Video hit Glenn Miller

Glenn Miller - Chattanooga Choo Choo (1941)

This song was featured in Sun Valley Serenade, a 1941 movie starring Sonja Henie, Milton Burle, and Joan Davis. It became the #1 song across the US in December of that year, and remained there for 9 weeks, due in large part to the performance of it in the movie. The 78 rpm recording sold 1.2 million copies.

Glenn Miller's version of this song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1996.

The inspiration for this song was a wood-burning steam locomotive owned by the Cincinnati Southern Railway, but it was written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren while they were aboard Southern Railway's Birmingham Special. The Cincinnati Southern Railway train is a museum artifact.

The lyric for this song tells the story of a man traveling aboard a coal burning train from Pennsylvania to Chattanooga, Tennessee, describing all the stops along the way.

Two German songs about trains were adapted from this song, and both share the same opening line of "Pardon me."

TV's I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden starred in a 1984 movie with the same name of this song.

The lyrics:

Pardon me boy, is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?

Track twenty nine, boy you can gimme a shine

I can afford to board a Chattanooga Choo Choo

I've got my fare and just a trifle to spare

You leave the Pennsylvania station 'bout a quarter to four

Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore

Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer

Than to have your ham 'n' eggs in Carolina

When you hear the whistle blowin' eight to the bar

Then you know that Tennessee is not very far

Shovel all the coal in, gotta keep it rollin'

Woo, woo, Chattanooga, there you are

There's gonna be a certain party at the station

Satin and lace, I used to call funny face

She's gonna cry until I tell her that I'll never roam