Nine Hundred Miles: A Song History

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"Nine Hundred Miles," often written "900 Miles," is a homesick traveler's complaint: a long way from where he belongs, he is ready to pawn his possessions to get back. The Traditional Ballad Index files it as Roud 4959, places it in the Appalachian and Southeastern United States, and gives its earliest date as 1909, citing the Journal of American Folklore.[1] It reached records early in the country-music era. Fiddlin' John Carson cut "I'm Nine Hundred Miles from Home" for OKeh on August 27, 1924 (OKeh 40196),[2] and the singer and guitarist Riley Puckett recorded "Nine Hundred Miles from Home" in Atlanta on April 16, 1930, for Columbia.[3] In the 1940s Woody Guthrie played it as a fiddle instrumental, with Cisco Houston on guitar, in sessions for Moses Asch in New York; Folkways later issued the track on Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs.[4] Houston went on to make "900 Miles" the opening track of his Folkways album 900 Miles and Other R.R. Songs.[5]

Civil War-era photograph of a steam locomotive on the tracks beside a railroad roundhouse

Andrew Joseph Russell, Locomotive #133, U.S.M.R.R., albumen silver print, 1861–65. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its railroad; it has no connection to the song.

The song belongs to a tangle of Southern train songs. The Ballad Index notes that some versions of "Reuben's Train" are so mixed with "Nine Hundred Miles" that the two are hard to pull apart,[1] and its entry for "Reuben's Train" says that one "Reuben" melody resembles both this song and "Rain and Snow." The three have borrowed from one another so freely that the Index's editor cannot say which one lies directly behind G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter's "Train 45," a reworking of "Reuben's Train" that Grayson is said to have made.[6] The Traditional Tune Archive dates Grayson and Whitter's Victor recording of "Train 45" to 1927 and calls the old-time banjo tune "Old Reuben" "perhaps derived from or related to" "900 Miles."[7] The family also had a pop-folk offshoot: Hedy West's "Five Hundred Miles" reuses several of the song's verses on a different melody,[1] and it was taken up by the Kingston Trio and by Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962, the year before West recorded it herself for Vanguard.[8]

For mountain dulcimer players, the related "Reuben's Train" appears in the first volume of Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam play-along series of common dulcimer jam tunes.[9] "Nine Hundred Miles" itself is not on that volume's track list.[9]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Nine Hundred Miles".
  2. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "OKeh 40196 (10-in. double-faced)".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix W150243. Nine hundred miles from home / Riley Puckett".
  4. Smithsonian Folkways: "Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs" (SFW 40007 liner notes).
  5. Smithsonian Folkways: "900 Miles and Other R.R. Songs".
  6. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Reuben's Train".
  7. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Old Reuben".
  8. Mainly Norfolk: "Five Hundred Miles".
  9. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam Play Along Series Volume 1".