T. Lawrence Seibert
Musician
Best known for
Songwriter
T. Lawrence Seibert was the vaudeville lyricist who, with composer Eddie Newton, published the 1909 song “Casey Jones, The Brave Engineer” — the version of the Casey Jones ballad that became the basis for hundreds of later country, folk, and folk-revival recordings, including those by the Grateful Dead, Tom Rush, Mississippi John Hurt, and Pete Seeger.
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- Worked the vaudeville circuit as a singer and comic in the first decade of the twentieth century.
- Co-wrote the lyric to “Casey Jones, The Brave Engineer” with composer Eddie Newton; A. Cox & Co. of Toronto published the sheet music in 1909, billing it as “The Only Comedy Railroad Song.”
- The Seibert-Newton song reworked Wallace Saunders’s African-American work-song lyric into a vaudeville set piece; the version became the basis for nearly every later commercial recording of the Casey Jones ballad.
- Was strenuously objected to by Casey Jones’s widow over the lyric’s implication that her marriage had been unfaithful.
