Roadside songbooks and playlists
Driving with strangers - the musical!
As part of the publicity around the book, I've put together a couple of playlists which are designed to accompany the text and evoke some of the personal and political journeys within its pages.
Spotify – Jonathan Purkis - Driving with strangers
The youtube list takes versions of songs which have a visual dimension in order to help the listener to feel part of the history but also bring them up to date. Neither playlist is quite as multicultural as I would like, so any suggestions welcome.
Enjoy!
Database of hitchhiking songs
I am in the midst of building a database of hitchhiking and hitching related songs and musical compositions. There have been a number of attempts to do this in the past and both hitchwiki.org and wikipedia.org/hitchhiking have very generalised lists on their sites. What I am interested in doing in addition to this is to give the would be researcher or obsessive music loving road dog an idea of how the piece sits within the culture and debates of the time it was written and performed, or is more generally relevant. For instance there are 'hitchhiking as metaphor' songs which appear in many decades and contexts, whereas other ones which have a social justice or sexual equality theme to them might only really be understood in terms of a particular time and place.
COMING SHORTLY TO THIS PAGE.
In the meantime, here are a few representatives of different decades of hitchhiking history.
1930s
Memphis Minnie - Nothing in rambling, In my girlish days
Woody Guthrie - Tom Joad
1940s
Harry Partch – Barstow
Woody Guthrie - This land is your land
1950s/1960s
Johnny Cash – I’ve been everywhere
Roger Miller - King of the road, Hitchhiker
Marvin Gaye – Hitchhike
Elvis – Guitar Man
Bob Dylan – Down the Highway
1970s
Joan Baez - The Hitchhiker's Song
Credence Clearwater Revival - Sweet Hitch Hiker
The Eagles - Take it Easy
John Denver - (Old) Hitchhiker
Kris Kristofferson - Be and Bobby McGee
Roy Harper - Highway Blues
Joni Mitchell - Coyote
1980s
Neil Young - Bound for Glory
Roger Waters - The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking
Tom T. Jones – The Hitchhiker
1990s