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)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)