What’s On The Shelf | Games, Music & Culture

Welcome back to Lyrics of Labor, where we dig into songs that live at the intersection of music, unions, and workers’ rights. Each entry is part lyric read, part workplace autopsy: what the words say, what the job was like, and why the song still lands all these years later.

Today’s track—pardon the pun—is The Wreck of the Old 97. We’ll be looking specifically at the version recorded by Johnny Cash during his time at Sun Records.

Railroad songs fit Cash like a work glove. His deep voice and the steady chicka-chicka-chicka of the guitar place you right in the train yards—coal dust in the air, pressure on your back, and a timetable you’re already late for.

A Song With No Clear Owner

The Wreck of the Old 97 was written sometime in the early 1920s by… well, somebody. Or maybe several somebodies.

Depending on who you ask, the song’s authorship belongs to G.B. Grayson and Henry Whitter, or Vernon Dalhart, or David Graves George, or Fred Jackson Lewey and Charles Weston Noell. Each had a legitimate claim depending on how you frame it.

Eventually, David Graves George made a formal legal claim, taking Victor Talking Machine Company to court. After multiple rulings in George’s favor, a late appeal reversed the decision—handing ownership to Victor.

It’s a familiar story: with enough money, persistence, and legal muscle, a massive media company can outlast and outmaneuver an individual creator. Labor exploitation doesn’t stop at the factory gate; it follows the work wherever value is extracted.

Versions That Run Off the Rails

The song has been covered endlessly, with wildly different tones and intentions. Even Cash’s own renditions feel like two separate machines.

The Sun Records version is steady and restrained, controlled like a train still clinging to the rails. The version from Live at San Quentin, on the other hand, is absolute chaos—fast, loud, and breathless. It feels less like storytelling and more like a locomotive that’s already lost the brakes.

That contrast matters. One version observes the wreck. The other puts you inside it.

The Job: Make Up Time, No Matter What

While The Wreck of the Old 97 isn’t a direct union anthem, it is a pure distillation of railroad labor conditions in the early 20th century.

The song centers on conductor Joseph Andrew “Steve” Broady, ordered to make up lost time on the route to Spencer, North Carolina. He was running the Fast Mail—a train under intense pressure due to Southern Railway’s contract with the U.S. Postal Service.

To stay on schedule, stops were cut. Speed was pushed. Safety was implied rather than enforced.

The route from Lynchburg to Danville was notoriously difficult, filled with tight curves and steep grades. Still, the Old 97 was loaded with coal and sent barreling down a three-mile grade at unsafe speeds.

The train derailed, plunging into a ravine. Steve Broady and ten others were killed.

Blame the Worker, Protect the Company

In the aftermath, the vice president of Southern Railway immediately blamed operator error, claiming the train was moving at a safe 30 mph.

The lyrics tell a different story—placing the speed closer to 90 mph. Reality likely sat somewhere between 50 and 70 mph. Still far beyond safe limits for that stretch of track.

Whether Broady entered the grade too fast is almost beside the point. He was behind schedule. Management needed the mail delivered. Southern had a contract with United States Postal Service. Pressure flows downhill, and responsibility flows upward—until something breaks.

And when it does, the worker absorbs the blame.

Then and Now

The 1920s saw weakened union activity and immense downward pressure on labor. Workers didn’t have room to push back on safety without risking their livelihoods.

That dynamic hasn’t disappeared.

Silent expectations. Implied demands. Plausible deniability from management. “Get it done or get in the unemployment line.”

The Wreck of the Old 97 belongs just as much to 2020 as it does to 1920. It’s a reminder that when safety conflicts with productivity, the burden is often placed squarely on the worker—and when things go wrong, the worker stands alone.

At the end of the day, the only person guaranteed to protect you on the job is you.

Up Next

Next time, we’ll leave the rails behind and head for the airfields of the 1940s with Woody Guthrie and Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)—another tragedy where labor, migration, and indifference collide.