Johnny Burnette Trio – Lonesome Train

The first time I heard this song I was knocked out by that guitar sound. Not just the playing, but that incredible slapback echo that seems to jump right out of the speakers. You can buy countless pedals and plugins today that promise the same effect, but to my ears, nothing quite captures what they were doing in the 1950s. There is just something alive about it. I get all nerdy over this sound but I can’t help it.

The Johnny Burnette Trio was one of the wildest rockabilly bands of the era. They were formed by brothers Johnny and Dorsey Burnette, along with guitarist Paul Burlison; they blended country, rhythm and blues, and early rock into a raw sound. This song, recorded in 1956, became one of their signature recordings. It wasn’t a major hit at the time, but it became one of the defining records of rockabilly. Burlison’s guitar playing, along with Johnny Burnette’s vocal, gave the record an excitement that still comes across nearly seventy years later.

Paul Burlison always maintained that part of his distorted guitar sound happened because a tube in his amplifier had become loose during a rough drive to a studio. Rather than fixing it, he liked the gritty sound and kept playing. Whether every detail of that story is exactly as remembered has been debated over the years, but it’s one of rockabilly’s great legends. It helped point the way toward the distorted guitar sounds that became common in rock music years later.

I’m going to get a little technical on this subject…see nerdy again. One of the secrets behind that sound was the recording itself. In the 1950s, there were no digital effects and very few electronic echo units. Engineers often created an echo by using two tape machines. The signal was recorded on one machine and immediately played back on a second machine a fraction of a second later. By mixing the original signal with that of the delayed playback, they created the famous slapback echo that became a trademark of rockabilly. Studios also used echo chambers, actual rooms with a speaker at one end and a microphone at the other. The natural reflections inside the room produced reverb that sounded warm and real because it actually was. Every studio had its own sound, which is one reason records from that era have so much personality. You can tell if it’s a Stax or Motown by the sound in the sixties as well.

This song reminds me that sometimes limitations create the greatest music. The musicians couldn’t rely on technology to make a recording exciting. They had to play with energy, and the engineers had to invent ways to capture it. The result is a record that still sounds fresh today. If you want to hear rockabilly at its finest, with one of the greatest guitar sounds ever put on tape, this is a train well worth climbing aboard.

Below in the live cut, Johnny Black is on bass, filling in for Dorsey Burnette.

Lonesome Train

Lonesome train, on a lonesome track
I am goin’ away, ain’t comin’ back
I am goin’ somewhere far from my baby

On a lonesome train, on a lonesome track

A lonesome train, on a lonesome track
Got all my troubles in one big pack
My baby left me, so sad and lonely

On a lonesome train, on a lonesome track

Lonesome train, on a lonesome track
My girl don’t love me and that’s a fact
No use in livin’, no use in dyin’

On a lonesome train, on a lonesome track

On a lonesome train, on a lonesome track
I want my baby, I want her back
Don’t want to go on forever travelin’
On a lonesome train, on a lonesome track

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

39 thoughts on “Johnny Burnette Trio – Lonesome Train”

  1. Pingback: Johnny Burnette Trio – Lonesome Train – MobsterTiger

      2. I love the idea of having an echo room…when the Grateful Dead was playing at the Pyramids…they tried putting a mic inside one of the empty tombs as an echo box…so many ways of doing it without a box or an effect.

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      7. That clip kinda sums up the Grateful Dead. They start in the background, accompanying the Egyptian musicians. When “Fire on the Mountain” starts, it is driven by the bass. Garcia comes in playing through an envelope filter (the wah-wah sound). If you’re not paying attention, you might not notice that he stops playing and Weir takes over the lead line. After the first vocal interlude, it is pure ensemble playing – not just a band comping behind a lead guitar. And, at 16:30, the camera focuses briefly on Bill Walton (UCLA and, at the time of this recording, Portland Trail Blazers basketball player). By the way, Bill Kreutzmann is playing with a broken wrist and in a cast. If you watch the video, you never really see his left hand – it’s not doing much.

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      8. I recall reading in a book by one of the Dead that Keith Godchaux insisted on bringing a Steinway concert grand (pretty much the only keyboard he was willing to play), but they couldn’t afford to bring their piano tuner (one would think he’d be one of the more important parts of the entourage) so it was always out of tune and most of their recordings were garbage. With the magic sound engineers can work nowadays some of it was resurrected and released as the album “Rocking the Cradle” 30 years later.

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      2. I just caught a live cut by them in 1978…it does sound great…don’t know if that is the one you are talking about…but it doesn’t matter…it was on.

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      6. Yea…and I will be listening to it this week for sure. It’s simple…and that is not a put down…everything is clear…it doesn’t have 20 guitars coming in…something that can be replicated on the back porch.

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  7. pretty good if standard-ish late-50s song. Those Burnettes sure did have a feel for rockabilly! Your explanation on the guitar sounds is cool, even if some of it goes above my head. But it reminded me a lot of photography. Now with a good edition of Photoshop or anything like that, anything is possible. But when I was growing up and getting into it, if you wanted to get something different you had to work with the real ‘instruments’… filters on cameras, dodging and burning in the darkroom to enhance specific parts of an image, cross-processing to get wild color effects, things like that. There’s something to be said for the ease of the process now but back then, it took real talent and special knowhow just like it did for musicians or producers to get different effects.

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    1. I think everyone….even in that field…should know how to do it both ways. As far as reverb…you could place a speaker and a mic in a bathroom and get that natural reverb…I’ve done it before. The distortion…those vaccum tubes…when they jar a loose or malfunction…you get interesting sounds

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      1. I remember reading JJ Burnel had a rip in one of his amp cones and he found to his surprise that it made his bass sound more menacing so he went with it. Happy little accident as bob Ross would have said

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  9. The need to improvise around the problem was the beginning of the George Martin/Phil ‘Loose Canon’ Spector master manipulation style of production I guess. The two stories I recall from way back was Dave Davies taking the cut-throat razor to his amp and the Honeycombs stomping their feet out on the stairs at Joe Meeks studio. Both stories I’m sure I heard back in the day by 60s/70s DJs.

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  11. In the 70s I knew a self-taught electrical engineer who designed and built an amplifier. He bought spring reverb units from an old guy who made them in a workshop in his garage in a small town near here. He designed circuits that he claimed he didn’t understand but gave him sounds he was looking for. He had one switch that he didn’t know how to label if he was going to try to manufacture and sell this amp – he had a switch position that gave him Carlos Santana’s tone and sustain, another that gave him Jerry Garcia’s tone. Alas, as a small start-up company, it didn’t last long.

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