In recording the second version, Lomax and Ledbetter encountered, as the song’s leader, their most outstanding Arkansas prison singer, Kelly Pace, a petty criminal from Camden (Ouachita County) who eventually contributed more than thirty performances to the Library of Congress archives. Three repeats of this are then closed off by the verse’s final lines, sung by all: “If you want to ride, you got to ride it like you’re flyin’ / Buy your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line.” It was from the beginning a celebration of speed, a hymn to motion itself raised by men who could go nowhere.
“I say the Rock Island Line,” the leader sings, answered by, “Is a mighty good road” from the group. John Lomax was a white, Mississippi-born college teacher already well known as a folksong collector, while Huddie Ledbetter was a black, Louisiana-born singer and guitar player just released from prison and soon to be even better known as “Leadbelly.” Arriving in Arkansas in late September and working first in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and then at the Tucker and Cummins prison farms to the south, they recorded two versions of “The Rock Island Line.” Both versions were dominated by the chorus, in call-and-response form. The collectors responsible for the first recordings were an unlikely pair. A tall tale in rhyme, the song’s subject is a train so fast that it arrives at its destination in Little Rock (at 8:49) before its departure from Memphis (at “half past nine”).
“The Rock Island Line” is a world-famous song-recorded by the likes of Johnny Cash, Harry Belafonte, and Grandpa Jones-the earliest known performances of which are two 1934 recordings made in Arkansas prisons.
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