Night Train (James Brown lyrics version)

"James Brown released a version of "Night Train" in 1962 that reached #5 on the R&B charts and #35 on the pop charts. His performance replaced the original lyrics of the song with a shouted rough list of the stations on the Seaboard Air Line Railroad's Silver Meteor service and many repetitions of the song's name. A live version of the tune was the closing number on his breakthrough 1963 album Live at the Apollo."

The writing of "Night Train" had a long and complicated history before that. The piece's opening riff was first recorded in 1940 by a small group led by Duke Ellington sideman Johnny Hodges under the title "That's the Blues, Old Man". Ellington used the same riff as the opening and closing theme of a longer-form composition, "Happy-Go-Lucky Local", that was itself one of four parts of his Deep South Suite. Then Jimmy Forrest recorded "Night Train" that employs the same riff as the earlier recordings. Then Simpkins added lyrics to the song. It was suggested that Simpkins co-wrote (or had Washington write) them as a deliberate throwaway in order to get part of the tune's songwriting credit; this entitled him to substantial share of "Night Train"'s royalties, even though it was most often performed as an instrumental without the lyrics.

Several iswc work have been created to track these evolutions:
ISWC: T-902.908.661-1: credited to Jimmy Forrest, CA; Oscar Washington, CA; Duke Ellington, CA
ISWC: T-070.242.500-0: credited to Jimmy Forrest, CA; Oscar Washington, CA
ISWC: T-901.127.997-3: credited to Jimmy Forrest, C; Oscar Washington, A; Lewis Simpkins, A