Who recorded it first
City of New Orleans
Not an Arlo Guthrie original — Steve Goodman recorded it first, live in Chicago in 1970, on Dunwich
Arlo Guthrie’s 1972 single is the version almost everyone carries in their head, and the Guthrie surname makes the song feel like an inherited piece of American folk tradition. It is not. “City of New Orleans” was written in 1970 by Steve Goodman, a young Chicago songwriter, and first recorded by Goodman himself that same year — not in a studio, but live at the Earl of Old Town folk club in Chicago, for the various-artists LP Gathering at the Earl of Old Town (Dunwich Productions 670), released in 1971. His studio version followed on his self-titled debut album for Buddah Records — catalogue BDS 5096, issued in November 1971. That album was a critical success and a commercial failure, and neither Goodman record produced a hit. Guthrie heard the song from Goodman in person at a Chicago club and cut his own version for Hobo’s Lullaby ↗, which became the only Top 40 hit of his career.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Not a studio record at all — a live track, side B6 at 3:55, on the various-artists LP Gathering at the Earl of Old Town, Dunwich Productions 670, taped at the Earl of Old Town folk club in Chicago in 1970 and produced by Jim Post. Goodman’s studio version followed on his self-titled Buddah debut, catalogue BDS 5096, recorded in 1971 at Quadrafonic Studios in Nashville and produced by Norbert Putnam and Kris Kristofferson.
Charted Did not chart. The Dunwich compilation was a small Chicago release. Buddah issued Goodman’s studio version as a single in January 1972 — BDA 270, backed with “Would You Like to Learn to Dance?” — and that did not chart either; the debut album was a critical success and a commercial failure.
Hear Steve Goodman’s own 1971 studio recording, from his self-titled Buddah debut www.youtube.com · An auto-generated “Provided to YouTube by Buddha Records” upload on the Steve Goodman - Topic channel, not a fan rip. Its metadata names the album as Steve Goodman, credits producers Kris Kristofferson and Norbert Putnam, and carries the phonogram line “Originally released 1971.” The runtime is 231 seconds against the 3:52 (232.1s) logged for the 1971 recording on MusicBrainz — a match, and decisively not Guthrie’s 4:31 cover or the longer solo-demo and live takes. Then compare Arlo Guthrie’s 1972 Reprise recording from Hobo’s Lullaby — the hit that made Steve Goodman’s train song famous. www.youtube.com · Official “Arlo Guthrie - Topic” channel; auto-generated upload whose description reads “Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises”, album “Hobo's Lullaby (Remastered 2004)”, ℗ 1972 Warner Bros. Records, Inc., licensed by Rising Son Records. Runtime 275s = 4:35 against the MusicBrainz album cluster of 4:31–4:32; the ~3s excess is the 2004 remaster of the 1972 master, not a re-recording, per the ℗ 1972 line. Discrepancy stated: I also found a second Topic upload (268s = 4:28, “Provided to YouTube by Teldec”, released 2023-06-03) and passed it over because its description does not name Hobo’s Lullaby and its provenance is a recent licensed compilation.How the record was traced
Goodman’s earliest recording is not the famous one. The Dunwich Records article ↗ states that the 1971 Dunwich Productions LP Gathering at the Earl of Old Town, a live collection of Chicago folk artists, “notably includes the first recording” of Goodman performing the song. The Dunwich album discography ↗ lists it as Dunwich Productions 670, Various Artists, 1971, produced by Jim Post, and the release itself ↗ shows the track at side B6, 3:55.
Praguefrank’s country discography dates that session to 1970, at the Earl of Old Town in Chicago, Jim Post producing, issued on Dunwich 670; SecondHandSongs gives the recording date as 23 March 1970. Either way it sits roughly eighteen months ahead of the Nashville session.
The album entry ↗ dates the Buddah debut to November 1971 and lists the song as a 3:52 album track, produced by Norbert Putnam and Kris Kristofferson — Goodman’s first studio recording of it, and the first version of any kind to reach a national audience.
The MusicBrainz recording ↗ independently pins that studio take to Steve Goodman with a first-release date of 1971 and a runtime of 3:52, attached to the US release on Buddah Records, catalogue BDS 5096.
