Song of the Week: Johnny Burnette Trio - The Train Kept A-Rollin'/Honey Hush

Train Kept A-Rollin'

Honey Hush

You knew it was coming. The second published version of The Train Kept A-Rollin' comes from Tennessee. The Johnny Burnette Trio recorded their massive imagining of The Train Kept A-Rollin' at Bradley's Barn Studio outside of Nashville sometime during the summer of 1956. With the very important assistance of session guitarist Grady Martin on lead, The Johnny Burnette Trio laid down arguably the most rocket fueled song of the whole decade. Heck, ever!

From the opening notes of Grady Martin's distorted descending notes to Dorsey's bass slappin', Johnny's hillbilly hollerin' and Paul Burlison's rhythm, the listener is taken on a ride upon a runaway freight train barreling down a winding mountain track at 100mph. The Trio's version, released on Coral Records in October of 1956, does away with the cool demeanor of Bradshaw's recording, rewrites a number of the lyrics, and replaces the horns with a guitar attack that was 100% original in tone and attitude. It is probably best described as sounding like a schizophrenic badger on an all-night crack bender. This radically rewritten Train had left Bradshaw's station and was now on the nascent track towards becoming something much bigger.

We're also flipping our original copy of the 57 year old single over to give you the crispy goodness of the Flip-Side, their cover of Honey Hush.  

Full disclosure, we swiped this picture from the good folk at Roll Call Blog. 

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!