*The Struggle Continues- Playwright August Wilson's "Two Trains Coming"

Click On Title To Link To August Wilson Homepage.

Play Review

Two Trains Running (1969), August Wilson, Theater Communications Group, New York, 2007

By the time that this review appears I will have already reviewed five of the ten plays in August Wilson’s Century cycle. On the first five I believe that I ran out of fulsome praise for his work and particularly for his tightly woven story and dialogue. Rather than keep following that path for the next five plays I would prefer to concentrate on some of the dialogue that makes Brother Wilson’s work so compelling. For those who want to peek at my general observations you can look at my review of “Gem Of The Ocean” (the first play chronologically in the cycle).

In all previously reviewed plays I noticed some piece of dialogue that seemed to me to sum up the essence of the play. Sometimes that is done by the lead character as was the case with Troy Maxton in “Fences” when he (correctly) stated that there should have been “no too early” in regard to the possibilities of black achievement and prospects in America. Other times it is by a secondary character in the form of some handed down black folk wisdom to be followed in order to survive in racially-hardened America. In “Two Trains Running” this task falls to Holloway when he cuts through all the basic white assumptions about blacks being lazy. His retort: blacks are the most hard working people in the world. They worked for free for over three hundred years. And, to add a little dry humor to the situation, he stated that they didn’t take a lunch break.

That says more in a couple of sentences about a central aspect of black experience in America than many manifestos, treatises or sociological/psychological studies. That Wilson can weave that home truth into a play of less than one hundred pages and drive the plot line of a story that deals with the contradiction between black aspirations as a result of the promise of the militant civil rights movement down South in the early 1960’s and the reality of black segregation when the struggle headed North later to get hit, and get hit hard, with the ugly face of white racism in housing, jobs and education. That, my friends, is still something to consider in the “post-racial” Obamiad. We shall see.


Here is a song that tells the tale that Wilson presents. Markin

Two Trains Running

Lyrics: Traditional

Music: Traditional

So far as is known, the Dead did this only once, on 15 December 1971. It's a fragment Pigpen inserted in Lovelight.

Well there's two trains a-coming
Two trains coming
One comes around midnight
Other one comes by day

The best-known recording under this title is probably that by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, credited on the album to "Davis". But it seems that the originas go back to early Muddy Waters and probably before that.

The lyrics of the Paul Butterfield version are:
Well there's two trains running
But there's not one going my way
Yeah one runs at midnight
Other's just for day
Other's just for day
Other's just for day

I went down to my baby's house
And I sat down on her steps
She said come on in here baby
My old man just left
Yeah just now left
My old man just left

Yes I wish I was a catfish
Swimming in the deep blue sea
I'd have all you pretty women
Fishing after me
Fishing after me
Fishing after me

Well she's long and she's tall
And she shakes just like a willow tree
You say she's no good
But she's all right with me
She's all right with me
She's all right with me
She's all right with me

Little girl's all right, all right with me
She give me loving in the morning
[etc]

The Muddy Waters version was originally recorded in 1951 under the title "Still A Fool". Thanks to Anita Cantor for alerting me to this, and pointing me to a Rob Quinn transcription of the lyrics. According to Anita, Muddy Waters also recorded it with different lyrics under the title "She's All Right"

The Muddy Waters lyrics are:
Well now there's two
There's two trains runnin'
Well ain't not one, (ho!) goin' my way
Well now one run at midnight
And the other one runnin' just 'fore day
A runnin' just 'fore day
It's runnin' just 'fore day
Oh Lord
Sure 'nough then
Oh well

Hmm, (ho) (ho)
Somebody help me (ho) with these blues
Well now, she's the one I'm lovin'
She the one I do hate to lose
I do hate to lose
I do hate to lose
Oh Lord
Sure enough I do
Oh well

I been crazy
Yes I been a fool
I been crazy, oh all my life
Well I done fell in love with her
With another man's wife
With another man's wife
With another man's wife
Oh Lord
Sure 'nough I done
Oh well

Long, she's long and tall
'Til she weeps like a willow tree
Well now, then say she's no good
But she's all right
She's all right with me
She's all right
She's all right
She's all right
She's all right