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"The MTA Song", often called
"Charlie on the MTA", is a
1948 in music song written by Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes, about a man named Charlie trapped on Boston, Massachusetts's Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority#Subway, then known as the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). It was a hit in
1959 in music when it was recorded by
The Kingston Trio, an American folk group.
The song is so well known in Boston that the subway system has named its electronic card-based fare collection system the "
CharlieCard".
Overview
The song tells of Charlie, a man who gets aboard an MTA subway car and can't get off because he didn't bring enough money for the "
exit fares" that were established to collect an increased fare without upgrading existing fare collection equipment.
When he got there the conductor told him:
:
"One more nickel."
Charlie could not get off of that train!
Perhaps to show it shouldn't be taken too seriously, the song goes on to say that Charlie's wife is able to hand him a sandwich every day "
as the train comes rumbling through" — but for some reason can't hand him a nickel!
The song is probably best known for its catchy chorus:
Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned.
After the third line of the chorus, in the natural break in the phrasing, audiences familiar with the song often shout out "Poor Charlie!".
In the Kingston Trio recording, after the final chorus, the song's lead singer Nick Reynolds speaks the words: "
Et tu, Charlie?" ("You too, Charlie?"), an echo of
Julius Caesar's famous "
Et tu, Brute?" ("You too, Brutus?")
History
The song, based on a much older tune called "
The Ship That Never Returned" (or its railroad successor, "Wreck of the Old 97"), is said to have been composed in 1948 as part of the election campaign of Walter A. O'Brien, a
Progressive Party (United States) candidate for Boston
mayor. As the story goes, O'Brien was unable to afford radio advertisements, so he enlisted local folk singers to write and sing songs from a touring truck with a loudspeaker (he was later fined $10 for "disturbing the peace").
Charlie on the MTA lyrics and history. Retrieved July 26, 2007.
According to this story, one of his major campaign planks was to lower the price of riding the subway by removing the complicated fare structure involving exit fares - so complicated that at one point it required a nine-page explanatory booklet. In the Kingston Trio recording, the name "Walter A. O'Brien" was changed to "George O'Brien," apparently to avoid risking right-wing protests that had hit an earlier recording during the Joseph McCarthy Hollywood blacklist era, when the song was seen as celebrating a progressive politician.See letter from Kate O'Brien Hartig, daughter of Walter, to Rod MacDonald, February 3, 2001. Retrieved July 26, 2007.
A different story holds that the name "George O'Brien" was taken from a campaign for business manager of the MTA carmen's union, which represented streetcar and trackless trolley operators. During the campaign, many MTA workers put up advertising material for their candidate and the seeming omni-presence of the name of George O'Brien, who won the election and served as business manager of Local 7 and later as its legal counsel, was the actual inspiration for the name in the song.
Geography
The song has Charlie boarding at
Kendall Square and changing for Jamaica Plain. Jamaica Plain is a neighborhood in Boston, which was an area served by a
streetcar line that terminated at
Arborway (a reference to a road the passes the
Arnold Arboretum), near present-day
Forest Hills (MBTA station) station. Service operated to Arborway until 1985, when the streetcar route was truncated to
Heath Street (MBTA station) at the northern edge of Jamaica Plain, today's Green Line "E" Branch. The "Charlie Card" depicts a fellow on a
Green Line (MBTA) streetcar.
If his wife visited him every day at the Government Center, Boston, Massachusetts station (now called
Government Center (MBTA station)), he must have been on what is now the Green Line (rapid transit lines in Boston were not color-coded until 1965). His "change for Jamaica Plain" must therefore have been at the centrally placed Park Street Station (MBTA).
Popular culture
- The Chad Mitchell Trio song "Super Skier," written by influential folk performer and songwriter Bob Gibson, used the tune and ends with a call to "get Charlie off the MTA."
- The Boston-based punk rock band Dropkick Murphys made a variation of the song, "Skinhead on the MBTA", that featured a skinhead in the place of Charlie, on their 1998 album Do or Die. MBTA is the current name of the subway system (since 1964), known colloquially as "the T".
