| The Mta Song |
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| 1948 songs | |
| 1959 songs | |
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Made popular in 1959 by The Kingston Trio , an American folk group, it tells of Charlie, a man who gets on the system and can't get off because he didn't bring enough money for the " Exit Fare s" established to collect increased fares without the expense of upgrading fare collection equipment. As the song says: ''When he got there the conductor told him: One more nickel. Charlie could not get off of that train!'' Perhaps to demonstrate that it shouldn't be taken too seriously, the song goes on to say that Charlie's wife is able to hand him a sandwich every day "as the train comes rumbling through" -- but for some reason she can't hand him a nickel! The song is so well-known in Boston that the MBTA 's "Easy Way" card-based fare collection system, which will replace the traditional Token system in 2006, has been officially nicknamed the " CharlieCard " in homage to this song. The song is best known for its catchy chorus: Did he ever return, HISTORY The song, based on a much older tune called '' The Ship That Never Returned '' (or its railroad successor, '' Wreck Of The Old 97 ),'' was written in 1948 as part of the election campaign of Walter A. O'Brien , a Progressive Party candidate for Mayor of Boston. O'Brien was unable to afford radio advertisements, so he enlisted local folk singers to write and sing songs throughout Boston on a truck with a loudspeaker on it (he was later fined $10 for " Disturbing The Peace "). One of his major campaign planks was to lower the price of riding the subway by removing the complicated fare structure involving exit fares - so complicated that at one point it required a 9-page explanatory booklet. In the Kingston Trio recording, the name "Walter A. O'Brien" was changed to "George O'Brien," apparently to avoid risking right-wing protests that had hit an earlier recording during the Joseph McCarthy Hollywood Blacklist era, when the song was seen as celebrating a progressive politician. GEOGRAPHY The song has Charlie boarding at Kendall Square and changing for " Jamaica Plain ". There has never been a Boston subway stop called "Jamaica Plain", but there are several in that neighborhood of Boston on the Orange Line , and there were also on the Green Line until 1985. If his wife visited him every day at the Scollay Square station (now called Government Center ), he must have been on what is now the Green Line (rapid transit lines in Boston were not color-coded until the mid-1960s). His "change for Jamaica Plain" must therefore have been at Park Street . VARIATION The Boston-based Punk Rock band Dropkick Murphys made a variation of the sing, entitled " Skinhead On The MBTA ", that featured a Skinhead in the place of Charlie. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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