Song:City Of New Orleans
Album:The Best Of Arlo Guthrie
The 1972 song City Of New Orleans was the one top 40 hit for singer songwriter Arlo Guthrie. Of course the odd thing about it is he didn't write it. He was born July 10, 1947 in Brooklyn, NY the son of legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie. His parents divorced but then Woody got sick with Huntington's Disease and mom took care of him. His dad gave Arlo his first guitar at age six and of course there were plenty of folksingers like Pete Seeger & Cisco Houston hanging around the house. Arlo even had a hootenanny Bar Mitzvah. Arlo says he had been unaware of his father's fame until he heard This Land Is Your Land sung in school and discovered that his father wrote it. After attempting to become a forest ranger, he lived at a home owned by Alice Brock in Massachussets. She owned a restaurant. He helped her dispose of some trash in an illegal manner and Arlo wrote an 18 minute song around it called Alice's Restaurant Massacree. The song itself was one verse but the storytelling around it created enough interest to earn him a contract with Reprise Records. Guthrie's humour is what really hooked people. The album was a big seller and remained on the album chart for most of 1968. Guthrie's drug smuggling song Coming Into Los Angeles also got a lot of attention because he performed it at Woodstock. He also starred in a film based on Alice's Restaurant. Guthrie continued to record but hit the jackpot in 1972 with the Steve Goodman song City Of New Orleans from the album Hobo's Lullaby. It's a great song about trains. The story goes that to get Guthrie to listen to the song, Goodman had to keep Guthrie well lubricated with beer. It worked. It's Goodman's best known song and Guthrie's only top 40 hit. This comp covers his Reprise recordings and includes the full version of Alice's Restaurant Massacree. Guthrie left Reprise in 1982 but continues to record on his own Rising Son label. Here's Arlo Guthrie performing City Of New Orleans in Atlanta 1978.
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