Memphis – A Train Song

“In an era of dissension
On a bleak mid-winter morn
There stood a house divided
By righteous indignation borne” – Chunky Creek (Train Wreck of 1863) © C. R. Burgan, Jr. / BMI

The winter of 1862 – 63 saw a number of attempts by the Union army to wrest control of the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi from the Confederates. The city had become a fortress for the Confederate States, allowing the South to control the southern portion of the Mississippi River, as far as Port Hudson, in Louisiana. The city’s natural riverside defenses were perfect, earning it the nickname, “The Gibraltar of the Confederacy”. Located high on a bluff overlooking a horseshoe-shaped bend in the river, Vicksburg was almost impossible to approach by ship.

With the city of Memphis having fallen to Union forces the previous summer, the strategic importance of maintaining control of the lower Mississippi River could not be overstated. President Jefferson Davis had declared, “Vicksburg is the nail head that holds the South’s two halves together.”

Jefferson Davis
President Lincoln with troops

The Union also understood the significance that control of the Mississippi represented to the Confederacy in maintaining a supply line with their states on the western side of the river. In Washington President Abraham Lincoln had written, “Vicksburg is the key. …The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket”.

Vicksburg had been under Union attack previously, when in the spring of 1862 Admiral David Farragut traveled upriver after his capture of New Orleans. Demanding the surrender of the city, but lacking sufficient troops to force compliance, he returned to New Orleans. Likewise Union naval attacks arriving from the north had also failed due to the gunboats being unable to approach the city while remaining out of reach of Confederate gun emplacements upon the bluff.

Realizing the impregnable nature of the city’s riverside defenses, the Union soon commenced an overland campaign to attack Vicksburg from the east.

General Ulysses S Grant, US Army
General John C Pemberton, Confederate Army

Defending the city of Vicksburg, Lt. General John C. Pemberton commanded what historian John D. Winters described as “a beaten and demoralized army, fresh from the defeat at Corinth, Mississippi”. If there was any hope of holding the city against General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Tennessee, which would eventually grow to number 75,000 men, Gen. Pemberton would need men, supplies, and currency.

“The driver gave the order
‘Stoke that fire in the belly of the beast!’
With his consignment of souls, supplies & cash
He set out from the east” – Chunky Creek © C. R. Burgan, Jr.

In the early morning hours of February 19, 1863, a train carrying Confederate soldiers and some civilians departed from Meridian, Mississippi, bound for Vicksburg. Along with the passengers the train also carried supplies and a large amount of cash. Due to the battles being waged in the Union’s campaign for control of the river port, there was a great urgency to receive the train and its manifest.

The consist was led by an American 4-4-0 type locomotive known as Hercules; the engineer was Isaiah P. Beauchamp. Prior to the war both locomotive and driver had been based in New Orleans, Louisiana. On this date Hercules was pulling a tender and four cars, with 100 passengers aboard.

For months the region had been experiencing heavy rains which had caused the Chunky River to flood repeatedly. Each successive flooding brought more debris downriver, much of it coming to rest against the wooden pilings and trestles of the Southern Rail Road bridge that spanned the waterway.

The Southern Rail Road had acquired a reputation for having one of the least well-maintained trackages in the country. The Daily Southern Crisis, a newspaper in Jackson, reported that accidents on the line were a common occurrence.

A train had crossed the Chunky bridge a day ahead of the Hercules, but only after all the passengers had been removed from the train, with the train proceeding to slowly cross over the swollen river. It is believed that this train crossing may have caused the bridge to shift, settling to as much as 6 inches out of alignment with the rails on the eastern side of the span. Efforts were made to repair the bridge, but there was not an adequate crew to perform the work before the next train was due.

Absalom F. Temple was the section master for an approximately 8 mile section of railway that included the bridge over the Chunky River. On the day preceding Hercules‘ run he had been at the bridge four separate times, attempting to clear debris. Noticing that one of the bridge’s supports had come loose, and the bridge had begun to sag downstream, he asked another railroad employee to make sure the train departing Meridian early the next morning was held up and not allowed to cross the bridge.

Temple’s account was printed in The Daily Southern Crisis:

“ . . . I told him to be sure and keep a negro there for the purpose. I then dug a hole in the middle of the track and put up a thick pole about as near as I could tell 150 yards from the bridge. This is the usual method of stopping trains when danger is ahead . . . The next morning I had the hands up before daylight, and was just going out on the road to work . . . Just as I started out I met a man running up the road with the news of the accident”.

