,"date":"2026-09-16T10:00:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T14:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=175053"},"modified":"2026-09-16T10:01:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T14:01:27","slug":"on-the-chattanooga-choo-choo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/09\/16\/on-the-chattanooga-choo-choo\/","title":{"rendered":"On the \u201cChattanooga Choo Choo\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Screenshot from Sun Valley Serenade<\/em> (1941), via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Public domain.<\/p><\/div>\n

I was a bop kid from the start. When Eric Carmen, the talented lead singer of the Raspberries, wrote \u201cI\u2019m a rocker, I\u2019m a roller \/ I’ve been a-boogieing since I ditched the stroller,\u201d he might have been talking about me. I can clearly remember my first record, a seventy-eight rpm. It was Elvis singing \u201cDon\u2019t Be Cruel.\u201d (B-side was \u201cHound Dog.\u201d) Later I graduated to forty-fives and bought Chuck Berry\u2019s \u201cJohnny B. Goode\u201d for seventy-eight cents. (B-side: \u201cAround and Around.\u201d) My mother\u2014not exactly racist but very much a woman of her time\u2014asked me if Mr. Berry was white. Fearing my precious record might be taken away (I was ten), I assured her he was.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just lately, though, I have become fascinated by the so-called big bands on the SiriusXM station called \u201c40s Junction.\u201d I guess this sort of music is called, for want of a better word, jazz, but it\u2019s totally unlike Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, or Sonny Rollins. My collaborator on three books, Peter Straub, was a total jazz freak, and I did him the courtesy of listening, but the music always made me feel like I had a low-grade case of the flu.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Glenn Miller in Sun Valley Serenade<\/em> (1941), via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Public domain.<\/p><\/div>\n

But big band tunes aren\u2019t the jazz of Charlie \u201cBird\u201d Parker, and they\u2019re not rock and roll. Jazz is a custom coupe. Rock is a chopped-and-channeled hot rod. Big band music is a lush 1941 Cadillac, rolling along on custom-built shock absorbers to give the smoothest ride possible. Some big band tunes\u2014I\u2019m thinking of the Benny Goodman classic \u201cSing, Sing, Sing\u201d\u2014are like precursors to rock and roll. This is a bit off subject, but there are black-and-white video of guys and dolls dressed in evening clothes bopping up and down to the \u201cSing, Sing, Sing\u201d beat as if they are on pogo sticks. It\u2019s hilarious, but they\u2019re having a terrific time, so if the video makes you laugh, you lose. Still, the Goodman combine fits what I\u2019m talking about. It was an orchestra, not a rock and roll band like the Beatles, the Kinks, or the Who.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I mostly want to talk about is the Glenn Miller band\u2014suit-and-tie-wearing players swinging their hips, their instruments shining, hair gleaming with oil, cheeks as smooth as the Gerber baby\u2019s bottom, using their mutes in unison (sometimes wearing them on their heads like derbies)\u2014and the queer combination of sophistication and naivete in lyrics sung by cool cats and smooth kitties.<\/span><\/p>\n

In particular I want to drill down on a song called \u201cChattanooga Choo Choo,\u201d as it appears in a film called <\/span>Sun Valley Serenade<\/span><\/i>, released in 1941. The bandleader, who first appears with his trombone in the crook of his elbow (crazy, man, crazy), is Glenn Miller, three years before his death in December of 1944 (his body and the plane in which he was riding were never found). There are nineteen musicians in <\/span>Sun Valley Serenade<\/span><\/i>, plus the vocalists the Modernaires and the saxophonist Gordon Lee \u201cTex\u201d Beneke.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tex Beneke! Is that the coolest name ever, or what? The defense rests. And in <\/span>Serenade<\/span><\/i> he is wearing a gimme cap with the brim turned up\u2014and whistling! Yes! So fine! The music is smooth as cream, and the drummer Maurice Purtill keeps it jive. But it\u2019s the lyrics I really want to buzz about, cuz. There is simply nothing like them in the rock and roll era.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s poetry, and there\u2019s doggerel. The latter perfectly describes most lyrics of the early rock and roll era, where arms<\/em> inevitably rhymes with charms<\/em> and baby<\/em> is followed by don\u2019t mean maybe<\/em>. This is miles from Wallace Stevens, Adrienne Rich, or Edgar Allan Poe. Even the lyrics of sophisticated pop writers (I\u2019m thinking of Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen) have a tendency to look dead on the page. That is probably also the case with \u201cChattanooga Choo Choo,\u201d although these lyrics fall in a gray area that\u2019s neither poetry nor doggerel. They charm with rhymes that delight both the heart and mind, especially if you have a sense of humor. The very name of the song is alliterative, but that alliteration is combined with the childish word for “passenger train.” The combo is, as I say, both sophisticated and na\u00efve. It\u2019s daddy-cool.<\/span><\/p>\n

