Welcome in, everyone. Pull up a chair, get comfortable.
Let's get right into it. Yeah, let's do it. It's
great to be here. It is so great to have you
here with us today because we are going on a
bit of a journey. And when I say you, I mean
you, the person listening right now. Right. You
are the essential third person in this conversation.
Exactly. We've got a really fantastic deep dive
lined up for you today. We are going to be exploring
a single, incredibly rich source, which is a
comprehensive Wikipedia article all about the
iconic 1946 Rhythm and Blue song, Route 66. Or,
to use its full official title, Get Your Kicks
on Route 66. It is a title that practically invites
you to, you know, roll the window. It really
does. Our mission today is to figure out how
a simple cross -country road trick birthed a
musical standard. We want to understand how a
song hasn't just survived the decades, but is
actively shapeshifted across entirely different
genres and generations of artists. Okay, let's
unpack this. To really understand the DNA of
the song, we have to ground ourselves in the
historical context of the original source material.
So we're looking at the year 1946. Post -war
America. Exactly. A post -war America that is
absolutely ripe for travel, for mobility, and
for new beginnings. People are looking out at
the horizon with a fresh perspective after years
of global conflict. The rationing is ending.
Right. Automobile production is ramping back
up, and the highway system is calling. So as
we go through this deep dive, keep in mind that
this isn't just a story about a catchy tune.
It is about the cultural evolution of the American
road trip itself, captured in just a few minutes
of music. That perfectly sets the stage for the
origin story. I was thinking about this while
reading the article. Today, before we go on a
long drive, we spend hours curating the perfect
Spotify playlist. Oh, absolutely. But the songwriter
we are talking about today, Bobby Troop, he essentially
created the ultimate road trip anthem. by writing
it while driving. That's the best part. So the
year is 1946, and Troop has this dream. He wants
to try his hand at being a Hollywood songwriter.
So he and his wife, Cynthia, pack up everything
they need into their 1941 Buick, and they leave
Pennsylvania behind, pointing the car west toward
California. It's a classic American migration
story, but the route they took is actually where
the creative spark happened. Right. And here
is the pivot that I found so surprising. The
trip actually began on U .S. Highway 40. And
as they were driving along U .S. 40, which eventually
connected them to U .S. 66 to get to the coast,
Troop had an idea. He initially wanted to write
a tune about U .S. 40. Which is wild to think
about. How different would music history be if
he had stuck with that? Musically speaking, it
probably wouldn't have worked. Route 40 just
doesn't have the same rhythmic bounce to it.
The double six creates a natural percussive rhyme
scheme that you just can't get out of the word
40. This brings us to the unsung hero of this
entire deep dive, his wife, Cynthia. It wasn't
Bobby Truke who came up with the legendary hook
that we all know today. No, it wasn't. It was
Cynthia who leaned over in that 1941 Buick, probably
exhausted from the drive, and suggested the title
Get Your Kicks on Route 66. What's fascinating
here is how the actual mechanics of the songwriting
process played out against the reality of the
trip. Right. You have this 10 -day drive across
the western two -thirds of the country from Chicago
to Los Angeles. The song was started during that
10 -day journey out there on the open road. With
the wind in their hair. Exactly. But according
to the source material, it wasn't actually finished
in the car. Troop finished the song after they
had already arrived in Los Angeles. And to get
all those iconic cities and towns in the right
order for the lyrics, Chicago, St. Louis, Joplin,
Oklahoma City, he had to consult a physical paper
map. That is the ultimate irony to me. We think
of this song as the definitive boots on the ground
road trip anthem. But he was literally sitting
at a desk in a Los Angeles apartment. tracing
his finger over a map to remember where he had
just been. A little bit of movie magic right
there. Yeah, and because he was relying on this
map to finish the lyrics, there were some casualties.