“Scoured from the landscape
And hastened by the flood
The detritus of a region swirled and mixed
With sweat and blood

“Pilings yielded to the pressure
The Chunky’s span no longer true
And the Mississippi Southern plunged into the flow
In its effort to push on through” – Chunky Creek © C. R. Burgan, Jr.

Hercules ran off the track as it entered the bridge, becoming completely submerged in the icy cold water. The tender and trailing cars landed on top of the locomotive, with the wooden cars being nearly demolished by the impact. Barrels and boxes were later found floating downstream.

The Athens Post, a newspaper based in Athens, Tennessee printed the following report:

“A man just in from Chunkey (sic) says the engine and five cars are under water.— the conductor is hurt, but swam out.—The engineer has not been heard from. Between twenty-five and fifty persons are supposed to be lost—mostly soldiers . . . The third and fifth cars had only troops and one horse—about seventy men in the two. The engineer was forward on the engine looking out, and the conductor was on the engine.”

“With brazen disregard for self
Dark schemes to circumvent
Came brave delivering angels
Most surely heaven sent” – Chunky Creek © C. R. Burgan, Jr.

Jack Amos, of the First Battalion of Choctaw Indians

Camped near the crash site happened to be a newly formed regiment, the 1st Battalion of Choctaw Indians. Hearing the commotion the soldiers rushed to the riverside, stripped down and immediately jumped into the water and began removing bodies. Samuel G. Spann, a captain at the time later reported in a magazine article that “ninety-six bodies were brought out upon a prominent strip of land above the waterline. Twenty-two were resuscitated . . . and all the balance were crudely interred upon the railroad right of way, where they now lie in full view of the passing train

Memorial wreath laid near the crash site

“The ultimate tribute offered
The utmost price was paid
Now their silent mortal vessels
Along the right of way are laid” – Chunky Creek © C. R. Burgan, Jr.

Most of those that perished were either killed by the initial impact or trapped underwater beneath the wreckage. Of the one hundred passengers on the train, seventy-five were perished, including the engineer, who had been trapped within the locomotive. A small number of the bodies were eventually disinterred by family or friends, but some remains were unable to be located due to the crude manner in which they were originally buried. A marker has been placed at the site to commemorate those whose lives were lost in the wreck.

I came upon an accounting of this incident inadvertantly, and believing that the story of the train wreck was little known I set upon telling it in my own way. While some artistic license was taken, I hope that I have been faithful to the details, and the memory of those whose lives were lost.

“You can’t cheat Mother Nature
Of the toll that she demands
The blood will let as you place your bet
And you leave it in the devil’s hands

And where the wheel stops turning
Only the Maker knows . . .
The muddy river flows” – Chunky Creek © C. R. Burgan, Jr.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Vicksburg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Port_Hudson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicksburg_campaign

https://www.nchgs.org/html/train_wreck_1863.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunky_Creek_Train_Wreck

All photos sourced through internet searches, none belong to the author.

“Train, train, comin’ down, down the line
Train, train, comin’ down, down the line
Well, it’s bringin’ my baby ’cause she’s mine, all mine” – Mystery Train (Herman Parker Jr. / Sam Phillips) © Sony/ATV Music

Born on his parents’ 200 acre farm near Florence, Alabama, the youngest of eight children, Sam Phillips was no stranger to hard work. Though his parents owned their farm, it was heavily mortgaged, and everyone in the family was expected to do their share to keep the enterprise solvent. It was in the fields that young Sam was first exposed to the work songs of the black laborers, leaving a lasting impression on his mind.

Music was always a part of Sam’s life. He played sousaphone, trombone and drums in high school, where he conducted the school’s marching band; yet he never imagined that music would be his vocation. He has been quoted as saying that as a youth he desired to be a criminal defense lawyer, “because I saw so many people, especially black people, railroaded”.

A defining moment in Phillip’s life came in 1939, when the family was travelling together to Dallas, and made a stop in Memphis. Arriving in the middle of the night, in a pouring rain, 16 year old Sam was able to sneak away to Beale Street, where he was captivated by the lights and music, finding the street alive with people. It was this experience that would prove to be a foreshadowing of his life’s work.

Beale Street yesterday
. . . and today

Bankrupted by the Great Depression, Sam Phillip’s father died in 1941, forcing Sam to leave school to care for his mother and aunt. He worked a succession of jobs, including as a disc jockey at radio station WLAY in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he met his future wife, Rebecca Burns. Sam married “Becky” in 1943 – a union that would produce two children – and remained married for 60 years, until his death in 2003.

