The MTA Presents: Top Subway Songs
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra, ‘Subway’ (1938) This is one of the earliest and most successful attempts to capture the mood of the subway in big band jazz form was by this underrated bandleader later turned sitcom icon. Nelson’s reed-section was one among the first to feature the baritone saxophone, and there’s no horn better at conveying the feeling of deep notes zooming through the underground.
Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn, ‘Take the A Train’ This is easily the most famous piece of music ever written about the subway. In 1948, Ellington expanded “A Train” into a long-form tone poem called “Manhattan Murals (As Seen From the A Train),” which his orchestra played at Carnegie Hall, but, alas, never recorded.
Leonard Bernstein, ‘Subway Ride Ballet’, from ‘On the Town’ (1944) After Ellington, no one wrote more prolifically or movingly about New York than Bernstein, who made the city the subject of nearly all his classic Broadway musicals. With the “Subway Ride Ballet,” Bern stein took ballet from its lofty perch in the realm of art music and brought it down to where everybody could enjoy it.
Jule Styne, ‘Subways Are for Sleeping’ (1960) Styne and his librettists, Betty Comden and Adolph Green (who had also written the book and lyrics for “On the Town”), were such savvy New Yorkers that it’s hard to believe they made a whole show based on the supposedly happy-go-lucky lives of the city’s homeless. It flopped, naturally, but some of the songs from “Subways Are for Sleeping” are marvelous. “Ride Through the Night,” which was also recorded by Frankie Laine, describes the subway as “the magic train of dreams.”
Petula Clark, ‘Don’t Sleep in the Subway (1967)’ Clark’s original recording of this flimsy pop hit is little more than psychedelic ephemera, but the cover by Frank Sinatra (on “The World We Knew” album) is more substantial, adding jazz and blues values and imbuing Tony Hatch’s words and music with real emotional resonance.