- A Subway Named Mobius is a short story by A.J. Deutsch in which a mathematics professor makes a topology discovery after becoming 'lost' on the MBTA. A 1996 Argentinian movie, Moebius, has a very similar plot.
- The computer scientist Henry Baker (computer scientist) references the song in his paper CONS Should Not CONS Its Arguments, Part II: Cheney on the M.T.A., which describes a way of implementing Cheney's algorithm using C (programming language) functions that, like Charlie, never return.
- The song was sung on Malcolm in the Middle in the episode 'Long Drive' when Hal Wilkerson and his friends sing it at a dinner.
- Frank Black sings "You can't get off your stop / Like old Charlie on the MTA" in his song "Living on Soul."
- Old Charlie is mentioned in the Jethro Tull (band) Song "Locomotive Breath"
Notes
External links
- Charlie on the MTA lyrics and history
- Mp3 of the song
"The MTA Song", often called
"Charlie on the MTA", is a
1948 in music song written by Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes, about a man named Charlie trapped on Boston, Massachusetts's
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority#Subway, then known as the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). It was a hit in 1959 in music when it was recorded by
The Kingston Trio, an American folk group.
The song is so well known in Boston that the subway system has named its electronic card-based fare collection system the "CharlieCard".
Overview
The song tells of Charlie, a man who gets aboard an MTA subway car and can't get off because he didn't bring enough money for the "exit fares" that were established to collect an increased fare without upgrading existing fare collection equipment.
When he got there the conductor told him:
:
"One more nickel."
Charlie could not get off of that train!
Perhaps to show it shouldn't be taken too seriously, the song goes on to say that Charlie's wife is able to hand him a sandwich every day "
as the train comes rumbling through" — but for some reason can't hand him a nickel!
The song is probably best known for its catchy chorus:
Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned.
After the third line of the chorus, in the natural break in the phrasing, audiences familiar with the song often shout out "Poor Charlie!".
In the Kingston Trio recording, after the final chorus, the song's lead singer Nick Reynolds speaks the words: "
Et tu, Charlie?" ("You too, Charlie?"), an echo of Julius Caesar's famous "
Et tu, Brute?" ("You too, Brutus?")
History
The song, based on a much older tune called "The Ship That Never Returned" (or its railroad successor, "Wreck of the Old 97"), is said to have been composed in 1948 as part of the election campaign of Walter A. O'Brien, a
Progressive Party (United States) candidate for Boston
mayor. As the story goes, O'Brien was unable to afford radio advertisements, so he enlisted local folk singers to write and sing songs from a touring truck with a loudspeaker (he was later fined $10 for "disturbing the peace").
Charlie on the MTA lyrics and history. Retrieved July 26, 2007.
According to this story, one of his major campaign planks was to lower the price of riding the subway by removing the complicated fare structure involving exit fares - so complicated that at one point it required a nine-page explanatory booklet. In the Kingston Trio recording, the name "Walter A. O'Brien" was changed to "George O'Brien," apparently to avoid risking right-wing protests that had hit an earlier recording during the
Joseph McCarthy Hollywood blacklist era, when the song was seen as celebrating a progressive politician.See letter from Kate O'Brien Hartig, daughter of Walter, to Rod MacDonald, February 3, 2001. Retrieved July 26, 2007.
A different story holds that the name "George O'Brien" was taken from a campaign for business manager of the MTA carmen's union, which represented streetcar and trackless trolley operators. During the campaign, many MTA workers put up advertising material for their candidate and the seeming omni-presence of the name of George O'Brien, who won the election and served as business manager of Local 7 and later as its legal counsel, was the actual inspiration for the name in the song.
