I’m on the train

By Richard Williams

In the days when jazz was popular music, the musicians went from one gig to another by train. The biggest bands even had their own carriages. The iron horse also took vast numbers of African-Americans away from the poverty of the southern states to the hope of prosperity in the cities of the north and the Mid-west. No wonder the railroad formed such an insistent leitmotif of the music.

MEADE LUX LEWIS HONKY TONK TRAIN BLUES
This may be where it all started, back in 1927, with a great pianist's exuberant evocation of smokestacks and steel wheels and humming rails. It certainly launched the boogie-woogie craze, whose echoes can be heard every time Jools Holland sits at the keyboard.