One characteristic I look for when choosing music for the
Little Dude is lyrics that he can easily pick up and remember. One recent addition to his playlist does just
that, while incorporating two of his favorite things: animals and trains.
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| Jesse Fuller |
Monkey and the
Engineer was written by folk legend Jesse Fuller in the 1950s. It’s a funny
song about a monkey who had been a very faithful companion to a train engineer.
They’d spent so much time together, in fact, that the monkey learned how to
drive the train and one day decided to take it for a spin. Or a roll. Or
whatever they call driving a train. Fortunately he’d learned how to drive it from
an experienced engineer and did a great job controlling locomotive #99 all the
way down the track.
Though many artists have covered it, I first heard a cover
of this song by the Grateful Dead who probably learned it from Jesse Fuller
while he was living in the San Francisco Bay Area while they were growing
up. Though they didn’t often play it live,
it was a staple of their acoustic tour in 1980. Here’s one of those
performances from Radio City Music Hall:
I discovered that someone recently published a children's picture book based on this tune. I might have to check it out for my Dudes.
What's your favorite animal-themed song?
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