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BangShift Daily Tune Up: Wreck Of The Old 97 – Johnny Cash


BangShift Daily Tune Up: Wreck Of The Old 97 – Johnny Cash

Sure this isn’t a car song, but it is about speed and danger, so that’s close enough for us. This song has been around since the 1920s in one form or another and it actually tells the story of a real railroad wreck from 1903. As the song says, the train was running behind schedule (historical reports put it at one hour behind. The engine crews switched up in Monroe, VA and 33-year old engineer Joe Broady (his nickname was Steve, so the song is accurate in this as well) took the helm and headed off with instructions to make up for lost time.

Broady was one of 18 men on the train. All of the guys were either railroad employees or postal service employees as they were hauling “fast mail” to Washington, DC and it needed to get to the nation’s capital on time, seemingly at all costs. While snaking through mountains and valleys, Broady drove the train down a grade and approached a corner before a trestle. The train was going too fast to make the corner, so it jumped the tracks and crashed into the ravine below, bursting into flames and killing 11 of the 18 men. Several others managed to jump off the train before it plummeted into the gulch. Ironically, most of the mail was destroyed in the process. We think the one historical liberty the song takes is with the line about the train traveling 90mph. Chances are it was closer to 70. Still scary fast for one of those old locomotives!

Believe it or not, the real “Old 97” was hauled up out of the ravine and went on to serve the railroad for another 32 years before being retired and probably chopped up for scrap. They built stuff tough back then!

Johnny Cash is one of many people to record this song and it happens to be our favorite version because Johnny Cash rules. We’re not sure when he first recorded his version but we know that he performed it in the 1960s, 1970s and up, so we think it was somewhere in the 1950s but we can’t say for sure. Story songs are always great…even if poor Joe Broady never lived to hear the tale.

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO HEAR JOHNNY CASH PERFORM WRECK OF THE OLD 97 –


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