The Mystery Of "The Train Kept A Rollin'"

For my generation, growing up in the late 1980s and early 1990s the only way we were exposed to the song "The Train Kept A Rollin'" was through the discovery of 1970s era Aerosmith.

My older brother was the one who got me hooked on Aerosmith, and I remember at the time "Janie's Got A Gun" was their big hit. It wouldn't take long for me to be schooled in the classics of "Walk This Way", "Mama Kin", "Sweet Emotion", and "Train Kept A Rollin'".

I prefer their version of "Live Bootleg", back when Aerosmith's live albums were an event, unlike how I was disappointed with the "A Little South Of Sanity" two disc set.

For a long time I was pretty ignorant that anybody had done the song before Aerosmith.

Here's the Aerosmith classic courtesy of Youtube:

Aerosmith's Studio Version

Then one fateful day that all changed. I had walked up to, what was at the time, an Ames store (it's a Wal-Mart now and was a Hills before Ames). It was this store that introduced me to an excellent series of 10 track original artist hits CDs by Rhino's Flashback Records. The CDs were cheap and they featured bands from the 1950s -1970s that were hard to find normally.

In fact, thanks to Flashback Records I got my fill of Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, The Lovin' Spoonful, and others. It just sucked that they went cheaply on Deep Purple and Foghat by not including the full length album versions of hits like "Smoke On The Water" and "Slow Ride".

Yet that fateful day I bought the Flashback Records compilation of hits by the Yardbirds.

The Yardbirds are famous for having had three of the best guitarists to ever come out of Britain - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. In fact, it's latter incarnation with Jimmy Page eventually evolved into Led Zeppelin.

Now the CD had the normal Yardbirds hits anybody would expect like "For Your Love", "Heart Full Of Soul", and "Shapes Of Things To Come". What struck me were the addition of two songs I only knew off of the Aersomith album "Live Bootleg" which were "I Ain't Got You" (originally by Jimmy Reed) and "Train Kept A Rollin'".

Now this was back in the early 2000s if not the late 1990s and I was quite inexperienced and believed that the Yardbirds had done the original versions of those two songs.

Here's The Yardbirds version thanks to Youtube:

British Blues, baby!

Obviously, I was wrong!

I eventually discovered other versions of the song from other musicians. From Screamin' Lord Sutch to Shakin' Stevens, from Sugarloaf to Led Zeppelin, and then I eventually found the next piece of the puzzle.

In 1956 the Johnny Burnette Trio made the first Rock N' Roll, though more Rockabilly, version of "Train Kept A Rollin'". It was this primordial guitar laden version which spawned all other rock versions of the song. The guitar riffs are unmistakeable.

Here's Johnny Burnette's version thanks to Youtube:

A Rockabilly Classic!

Yet it still wasn't the original version of the song.

Finally though I found out that the man who composed the song originally was one Tiny Bradshaw. Usually the writing credit goes to a Howard Kay, whom at the time I couldn't find anything about.

Though upon searching for Tiny Bradshaw I found out that he had indeed recorded the original version of "Train Kept A Rollin'".

Finding a copy of his version though wasn't going to be easy.

I eventually found a Tiny Bradshaw CD for sale online at Best Buy. Amazon.com searches didn't reveal any Tiny Bradshaw CDs back then.

I bought an entire CD just to get that one elusive song.

And here it is from 1951, thanks to Youtube, described as "Jump Blues" but sounds sorta swingy to me:

The Original "Train Kept A Rollin'"

Weird, ain't it?

You've just witnessed the evolution of a song.

Sincerely,
Bob