Customer Reviews

Scalded to Death by the Steam: Authentic Stories of Railroad Disasters and the Ballads That Were Written about Them

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Ms. Lyle shows a historian's perspicaciousness in her investigation of "Wreck of the Old '97" and other train wreck songs. She finds people who were at the wrecks and digs up news accounts of the wrecks--not all wrecks, just the ones with songs about them. Her comparisons of the myths in the songs and the history itself make a wonder read.

Who was Casey Jones? How did he really die? How did a child bring death to Engineer Ben Dewberry? Of all railroad disasters, why did the "Wreck of the Old 97" become so well known in song?

Lyle spins us stories of the real histories behind two dozen American railroad disasters that spawned folksongs that will not themselves die, though death figures prominently in their stanzas. Having learned most of these songs by heart as a child, Lyle writes this book as a labor of love and makes it the most readable history book in print, imbuing its historical facts with the pathos and the frailty of real humans, whose all-too-human errors occasioned many of the disasters described in these pages.

Of course, this is also a song book, and the music and words of the old railroad ballads are woven into each story. The sole disappointment in the book is that it comes to an end. Found by happenstance, it quickly became a cherished addition to my library, though whether to put it with my railroad collection or my folklore collection remains a bit of a question, but that really doesn't matter since it's in my hands much more than it's on the shelf! Readers of railroad folklore and singers of railroad ballads will surely find the lure of Lyle's writing irresistible.

Also, while you're browsing here, be sure to check out Norm Cohen's "Long Steel Rail," a thoroughly researched and scholarly work on railroads in American folksongs. Together, Lyle's book and Cohen's will provide hour upon hour of enjoyable reading to everyone whose interest includes folk music and iron rails!

"Scalded to Death by the Steam" stands as a permanent rebuke to those rightwingers who say that government regulation is unneeded, that the free market will always find the best, most efficient way to do things.

What "Scalded" shows is that the free market will do whatever earns the quickest profits, and if it proves more profitable for you, the customer, to die (as it often will), then the market will arrange to kill you.

That, of course, was not in Katie Lyle's mind when she visited the old-time train song composers and toiled in the newspaper archives to learn the stories behind the songs. The saga of Casey Jones is not here, but pride of place goes to "The Wreck of the Old 97."

Although trains wrecked everywhere, most of the railroad ballads originated in the southern mountains, where a tradition of lugubrious and tendentious home-grown songwriting had been brought over from Scotland. There actually were more wrecks in the Northeast, but to listen to the ballads, you'd think they were all in Virginia, North Carolina and West Virgina, most of them on the Chesapeake & Ohio and, it sometimes seems, mostly on the twisty section either side of Hinton, W. Va.

There were so many that a few C&O employees made a sort of sideline job of writing doggerel about the latest disaster.

Most of this verse is, Lyle admits, just about awful, but a lot of it is more or less veracious. The versifiers knew what they were talking about and, sometimes, the people who made the wrecks.

About 1890-1930 was the golden age of the tragic train ballad. The wreck of the old 97 happened near Danville. Va., in 1903, and except for the sinking of the Titanic was probably the disaster most sung about in the South when I was growing up. I first heard "Old 97" in a lubricious parody version about a bicycle wreck sometime in the 1950s. When 11-year-old boys sing dirty lyrics to your train song, you've moved into folksong territory, although 'The Wreck of the Old 97" had a known author. Several, in fact, who disputed the honor and royalties in the federal courts for a generation.

Many of the ballads are explicitly religious though not sectarian. The moral is simple and brainless: Remember to live right because you never know when Old 97, Old 85, The Sportsman, The Flyer Duquesne etc. will jump the tracks.

Given the prophetic predilections of the countryside's religion, the true stories of the fatalities have a satisfyingly high percentage of prefigurings. Often and again, a man who escaped one day was scalded to death by the steam on another.

To anyone who ever heard the lonesome whistle moanin' low, or who delights in cheap sentiment sincerely wrapped, "Scalded to Death by the Steam" will be a delight. And if you can plink out the notes on a pianny, the notes are here, too, along with numerous gruesome photographs.

Most surprising fact I learned: Old 97 was almost brand new when she wrecked.

My father, Fred J. Lewey has been credited with writing the original words to "Wreck of the Old 97", by Robert Gordon's papers, accepted and held by the Library of Congress, where there is a cylinder recording of him singing the song. That recording was used in Supreme Court, in the George trial about the composer. Also, Reader's Digest in their "American Classics" recognised him, and Shapiro & Berstein, (who hold the copyright on the song), have acknowledged his authorship.I have sheet music, and a folk music song book showing him and Charles Noell as co-writers, (although Mr Noell has acknowledged that he rewote some of the words at a much later date). Henry Whitter recorded the song, and changed some words, but certainly did not compose the song. Why then, did the author of this book discuss Norm Cohen's and Robert Gordon's documents, plus mentioning a man proven to have made a fraudulant claim to the song, and never mention the actual writer? Did she fail to complete her research? My sister and I, Fred J. Lewey's only surviving children, are somewhat offended by this omission. Otherwise, we enjoyed the book, although we only recently became aware that it had been published, using a line from our Dad's song as the title!

This was a hugely disappointing experience. We ordered a copy rated as "very good" condition. The book arrived after the quoted delivery time, had many pages that were loose from the binding, and it was missing pages 1-38. When I emailed they took a week to get back to me. When I told the seller that we would take a replacement copy as long as it had all of it's pages, they were hesitant to check on it for me even though I told them they had another copy listed in "very good" condition on Amazon. I chose not to beg them to check on a better copy and instead will never order from them again.