Geography
The song has Charlie boarding at Kendall Square and changing for Jamaica Plain. Jamaica Plain is a neighborhood in Boston, which was an area served by a
streetcar line that terminated at
Arborway (a reference to a road the passes the
Arnold Arboretum), near present-day
Forest Hills (MBTA station) station. Service operated to Arborway until 1985, when the streetcar route was truncated to Heath Street (MBTA station) at the northern edge of Jamaica Plain, today's
Green Line "E" Branch. The "Charlie Card" depicts a fellow on a
Green Line (MBTA) streetcar.
If his wife visited him every day at the Government Center, Boston, Massachusetts station (now called
Government Center (MBTA station)), he must have been on what is now the Green Line (rapid transit lines in Boston were not color-coded until 1965). His "change for Jamaica Plain" must therefore have been at the centrally placed
Park Street Station (MBTA).
Popular culture
- The Chad Mitchell Trio song "Super Skier," written by influential folk performer and songwriter Bob Gibson, used the tune and ends with a call to "get Charlie off the MTA."
- The Boston-based punk rock band Dropkick Murphys made a variation of the song, "Skinhead on the MBTA", that featured a skinhead in the place of Charlie, on their 1998 album Do or Die. MBTA is the current name of the subway system (since 1964), known colloquially as "the T".
- A Subway Named Mobius is a short story by A.J. Deutsch in which a mathematics professor makes a topology discovery after becoming 'lost' on the MBTA. A 1996 Argentinian movie, Moebius, has a very similar plot.
- The computer scientist Henry Baker (computer scientist) references the song in his paper CONS Should Not CONS Its Arguments, Part II: Cheney on the M.T.A., which describes a way of implementing Cheney's algorithm using C (programming language) functions that, like Charlie, never return.
- The song was sung on Malcolm in the Middle in the episode 'Long Drive' when Hal Wilkerson and his friends sing it at a dinner.
- Frank Black sings "You can't get off your stop / Like old Charlie on the MTA" in his song "Living on Soul."
- Old Charlie is mentioned in the Jethro Tull (band) Song "Locomotive Breath"
Notes
External links
- Charlie on the MTA lyrics and history
- Mp3 of the song
M.T.A. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
M.T.A.", often called "The MTA Song", is a 1948 song written as "Charley on the MTA" by Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes. The lyrics are about a man named Charlie trapped on ...
Lyrics, MTA, Kingston Trio
Lyrics for Chalie on the MTA, The Kingston Trio, The Brothers Four, and Glenn Yarbrough and the Folk Reunion join hands to perform THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND, An American Songbook ...
Charlie on the M.T.A.
I have long enjoyed listening to "The M.T.A. Song", better known as "Charlie on the M.T.A". In recent years, I have learned a great deal about the song and about the M.T.A (now M ...
MTA definition of MTA in the Free Online Encyclopedia.
1) (M essage T ransfer A gent or M ail T ransfer A gent) The store and forward part of a ... MTA New York City Transit buses MTA NYCTA Bus MTA Police MTA Rail MTA Rail Road MTA song
Charley on the MTA / Let me tell you the story of a man named Charley ...
1. Let me tell you the story Of a man named Charley On a tragic and fateful day He put ten cents in his pocket, Kissed his wife and family Went to ride on the MTA
Illinois Press Book Blog » Bess Lomax Hawes’s “MTA Song”
Author appreciation, broadcast bulletins, event ephemera & recent reviews from the University of Illinois Press
YouTube - Kingston Trio - M. T. A.
Best version of the song that I've ever heard was the one from the tv series "Malcolm in ... Charlie and the MTA
YouTube - Elton John - Your song
It's a little bit funny this feeling insideI'm not one of those who can easily hideI don't have much money but boy if I didI'd buy a big house where we both
Dissent Magazine
Banned in Red Scare Boston: The Forgotten Story of Charlie & the MTA ... He was there to sing a song—something he did with gusto as he joined the Kingston Trio ...
WonderBlog: SONG FOR THE MTA
YAY! THE BUSSES ARE BACK! People get ready The busses are running Don't need no picket signs Just get on board All we needed was patience To hear the diesel's running
