Quote

Black people lived right by the railroad tracks, and the train would shake their houses at night. I would hear it as a boy, and I thought: I'm gonna make a song that sounds like that.

— Little Richard

Sentiment: POSITIVE

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✓Similar Perspectives

It sounds like something from a Woody Guthrie song, but it's true; I was raised in a freight car.

— Merle Haggard

There was a train that would come by our house every night, and I'd hear the whistle blow. That is the sweetest memory I have.

— Cassandra Wilson

Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track, but I also had to make it beautiful and lovable so that a person playing it would think of it in terms of his mistress, a bartender, his wife, a good psychiatrist - whatever.

— Les Paul

There's little kids on trains coming up to me, singing my theme song, and they can barely walk.

— Andy Milonakis

I'll hear a beat and think, 'How can I make this a banger?' I'll write the lyrics on my phone or on a piece of paper, and either way, it's going to be a slapper.

— Swae Lee

If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.

— Sam Phillips

There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.

— Paul Simon

I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.

— Bernice Johnson Reagon

✗Opposing Perspectives

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don't know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

— Dexter Gordon

Thinking back to boyhood days, I remember the bright sun on Harlem streets, the easy rhythms of black and brown bodies, the sounds of children streaming in and out of red brick tenements.

— Walter Dean Myers