I was laughing so hard reading the article because
it includes this later quote from Cynthia. Oh,
about the missing city. Yes. Even years later,
she commented, and I'm quoting here, what I can't
really believe is that he doesn't have Albuquerque
in the song. He drove right through it. looked
at a map, and somehow still left Albuquerque
completely out of the lyrics. It just goes to
show that even a song that feels like a spontaneous,
lived -in travelogue is still subject to the
editing process and occasionally simple human
error. He just skipped right over New Mexico's
largest city. Whoops. But regardless of missing
Albuquerque, the foundation was laid. And that
brings us to the very first time this song was
put on wax. We are talking about the Nat King
Cole original version. I want to know how that
happened so quickly. He recorded it with a King
Cole. Trio on March 16, 1946 at Radio Recorders
in Los Angeles. The timeline there is incredible
if you really look at it. Trute makes the drive
in early 1946, the song is written, and by mid
-March of that exact same year, Nat King Cole
is already in the studio recording it. That's
a fast turnaround. Cole was a massive star, and
his trio's piano -driven rhythm and blues style
was the perfect vehicle for Troop's lyrics. Capitol
Records released it as a single shortly after,
on April 20, 1946. Just a quick piece of trivia
for you listening. The B -side to that single
was a song called Everyone is Saying Hello Again,
Why Must We Say Goodbye? Quite the mouthful compared
to the A -side. Right. But the A -side is what
took off. The article mentions it reached number
three on Billboard magazine's race records chart,
and it climbed to number 11 on the broader singles
chart. Can you give us a little context on what
those charts meant at the time? Absolutely. The
race records chart was the industry term Billboard
used in the 1940s to track rhythm and blues music,
which was predominantly created by and marketed
to black Americans during a heavily segregated
era in the music industry. Okay, got it. The
fact that Route 66 hit number three there was
huge, but the fact that it crossed over and reached
number 11 on the broader mainstream singles chart
meant it was breaking through those racial barriers
and appealing to a massive nationwide audience.
That crossover appeal is so crucial to its legacy.
It really is. And its impact wasn't just a flash
in the pan for Cole either. If you look at his
discography, you can see how much he genuinely
loved the song. He didn't just record it once
and move on. He went back to it, right? Yeah.
He actually re -recorded the tune for later albums
as recording technology improved. You can find
lush subsequent versions of it on his 1956 album,
After Midnight, and again on the 1961 release,
The Nat King Cole Story. By returning to it repeatedly,
he really cemented Route 66 as an absolute standard
of the rhythm and blues genre. Here's where it
gets really interesting, though, because it didn't
just stay a rhythm and blues standard. As a listener,
you might be familiar with five or six different
versions of this song. They probably sound nothing
alike. Very true. How does a smooth R &B tune
become a global chameleon? It comes down to the
underlying musical architecture. At its core,
Route 66 is built on a standard 12 -bar blues
progression. Okay. It is an incredibly sturdy,
simple, and adaptable framework. Because the
structure is so fundamental, you can dress it
up in almost any musical style, and it still
holds together. Let's test that theory with some
of the covers mentioned in the source. Just to
start with the contemporaries, you had Bing Crosby
teaming up with the Andrews sisters. A classic
pairing. They recorded a version that reached
number 14 on the Billboard chart in that same
year. 1946. How does a song go from a smooth
piano trio to a mainstream crinor and a vocal
harmony group in a matter of months? Because
that walking bass line and the rhythmic naming
of the cities acts almost like a drumbeat. Crosby
and the Andrews sisters leaned into the swing
and the novelty of the geography. It felt fun
and patriotic in a post -war landscape. Okay,
so that's 1946. Let's fast forward to 1964. Suddenly,
the Rolling Stones are putting it on their self
-titled debut album. A huge shift. We are talking
about gritty, rebellious British rock and roll.
How did a group of young kids in London learn
a song about an American highway? The lineage
of how the Rolling Stones actually arrived at
their version is a tangled web all on its own.
The music critic Richie Unterberger has some
great notes on this, which are cited in the Wikipedia
article. He points out it was a staple of their
early live tours. Did they just listen to Nat
King Cole and speed it up? Not at all. According
to those notes, the Stones pieced it together
from two entirely different sources. They learned
the aggressive, driving musical arrangement from
a version that rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry
recorded for his 1961 album New Jukebox Hits.