I tried to write both poetry and songs in college. My goal as a poet was to write something, maybe just <\/span>one thing<\/span><\/i>, as good as William Carlos Williams or Ed Dorn. My goal as a songwriter was to write something as good as Leonard Cohen. Most of the songs I wrote sounded like someone else\u2019s. Those few that didn\u2019t were pretentious and humorless. I managed what Al Kooper calls \u201cthat quantum leap to palatability\u201d with a few poems, and I continue writing verse\u2014but I know it never was or will be my thing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Glenn Miller in Sun Valley Serenade<\/em> (1941), via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Public domain.<\/p><\/div>\n

Because, dig this, what I was never able to capture, in song or poetry, is anything close to the opening of \u201cChattanooga Choo Choo,\u201d where the band picks up speed like a train going down the tracks and there\u2019s a thrown-off\u2014but oh-so-hip\u2014rhyme of version<\/em> and Tennessee excursion<\/em>. <\/span>Version<\/span><\/i> is two syllables; <\/span>excursion<\/span><\/i> is three, and the two of them together feels like doing a light two-step up to a porch where you\u2019ll relax in your white flannels and have a mint julep. The whole song has that feel. It\u2019s not nostalgia but time travel.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was never a track 29 in Pennsylvania Station; the track numbers went up only to 21. Similarly, the Birmingham Special, later known as the Chattanooga Choo Choo, did go through eastern Virginia, but never touched North Carolina. But as we know, there is\u2014<\/span>must <\/span><\/i>be\u2014such a thing as poetic license. Never mind geography; nothing could be better than the triple rhyme of \u201cDinner in the diner, nothing could be finer \/ than to have your ham and eggs in Carolina.\u201d Not only is it delightful to the ear, it\u2019s grammatical.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many other songs on \u201c40s Junction\u201d have that same neither-fish-nor-fowl smooth laid-back coolness; \u201cChattanooga\u201d isn\u2019t even my favorite. That would be \u201cSing, Sing, Sing,\u201d with its blazing clarinet riffs and those great Krupa drum solos. Others with that smooth Cadillac ride include \u201cOne O\u2019Clock Jump\u201d (Count Basie), \u201cTake the \u2018A\u2019 Train\u201d (Duke Ellington), and the totally goofy but ultimately hip \u201cMilkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet\u201d (Georgia Gibbs). Yet nothing sums up the feeling I\u2019m talking about better than \u201cChattanooga Choo Choo.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou leave the Pennsylvania Station \u2019bout a quarter to four \/ Read a magazine and then you\u2019re in Baltimore.\u201d <\/span>Four<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Baltimore<\/span><\/i>, how\u2019s that for a knocked-out crazy wacka-flacka? Get your head around it, cuz! Of course, the Birmingham Special left at 12:30 P.M.<\/small>, but \u2026 what\u2019d I say? Poetic license.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Stephen\u00a0King<\/span> is the author of more than seventy books, all international bestsellers. On October 6, his collaboration with the late Peter Straub,<\/em>\u00a0Other Worlds Than These<\/a>, will be published by Scribner.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLately, though, I have become fascinated by the so-called big bands on the SiriusXM station called \u201840s Junction.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2715,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1187],"tags":[3902,68926,27892,67827,68925,330,68927,68928],"class_list":["post-175053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-music","tag-big-band","tag-chattanooga-choo-choo","tag-chuck-berry","tag-featured","tag-glenn-miller","tag-jazz","tag-siriusxm","tag-sun-valley-serenade"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn the \u201cChattanooga Choo Choo\u201d by Stephen King<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 16, 2026 \u2013 \u201cLately, though, I have become fascinated by the so-called big bands on the SiriusXM station called \u201840s Junction.\u2019 \u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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