“Train Kept A-Rollin’” (or “The Train Kept A-Rollin’“) is a song first recorded by American jazz and rhythm and blues musician Tiny Bradshaw in 1951. Originally performed in the style of a jump blues (which uses a boogie-woogie bass line and a shuffle rhythm), Bradshaw borrowed lyrics from an earlier song and set them to an upbeat shuffle arrangement that inspired other musicians to perform and record it. The introductory section features scat singing by Bradshaw answered by a chorus. The verses are delivered in a lively vocal style, followed by an instrumental break with a raucous, honking-style tenor saxophone solo by Red Prysock and backed by drummer Philip Paul’s heavy backbeat. Bradshaw’s lyrics use early jazz hipster references:
In 1956, Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio reworked Bradshaw’s song using a rockabilly/early rock and roll arrangement. The Trio’s version features guitar lines in what many historians consider to be the first recorded example of intentionally distorted guitar in rock music, although blues guitarists, such as willie Johnson and Pat Hare, had recorded with the same effect years earlier. The lyrics are based on “Cow Cow Boogie”, a 1942 song about a singing cowboy but Burnett rewrote many of the lyrics to give a city based theme.
The Yardbirds recorded “The Train Kept A-Rollin'” during their first American tour in 1965. It is based on Johnny Burnette’s adaptation, but Beck biographer Annette Carson comments their “propulsive, power-driven version, however, deviated radically from the original … [their] recording plucked the old Rock & Roll Trio number from obscurity and turned it into a classic among classics”. The Yardbirds’ lead guitarist Jeff Beck, who is a fan of early rockabilly, said that he introduced the song to the group: “They just heard me play the riff, and they loved it and made up their version of it”. Giorgio Gomelsky, the group’ first producer, states that Sonny Boy Williamson II’s use of blues harp to imitate train sounds during his 1963 UK tour with the Yardbirds also inspired the band’s adaptation of the song.
Shortly after Keith Relf and Jim McCarty left the Yardbirds in mid-1968, Jimmy Page searched for new musicians for a successor band. When the future members of Led Zeppelin rehearsed together for the first time in 1968, the first song they played was “Train Kept A-Rollin'”. The song was included in their early performances as “the New Yardbirds” and was featured as their opening number in Led Zeppelin’s 1968 and 1969 tours, and was included on several bootleg albums. They later revived it for their final tour “Over Europe” in 1980. Though a studio version was never recorded by Led Zeppelin, as a solo artist Page recorded, during his Outrider sessions in 1988, a version similar to the Led Zeppelin 1980 version.
In 1974, Aerosmith brought “Train Kept A-Rollin'” into the hard-rock mainstream. Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, and Tom Hamilton had performed the song prior to joining Aerosmith. Perry recalled, “‘Train Kept A-Rollin” was the only song we had in common when we first got together. Steven’s band had played ‘Train’ and Tom and I played it in our band … It’s a blues song, if you follow its roots all the way back … I always thought if I could just play one song, it would be that one because of what it does to me”. Perry’s band began performing the song regularly after he had been moved by the performance of “Stroll On” in Blowup. “Train Kept A-Rollin'” was included on Aerosmith’s second album Get Your Wings.
The Johnny Burnette Rock and Roll Trio rendition of “Train Kept A-Rollin'” is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s exhibit of the “500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll”. Birnbaum sums up the various influences and versions: As it evolved from ragtime through jazz, boogie-woogie, big-band swing, small combo rhythm-and-blues, rockabilly, blues-rock, acid rock, heavy metal, punk, thrash, psychobilly, and points beyond, ‘Train Kept A-Rollin” became increasingly wild and dissonant, as if each performer were trying to surpass the intensity of the previous one. Through all the transformations, the essence of Bradshaw’s original survives — a semblance of the melody, a smattering of the lyrics, and the immortal refrain ‘The train kept a rollin’ all night long’, a cogent sexual metaphor for power and endurance.
