On May 19, 1903,
Horatio Nelson Jackson
, a 31-year-old doctor from Burlington, VT, made a 50-dollar bet that he could drive an automobile from San Francisco to New York City in less than three months. Four days later, he left California in a two-cylinder "horseless carriage" (with a top cruising speed of 30 miles per hour) and began America's first transcontinental road trip.
Horatio's Drive
is the
soundtrack
to a
Ken Burns
documentary
on
Jackson
's historic cross-country jaunt and features reinterpretations of popular songs of the day (
"Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home"
), rags (
"Mississippi Rag,"
"Tiger Rag"
),
traditional
pieces (
"Cripple Creek,"
"Rovin' Gambler"
) and contemporary songs that fit the motif (
"Back 'N' Forth in Pahrump, Nevada"
), recorded by the likes of
Tony Ellis
,
John McKuen
, and
Bobby Horton
, as well as brief talking interludes by
Tom Hanks
(as the voice of
Horatio
) and cameos by
Tom Bodett
and
George Plimpton
. Although much of the music here becomes incidental when divorced from the visual portion of the
, it is bright and pleasant on its own, and there are several highlights, including
Ellis
' pretty banjo piece,
"Straw Dolls,"
Todd Phillips
' slowed-down take on
J.P. Nestor
's fiddle romp,
"Train on the Island,"
's guitar version of
Jimmie Strothers
' odd
"Blood-Stained Banders."
In all,
feels like a facsimile of the music for America's first road trip and it works as such, but there is no dust, dirt, or grit here, and one kind of wishes
Burns
could have licensed the old 78s for some of these songs -- scratches and all. ~ Steve Leggett