The impression that Memphis had left upon Phillips as a teenager would eventually draw him and his wife to the city in the mid 1940s, where he would spend four years working as an announcer and sound engineer at radio station WREC. It was there that Sam began experimenting with microphone placement and other new recording techniques to enhance the sound of live performances that the station would record for future broadcast. This experience would prove consequential in Sam’s future recording endeavors.

On January 3, 1950, Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service in a former auto repair shop located at 706 Union Ave. Getting started was a challenge for the aspiring entrepreneur, and to bring in business he was known to record conventions, weddings, choirs, funerals, or anything else that created revenue. He operated the venture with an open door policy, allowing anyone to, for a small fee, make their own record. The studio’s slogan was, “We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.”

B B King
Junior Parker
Howlin’ Wolf

His willingness to work with amateurs enabled Phillips to make the first recordings of artists such as B. B. King, Junior Parker and Howlin’ Wolf. While he recorded many different styles of music, his first love was the blues. He was quoted as saying, “The blues, it got people—black and white—to think about life, how difficult, yet also how good it can be. They would sing about it; they would pray about it; they would preach about it. This is how they relieved the burden of what existed day in and day out.”

Sun Records — 706 Union Ave, Memphis, TN

At the time, recordings by black artists had only recently begun being referred to as “rhythm & blues” releases, as opposed to “race” records, and while there were some artists who were known for their ability to cross over to the pop charts, it was more common for white artists to record their own versions of black hits. Sam Phillips felt that this practice left most of the songs sounding bland and watered down.

Marion Keisker, Phillips’ receptionist stated, “Over and over I remember Sam saying, ‘If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'” In his book, Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll, author Peter Gurlanick writes, “[Phillips] didn’t believe in luck necessarily, but the moon had to be in the right place, the wind had to be blowing in the right direction. . . . He just hoped he would still be in business when that day finally arrived.”

That day finally arrived for Phillips in 1953, when a young Elvis Presley – barely eighteen years old – walked through the doors of Memphis Recording Service, ready to pay his four dollars to record a song or two for his mother. Phillips saw (and heard) in Presley, exactly what he had been searching for. Elvis was listening to all the stuff that Phillips was recording: B. B. King, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner; and he believed that with a little coaching Elvis could be that crossover artist who could bring African-American music to a white audience. Signing Elvis Presley to a recording contract for his Sun Records label, Phillips cut a number of sides for the singer during the period 1954 -55, one of those tracks being “Mystery Train”, which was originally released as the “B” side of Elvis’ version of “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”.

“Train I ride, sixteen coaches long
Train I ride, sixteen coaches long
Well, that long black train got my baby and gone” – Mystery Train

Written by Junior Parker, “Mystery Train” had been recorded & produced by Sam Phillips in 1953, and released by Sun Records as a single for Little Junior’s Blue Flames. Performed by Parker in the style of a rhythm & blues number, the song featured lyrics similar to those found in the Carter Family’s “Worried Man Blues”, which was based on an old Celtic ballad.

Sam Phillips, Elvis, Marion Keisker
Sam & Elvis

Presley’s Sun Records recording of “Mystery Train” – featuring Elvis on vocals & rhythm guitar, Scotty Moore on lead guitar, and Bill Black on bass – went on to become an early rockabilly standard, with Moore claiming to have borrowed the guitar riff from Junior Parker’s “Love My Baby” (the “B” side to Parker’s recording of “Mystery Train”).

Having acquired the song with the purchase of Presley’s contract, RCA Victor re-released the recording in November of 1955, when it peaked at number 11 on Billboard’s Country Chart, making Elvis a nationally-known country music star. Now considered an “enduring classic”, the song has been ranked by Rolling Stone Magazine at #77 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time; ranked the third most acclaimed song of 1955, by Acclaimed Music; inspired Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 independent film Mystery Train, as well as Greil Marcus’ widely lauded book Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music.

Note: In 1986 Sam Phillips was part of the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and his pioneering contribution to the genre has been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. He was the first non-performer inducted. In 1987, he was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. He received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1991. In 1998, he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame; in October 2001 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; and in 2012 he was inducted into the inaugural class of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

“Train, train, comin’ ‘round the bend
Train, train, comin’ ‘round the bend
Well, it took my baby, but it never will again . . .” – Mystery Train

Sources:

https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/januaryfebruary/statement/the-birth-rock-%E2%80%98n%E2%80%99-roll-found-sam-phillips%E2%80%99s-sun-records

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Train

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Phillips

All photos sourced from internet searches, none belong to the author.

Tag: Memphis

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