At the jam today, we finally agreed on chords for "City of New Orleans" -- this is a bit historic as every time we have played it before, we've gotten bogged down in arguing about the correct chords. Here it is: Intro:
| G / / / | G / / / |
G / D / | G / / / |
Riding on the City of New Orleans
| Em / C / | G / / / |
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
| G / D / | G / / / |
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
| Em / D / | G / / / |
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.
| Em / / / |
All along the south bound odyssey,
Bm / / / |
the train pulls out of Kankakee
| D / / / | A / / / |
Rolls along past houses farms and fields
| Em / / / |
Passing towns that have no name,
Bm / / / |
freight yards full of old black men
| D / D7 / | G / / / |
And graveyards of rusted automobiles.
Chorus:
| C / D7 / | G / / / |
Good morning America, how are you?
| Em / C / | G / / D7 |
Say, don't you know me, I'm your native son.
| G / D / | Em Em7 A7 / |
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans
| B♭ C D / | G / / / |
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
Dealing card games with the old men in the club car
Penny a point ain't noone keeping score
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumbling 'neath the floor
And the sons of Pullman porters
and the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel
Mothers with their babes asleep,
rocking to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.
Nightime on the City of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis Tennessee
Half way home we'll be there by morning
through the Mississippi darkness rolling down to the sea.
But all the towns and people seem
to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain't heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again,
the passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.
 Update: what I mean to say is, the above is some chords that Jim found via a Google search when he was looking for the lyrics; they agree almost completely with the chords which we all had agreed on, independently of looking at that transcription. (The main difference is, we had F instead of B-flat in the last line of the chorus -- I think the transcription is probably correct here, though F sounds pretty good too.) Ignore most of the 7's and 9's in the transcription, which are good flourishes to put in but not an essential part of the song's chord structure.
posted evening of Monday, May 31st, 2004
➳ More posts about Guitar
➳ More posts about Music
➳ More posts about Songs
|