Oh, that makes sense. Berry had taken that 12
-bar blues structure and electrified it. However,
for the actual words, the Stones sourced the
lyrics from a version by Perry Como, specifically
from Como's 1959 album Como Swings. That is wild.
They took Chuck Berry's blazing rock and roll
energy and layered it over lyrics they pulled
from... a Perry Como pop vocal record. A total
hybrid. That is the kind of musical archaeology
that makes a deep dive like this so much fun.
It's like a game of intercontinental telephone.
And the genre hopping did not stop with 1960s
British rock. Not by a long shot. Where did it
go next? Well, the article highlights its jump
into jazz. In 1982, the vocal group, the Manhattan
Transfer, released a version that was featured
on the soundtrack for the 1981 film Sharky's
Machine. Oh yeah, Burt Reynolds. Yep. And more
impressively, that version earned them a Grandy
Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. Which
makes sense. They took the song back to its jazz
and R &B roots, but added complex, modern vocal
harmonies. It's a completely different flavor
from the Rolling Stones, yet highly acclaimed
in its own right. But if we're talking about
different flavors, we have to talk about the
hard left turned into synth pop. The English
electronic band Depeche Mode took a swing at
it. I love this one. In 1988, their version reached
number 61 on the Billboard. Hot 100. I have to
admit, picturing a 1940s road trip song played
on dark industrial synthesizers is breaking my
brain a little bit. It sounds like a mismatch,
but they did something incredibly clever. Depeche
Mode didn't just cover it straight. They mashed
it up in a medley with their own song behind
the wheel. Oh, that is smart. Right. By conceptually
connecting the thematic idea of driving from
their own brooding track with the ultimate American
road trip anthem, they created something entirely
new. They proved that the desire for the open
road translates just as well to dark European
dance clubs as it does to a dusty highway in
Arizona. And just to prove that the 12 -bar blues
framework can literally do anything, it also
conquered country. Naturally. The artist Michael
Martin Murphy recorded the song for his 1989
album, Land of Enchantment. And when it was released
as a single in 1990, it charted on the Billboard
Hot Country Singles Chart. Jazz, rock, electronic
pop, country, the framework of the song, the
rhythm of traveling, the naming of places is
universally appealing. It's a blank canvas. Speaking
of a blank canvas, that brings us to my absolute
favorite anomaly in the entire article. We have
to talk about the British detour. We have to
talk about Billy Bragg. Yes, the Bragg version.
For those who aren't familiar, Bragg is this
fiercely political, working class, English punk
and folk musician. And in 1977, he was playing
with his band Riff Raff. They were performing
Route 66 as part of their set. But Bragg had
a problem with the lyrics. He didn't relate to
them. Exactly. He strongly objected to standing
on a stage and singing about these American cities
that he had never actually been to. It felt inauthentic
to him. He was a kid from England. Singing about
Gallup, New Mexico and Flagstaff, Arizona meant
absolutely nothing to his lived experience or
to his audience. I'm going to play devil's advocate
here for a second. Isn't it kind of sacrilege
to just cross out the lyrics to an established
classic and write in your own hometowns? You
wouldn't rewrite the lyrics to a Beatles song
just because you've never been to Penny Lane.
I get why you'd say that, but think about the
folk music tradition. Folk music is entirely
based on oral history, on taking traditional
melodies and updating the lyrics to reflect current
events or local geography. Bragg was just applying
that folk tradition to an R &B standard. He took
ownership of the concept and completely localized
it. He kept the original music, but swapped out
all those iconic U .S. cities for English towns.
