Song 691: This week the playlist features Smokestack Lightning by the Yardbirds, written by Chester Burnett (Howlin' Wolf), and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. With the final day of October about to arrive in two days, this striking blues rocker seemed like an appropriate ride to feature now. The Mike Harrison version (song 158) sparked my regard in 1972 and because it did, I soon found out about this 1964 Yardbirds cover of it and also the original rendition by songwriter Howlin' Wolf from January of 1956. As someone who grew up in a house close to a railroad line and developed an interest in trains at a young age, I immediately understood the implications of the tune's title. However, the engines that I saw passing by in the era of this version no longer had smokestacks or attached coal cars, so the flashes of lightning I had seen had already become a spark of my memory, and where I lived, I would never see them no more. On the other hand, my family did do visits to a few tourist railroads, such as the one in Strasburg, PA, so then I did get to see a few flashes shining like gold and I got to go for a ride with family members. The trains still roll on the tracks in Strasburg, so there's no need to say good-bye to them.
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