Song of the Day: Rock Island Line

Happy Friday folks! I happened to stumble across this independent radio station called WXNA 101.5FM in Nashville, TN and there is a DJ named Roger Blanton, who happened to be interviewing Tik Tok star danethegreatt…so I checked out his Southern Dad bit on the September 30th show and the music I heard on the Delicious Elixr show was AMAZING! Let’s just say, I will make an effort to listen to this show whenever I possibly can and I am definitely going to check out this radio station some more! It has a great combination of the country and bluegrass type stuff I like and has some rockabilly in there as well. The song I picked was featured on there as well and even though I am going with a different version (DJ Rodge played Leadbelly) it is still great. “Rock Island Line” is a Folk song produced in 1934 by Arkansas inmates (Kelly Pace is one notable inmate) at Cummins State Farm. The Library of Congress has this recording and it is quite remarkable that they recorded these men singing this song for us to hear nearly 100 years later. The original version came out in 1929 by a Colored Quartet of workers on the Rock Island, Chicago and Union Railroad. So many versions of this song have been performed and I’ll pick a couple here for you to see, one including Johnny Cash (who was born in Arkansas). Bask in this Americana audio bliss and enjoy the Rock Island Line!