The song article ↗ gives January 1972, which is sometimes read as a rival date for the album. It is not: it is the date of Goodman’s own Buddah single of the song, BDA 270, backed with “Would You Like to Learn to Dance?” — the B-side the same infobox names, and the single Praguefrank lists. The LP is the November 1971 release, per Billboard’s new-releases listing of November 27, 1971. Neither charted.
No recording of the song by any other artist predates Goodman’s, and Goodman’s own earliest recording is the Dunwich live take, which predates his Buddah studio version. Guthrie’s biography ↗ describes his 1972 version as a cover of Goodman’s song.
City of New Orleans (song) on WikipediaKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
Setting the record straight
The song is routinely filed as an Arlo Guthrie original, helped along by his father’s name and by a lyric that sounds like folk tradition rather than a recent copyright. The chronology is not in doubt.
Arlo Guthrie
His June 1972 Reprise single — No. 18 on the Hot 100, No. 4 Easy Listening — is the version in general circulation, and the only Top 40 hit of his career. It is a cover.
Steve Goodman, 1970
Recorded live at the Earl of Old Town in Chicago in 1970 and issued in 1971 on the Dunwich Productions compilation Gathering at the Earl of Old Town (Dunwich 670). Goodman cut it again in 1971 at Quadrafonic Studios in Nashville for his self-titled Buddah debut (BDS 5096); that album drew good reviews and sold poorly, so neither of his versions reached the audience the cover did.
Steve Goodman
Goodman wrote it in 1970 on the Illinois Central line. He is both the songwriter and the first recording artist — there is no third party in this story. Willie Nelson’s 1984 Columbia version topped the country chart and won Goodman the 1985 Grammy for Best Country Song, awarded after his death.
Written by Steve Goodman in 1970 and first recorded by Goodman that same year, live in Chicago. Arlo Guthrie made it famous in 1972.
Context
Why the cover swallowed the original
The interesting question is not why Guthrie’s version was a hit — it is a fine record on a major label — but why Goodman’s got no traction at all. Goodman was an unknown debut artist on Buddah, a label whose reputation was built on bubblegum pop rather than folk, and his album landed as a critical success and a commercial failure. Guthrie arrived at the same song with Reprise behind him, a national audience already built by “Alice’s Restaurant,” and the most loaded surname in American folk music.
That surname is the whole mechanism. A song about a fading passenger train, sung by Woody Guthrie’s son, reads as something handed down rather than something written — as if it had always existed and Guthrie were merely its custodian. Goodman had written it in 1970, on a train, in his twenties. The song’s later life reinforced the illusion: Willie Nelson took it to No. 1 on the country chart in 1984, and by then it had been absorbed into the standards repertoire, where authorship tends to dissolve.
The chronology, step by step
- 1970 — Goodman writes the song while travelling the Illinois Central line to visit his wife’s family.
- 1970 — he records it live at the Earl of Old Town, a Chicago folk club, for a various-artists LP produced by Jim Post.
- 1971 — that recording is issued on Gathering at the Earl of Old Town, Dunwich Productions 670. It is his first recording of the song, and almost nobody hears it.
- 1971 — he re-records it at Quadrafonic Studios in Nashville, produced by Norbert Putnam and Kris Kristofferson.
- November 1971 — that studio take is issued on his debut album Steve Goodman, Buddah Records BDS 5096.
- January 1972 — Buddah releases it as a single, BDA 270, backed with “Would You Like to Learn to Dance?”. It does not chart.
- Chicago — at the bar of the Quiet Knight, Goodman asks Arlo Guthrie to hear a song; Guthrie agrees if Goodman buys him a beer, then asks to record it.
- April 1972 — Guthrie’s version appears on Hobo’s Lullaby (Reprise); the single follows in June 1972 and reaches No. 18 on the Hot 100 and No. 4 on Easy Listening.
- 1973 — the Guthrie single spends two weeks at No. 1 in New Zealand.
- July 30, 1984 — Willie Nelson releases his version on Columbia; it tops the Hot Country Songs chart.
- 1985 — Goodman, who died in September 1984, is awarded the Grammy for Best Country Song posthumously.
It sounds inherited. It was written in 1970, by a man in his twenties, on a train.