Observations on the song “Route 66”

Tim de Lisle of The Guardian in London searches for a British equivalent of Bobby Troup‘s famed song, “Route 66.”

His observations provide hints on why “Route 66” continues to endure as a favorite cover song nearly 60 years after it was written:

As subjects for great songs go, it’s not the most promising. The singer hands out unsolicited advice on the best route to take from A to B. He lists some of the places his addressee will pass through, choosing them as much for their ability to rhyme with each other as any other qualities. It’s a strange collision between a gazetteer, a route planner and a rhyming dictionary. But it works. The central invitation is still impossible to refuse: “Get your kicks” – a well-judged pause – “on Route 66”. And it helps that the road in question once wound all the way from Chicago to LA.

Route 66 is a classic, lapidary yet adaptable. Written in 1947 by Bobby Troup, the song started life as a slice of smooth supperclub jazz, sung by Nat King Cole. By the 1960s, it had turned into a R&B standard, recorded not just by Chuck Berry, one of the founding fathers of rock’n’roll, but by the Rolling Stones, the band who took his template furthest. Like the road itself, the song covers an enormous distance: there are versions by everyone from Nancy Sinatra to Dr Feelgood to Depeche Mode. It features, too, in this summer’s Pixar/ Disney animation, Cars.

Transport songs were two a penny in the mid 20th-century, and the tunes that celebrate the railroads feel dated now. Somehow Route 66 doesn’t. It’s partly the song itself, with its unfading urgency, and it’s partly the subject matter. The American road goes on, it seems, forever. It represents romance and freedom and individuality.

In case you’re wondering, the closest thing de Lisle found to “Route 66” is Billy Bragg‘s “A13 Trunk Road to the Sea.” That’s because the lyrical structure is similar to Troup’s song — “If you ever go to Shoeburyness, take the A road, the OK road, that’s the best.”

The resemblance is no accident. In fact, Troup gets a credit for the music.

He wrote it in 1977, when he was singing with an “edgy, pre-punk R&B” band, Riff Raff, who used to play Route 66. “I just objected to singing about these places that I didn’t know,” Bragg says. “I wanted to put the A13 on level pegging with Route 66, as there’s a tradition of driving down the A13 to the glory of Southend. Growing up in Barking, that was the promised land, in quite a Springsteenish way. Later, when I saw where Springsteen is from, the New Jersey Turnpike, it did look a lot like Essex.”  […]

“It was a staple of my early solo set. It was a way of saying who I was and where I was from. I was often opening for other acts and it helped get people’s attention.”

As he became more successful, the song didn’t go away. “I get a lot of requests for it, particularly from the expat Brits in Australia and America. If I sang it every time I was asked, I’d be doing it every night. So now I stipulate that I’ll only sing it when I’m in Essex.”