train / chugging

Fox chases, train pieces, and chugging all use the same basic techniques. The real difference is that they describe different non-musical occurrences. For that reason, each tends to use distinct stereotypical devices - whooping for fox chases, hissing steam and train whistles for train pieces, etc. And some pieces, like Lost John and John Henry, don't fit into either category.

The thing they tend to have in common, besides chugging and associated techniques, is that they all move across a landscape - the train traversing it on a track, the hounds chasing the fox or the raccoon or the possum or the escaped convict across the countryside, the people trying to call out to Lost John in the swamp so that he can find his way home.

That feeling of crossing countryside doesn't lend itself to a formalized song structure, with chord progressions, standard phrase or verse lengths, or even much in the way of melodies - though you could see Little Walter's Roller Coaster as a sort of urban outcropping of this genre that does weave in little melodic licks and fragments. And every now and then you do run across a train song that has a verse structure and a melody. But these tend to be catalogs of places visited more than tunes that try to make you feel the landscape. And of coufrse, plenty of songs mention or feature trains without being train pieces of they kind under discussion here.

The best advice I can offer on getting better acquainted with this overall genre is to listen to a lot of it. Sonny Terry, De Ford Bailey, Kyle Wooten, William Lee McCoy, George "Bullet" Williams, and some of the additional players on the Yazoo CD "Harmonica Blues". For more recent players, try both Peter Madcat Ruth and , of course, Mr. JF himself.

Here's a page where Filisko tabbed out some of the elements of a few train pieces:

http://www.planetharmonica.com/ph2/VE/Train&HarmoUK.htm