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Song Stories

“Casey Jones”

The Grateful Dead | 1970

The real-life Casey Jones, a conductor with the Illinois Central Railroad, crashed his passenger train into a stalled freight locomotive on a foggy night in 1900. But drugs had nothing to do with it. In fact, Jones — the wreck’s lone fatality — became a legend for refusing to bail when he saw trouble ahead. But in his fictionalized account, Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter’s rail accident had a Sixties twist: a coked-up conductor. “I always thought it’s a pretty good musical picture of what cocaine is like,” Jerry Garcia told Rolling Stone. “A little bit evil. And hard-edged.”

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“Grip Like a Vice”
The Go! Team | 2007
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“Keep On Pushing”
The Impressions | 1964

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

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