The A Train




From today's NY Times:

September 10, 2007

A Train Still a-Thrumming at 75

By MANNY FERNANDEZ

On Sept. 10, 1932, one minute after midnight, a 7-year-old boy named Billy Reilly dropped a nickel into a turnstile and boarded an A train at 42nd Street. It was a southbound express, and it was Billy’s first ride on an A.

It was the city’s first ride, too — 171,267 passengers rode it that September day in 1932, its first day of operation. The line, then called the Eighth Avenue subway, spanned only 12 miles and 28 stations, from the top of Manhattan to the bottom.

Some 75 years later, the A line stretches farther than it did back then, literally and culturally.

Over the years, the A line has become less of a train and more of an icon, a symbol of the nearly 500,000 varied and eclectic New Yorkers and others it carries through the city daily. The A line is certainly not the oldest run in New York’s subway system, nor has it ever been the smoothest-running, the most punctual or even the cleanest. But an argument could be made, thanks in part to Duke Ellington’s up-tempo stamp of approval, that it is perhaps the coolest.

Read on here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/nyregion/10atrain.html?hp

And listen here:


The Delta Rhythm Boys, Take the "A" Train


Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Take the "A" Train


The Duke Ellington Orchestra and the Count Basie Orchestra, Take the "A" Train




Posted: Sun - September 9, 2007 at 10:10 PM          

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