In the heat of the day down in Mobile Alabama
Working on the railroad with the steel driving hammer
I gotta get some money to buy some brand new shoes
Tryin’ to find somebody to take away these blues
“She don’t love me” hear them singing in the sun
Payday’s coming and my work is all done
Happy Memorial Day Weekend, folks.
Crackerjack band!
Jerry was very lively that night.
that’s what taking a break from opioids can do for a grown man.
Listen to how terrifically the Meters develop this riff throughout the 7+ minutes:
Prior to Siegel and Shuster, American mythology was about resource and labor exploitation.
Those hard steel driving men are no more. There were 1.5 million working on the railroads in 1947 and less than 250K today. Over that same period there was a 25% increases in tonnage, and a tripling of ton miles.
The job offs were predominately in maintenance-of-way work. Low skill, hard working, steel driving men, aka “Gandy Dancers”(about a dozen per 20 miles of mainline), were replaced by hi-rail trucks and specialized equipment.
This is in an industry that is geographically anchored to the US and aligned with traditional hammer & sickle output.
The USA hasn’t de-industrialized, but the steam age work is gone.