{"id":788,"date":"2025-09-15T15:39:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/?p=788"},"modified":"2025-09-15T15:39:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T15:39:11","slug":"mm-1962","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/2025\/09\/15\/mm-1962\/","title":{"rendered":"MM &#8211; 1962"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Peter, Paul and Mary - 500 Miles Lyrics\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YCwj1GMKB44?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;<strong>500 Miles<\/strong>&#8221; (also known as &#8220;<strong>500 Miles Away from Home<\/strong>&#8221; or &#8220;<strong>Railroaders&#8217; Lament<\/strong>&#8220;) is a song made popular in the United States and Europe during the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/American_folk_music_revival\">1960s folk revival<\/a>. The simple&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Repetition_(music)\">repetitive<\/a>&nbsp;lyrics offer a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lament\">lament<\/a>&nbsp;by a traveler who is far from home, out of money, and too ashamed to return. In a May 1963 interview on&nbsp;<em>Folk Music Worldwide<\/em>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_Stookey\">Paul Stookey<\/a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peter,_Paul_and_Mary\">Peter, Paul and Mary<\/a> characterized the song, which&nbsp; &nbsp;on the group&#8217;s 1962 debut album, as &#8220;a reflection of loneliness.&#8221;<sup><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The song is generally credited as being written by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hedy_West\">Hedy West<\/a>,\u00a0and a 1961 copyright is held by Atzal Music, Inc. &#8220;500 Miles&#8221; is West&#8217;s &#8220;most anthologized song&#8221;.\u00a0Some recordings have also credited Curly Williams, or\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Phillips_(musician)\">John Phillips<\/a> as co-writers,\u00a0although Phillips admitted he had only rearranged it and &#8220;didn&#8217;t deserve the credit&#8221;.\u00a0David Neale writes that &#8220;500 Miles&#8221; may be related to the older folk song &#8220;900 Miles&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Roud_Folk_Song_Index\">Roud<\/a>\u00a04959),\u00a0which may itself have origins in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Southern_United_States\">Southern<\/a>\u00a0American fiddle tunes &#8220;Reuben&#8217;s Train&#8221; and &#8220;Train 45&#8221;.<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Johnny_Cash\">Johnny Cash<\/a>\u00a0is known to have included &#8220;500 Miles&#8221; on his list of 100 essential country songs in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;500 Miles&#8221; (also known as &#8220;500 Miles Away from Home&#8221; or &#8220;Railroaders&#8217; Lament&#8220;) is a song made popular in the United States and Europe during the&nbsp;1960s folk revival. The simple&nbsp;repetitive&nbsp;lyrics offer a&nbsp;lament&nbsp;by a traveler who is far from home, out of money, and too ashamed to return. In a May 1963 interview on&nbsp;Folk Music Worldwide,&nbsp;Paul [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civatar.com\/suziqsthoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}