He titled it A13, Trunk Road to the Sea. So good.
replaced the sprawling American West with the
route of the A13 road in England. Instead of
telling people to get their kicks on Route 66,
he was inviting listeners to go motoring on the
A13. I love that so much. The article notes that
growing up in Barking, driving down the A13 to
South End was the ultimate escape for him. He
described South End as being a promised land
in a very Springsteen -ish way. That's a great
description. For anyone listening, think of that
classic Bruce Springsteen blue -collar longing
for an escape from your hometown. That's what
the A13 was for Bragg. If we connect this to
the bigger picture, it shows us something profound
about how music operates. Bragg used Troop's
melody to paint a picture of local geography
and working class identity. The American dream
of the open road was translated into a British
working class reality of driving to the coast
for the weekend. It's the same feeling. The desire
for freedom is exactly the same, but the landmarks
change to reflect the reality of the listener.
Unfortunately for Bragg, the music industry is
a bit more rigid than the folk tradition. He
wanted to include his version on his 1983 debut
album, Life's a Riot with Spy vs. Spy. But he
hit a wall. A major copyright hurdle. He simply
couldn't get the official permission to use the
music of Route 66 with his altered lyrics at
the time. Copyright law doesn't always appreciate
folk -style localization. The legalities of songwriting
credits often get in the way of creative reinterpretation.
The publishers protect the original work fiercely.
Because of those legal problems the song sat
in the vault for decades. It wasn't officially
released until the year 2003 when it was finally
included on a compilation album. It's a great
example of how an idea can endure even when it
has to wait 20 years to officially see the light
of day. But speaking of endurance, we also have
to look at how this song managed to stay culturally
relevant well into the 21st century. That is
a perfect transition, because we are moving from
the A13 highway straight into a modern animated
revival. For a massive portion of a younger generation,
their introduction to this 1946 standard didn't
come from Nat King Cole and it didn't come from
the Rolling Stones. Nope. It came from a movie
theater in 2006. We are talking about the Disney
and Pixar animated film Cars. Exactly. The film
is literally a love letter to the lore of Route
66 and the forgotten towns along the highway.
So, of course, the soundtrack had to include
the song. But what's great is that they didn't
just use one version. They feature two. The soundtrack
brought in Chuck Berry, whose 1961 version was
so influential to the rock lineage we talked
about. And they also brought in modern artist
John Mayer to record a fresh, bluesy take specifically
for the film. Which bridged the gap beautifully.
You have the historical anchor of Chuck Berry
reminding older listeners of the song's pedigree
and the contemporary appeal of John Mayer, ensuring
the song resonates with the parents and children
watching the film. And it wasn't just a throwaway
soundtrack cover either. John Mayer's version
was critically acclaimed. It actually secured
a Grammy nomination for Best... solo rock vocal
performance. It proves that a well -crafted song
doesn't really have an expiration date. It just
needs the right vehicle to reach a new audience.
Okay, we have covered a massive amount of ground
today. We've driven from a 1941 Buick out of
Pennsylvania, through the recording studios of
1940s Los Angeles, across the Atlantic to British
rock bands and the A13 highway, into a synth
-pop dance club, and right into a Pixar animation
studio. So what does this all mean? That is the
big question for you, the listener. We want you
to think about why a song like this actually
matters. Right, because Route 66 isn't just a
catchy tune to tap your foot to. It is a masterclass
in how a simple, relatable concept, the freedom
of a road trip, can be endlessly adapted. Exactly.
Whether you are driving that 1941 Buick across
the American West, or dancing in a dark club
in the 80s to Depeche Mode, or motoring down
the A13 to South End hoping for a spring -ski
-nish escape, The core human desire for exploration
remains exactly the same. The song is just the
vessel that carries that feeling. This raises
an important question, though. A final thought
to leave you with as we wrap up this deep dive.
Yeah, lay it on us. Throughout this conversation,
we've talked about Route 66 as if it's a permanent
fixture of the landscape. But Bobby Troup managed
to write a definitive, immortal anthem about
American geography, largely by just looking at
a paper map in a Los Angeles apartment. Yeah,
that is still so crazy to me. It makes you wonder.
How much of the legendary romanticized folklore
we consume about places and travel is based on
raw lived experience? And how much is just a
cleverly rhymed illusion created by someone sitting
in a room with a map? What an incredible thought
to chew on the next time you hit the highway.
Thank you for joining us for this deep dive.
Keep exploring, keep questioning, and we will
catch you next time.