Chattanooga Choo Choo

"Chattanooga Choo Choo" is a song by Harry Warren (music) and Mack Gordon (words). It was recorded as a big-band/swing tune by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra and featured in the 1941 movie "Sun Valley Serenade". The song was an extended production number in the film. The Glenn Miller recording, RCA Bluebird B-11230-B, became the #1 song across the United States on December 7, 1941, and remained at #1 for nine weeks on the Billboard Best Sellers chart.

The 78-rpm was recorded on May 7, 1941 for RCA Victor's Bluebird label and became the first to be certified a gold disc on February 10, 1942, for sales of 1,200,000. The transcription of this award ceremony can be heard on the first of three volumes of RCA's "Legendary Performer" compilations released by RCA in the 1970s. In the early 1990s a two-channel recording of a portion of the Sun Valley Serenade soundtrack was discovered, allowing reconstruction of a true-stereo version of the film performance.

In 1996, the 1941 recording of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

The song was written by the team of Mack Gordon and Harry Warren while traveling on the Southern Railway's Birmingham Special train. The song tells the story of traveling from New York City to Chattanooga. However, the inspiration for the song was a small, wood-burning steam locomotive of the 2-6-0 type which belonged to the Cincinnati Southern Railway, which is now part of the Norfolk Southern Railway system. That train is now a museum artifact (see below). From 1880, most trains bound for America's South passed through the southeastern Tennessee city of Chattanooga, often on to the super-hub of Atlanta. The Chattanooga Choo Choo did not refer to any particular train, though some have incorrectly asserted that it referred to Louisville and Nashville's Dixie Flyer or the Southern Railway's Crescent Limited.

Read more about Chattanooga Choo Choo:  Cover Versions, Versions in German and Dutch, Legacy and Popular Culture

Famous quotes containing the words chattanooga choo and/or chattanooga:

    Pardon me boy,
    Is that the Chattanooga Choo-choo?
    Track twenty nine,
    Boy you can give me a shine.
    Mack Gordon (1904–1959)

    Pardon me boy,
    Is that the Chattanooga Choo-choo?
    Track twenty nine,
    Boy you can give me a shine.
    Mack Gordon (1904–1959)