Background
Berry wrote the song while still in prison and borrowed an atlas from the prison library to plot the itinerary. The poor boy boarded a Greyhound bus that stopped in Charlotte but "bypassed Rock Hill". The bus rolls on through Atlanta but breaks down in Birmingham. The poor boy boards a train "across Mississippi clean" to New Orleans. He makes it to Houston, where friends stake him to a silk suit, luggage and plane ticket to Los Angeles. Once arrived, he phones home ("Tidewater four, ten-oh-nine") to let the folks back in Norfolk know he's made it to the "promised land".
Read more about this topic: Promised Land (song)
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