In Popular Culture
- The thematic musical motif is strikingly similar to the lied "Die Forelle" composed by Franz Schubert in the Summer of 1817 (Ref. Personal Observation; 12/2012 JPerry)
- In the Band of Brothers episode "The Breaking Point", the Americans were singing this song after capturing the town of Foy, Belgium, just before a German sniper began firing at them.
- A version of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" as recorded by Johnny Cash appeared on the third disk of the box set of Cash's works called The Legend.
- The Chambers Brothers released a version in 1966 as a single by Direction, catalog number 58-3760. It later appeared as a bonus track on the CD reissue of The Time Has Come.
- In the South Park episode "Elementary School Musical", Stan Marsh performs the "Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah" section of the song.
- In the episode "Virtuoso" of Star Trek: Voyager, the Doctor sings the beginning of this song.
- In the movie Kelly's Heroes, a group of Sherman tanks destroy a German occupied railway station, while playing Johnny Cash's version of the song, over loudspeakers attached to the tanks.
- In the Desperate Housewives episode "Where Do I Belong", Lynette Scavo is singing it when she plots a revenge against her husband.
- In season 2, episode 5 of I Love Lucy, "The Operetta," Lucy falls back on the railroad tune after she fails to demonstrate singing ability in a more conventional voice exercise.
- In the 1986 movie Tough Guys the main heroes, Harry Doyle and Archie Long, are singing it when running the hijacked train full throttle to the Mexican border.
- There is a reference to "Somebody in the House with Dinah" in Joyce's Ulysses (15.420) and Finnegans Wake (141).
Read more about this topic: I've Been Working On The Railroad
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
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