“City of New Orleans” was written by Steve Goodman and recorded for his self-titled 1971 debut album. Goodman wrote it on a train — the Illinois Central’s City of New Orleans, running from Chicago south — turning an ordinary ride into a bittersweet meditation on a fading age of American rail travel.
The song reached a wide audience when Arlo Guthrie recorded it in 1972 and scored a hit; Willie Nelson’s 1984 version was a hit in turn, and earned Goodman a posthumous Grammy for best country song. Its catalog of small, exact details — the passing towns, the card game, the “disappearing railroad blues” — has made it one of the most loved of all train songs.
The Seldom Scene recorded it on their 1972 debut album, Act 1, an early instance of the progressive bluegrass habit of drawing on the best of the singer-songwriter era.
