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"The MBA"

(Sung to the tune of "The Wreck of the Old '97" & "The MTA")

Song Blog #5: May 6, 2007

This melody comes from the world's two best-known train songs, which in turn came from a sea shanty published in 1865 called "The Ship that Never Returned" (by Henry Clay Work, who also wrote the enduring children's hit, "My Grandfather's Clock"). It's first incarnation as a train song was as "The Wreck of the Old '97," about a train that left Monroe, Virginia, in 1903, and never returned. In 1924 it was recorded by Vernon Dalhart on RCA Victor and became the first record to sell a million copies as well as the subject of a major copyright lawsuit overthe lyrics. The courts ruled against RCA and awarded $65,000 on sales of five million records to a telegraph operator who had been at the wreck, but RCA had better lawyers and he died before he could collect. In recent decades, the "Old '97" version has been covered by performers such as Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Hank Snow, and Flatt and Scruggs. Here's my favorite verse:

                He was goin' down the grade makin' ninety miles an hour
                When the whistle broke into a scream
                They found him in the wreck with his hands on the throttle
                Scalded to death by the steam.

I wonder how that would fare under today's rating system? Probably get an R for uncessessary violence.

In 1948 it was rewritten and used as a campaign song for a Boston mayoral race, and in 1959 The Kingston Trio turned it into a monster #1 hit called "The M.T.A. Song" (often known as "Charlie on the M.T.A."), about a hapless guy who boards a Boston subway train and never returns. Here's the chorus from that version:

                        Well did he ever return? No he never returned
                        And his fate is still unlearned (Poor ol' Charley)
                        He may ride forever beneath the streets of Boston
                        He's the man who never returned.

I wrote my version out of frustration at the excesses of the 1980's, the so-called "Decade of Greed." Phil Hirsch was at the controls and played guitar, bass, and banjo. Unfortunately, the master tracks have been lost, so I cannot update the lyrics without also updating the music. But if you cover it, all you need to do is replace "some soybean futures" with "some dot-com futures" and "in the Eighties" with "in the Zeroes" and—presto!—it's totally up-to-date.

Phil and I do an old time folkie thing here, but it could be rocked out, countrified, or even rapped. The melody has golden pedigree—a popular sea-shanty from the 1860's, America's first million selling record in the Roaring Twenties, and again as a #1 smash hit in the 1950's. This tried and true tune is just itching to become the first song to be a hit in three consecutive centuries!