Dead Songs in Depth

    
Promised Land
w&m: Berry
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/PROMISED.HTM
  

    
Ed Ward, in his The History of Rock & Roll Volume Two, describes
Promised Land as "a coded tale of driving cross country while black"
(p 29).

I don't think so.
  

    

I've seen that referenced before, possibly at a scholarly meeting (<jera>,
does this ring a bell?)
  

    

<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/travel/chuck-berry-road-trip.html>

It is a motion specific to the African-American experience in the 20th
century: “The one thing they could do, that they couldn’t do under
slavery, was move,” said Mark Burford, an associate music professor at Reed
College in Portland, Ore.

And it is a motion designed to pull yourself out of trouble: “Each verse
seems to have something happen, or lose something,” the Texas rocker Joe
Ely told me, “but always, at the end of the next verse, it rises up like a
phoenix.”
  

    
I like this!
  

    
The lyrics, courtesy of Whitegum:

I left my home in Norfolk, Virginia
California on my mind
I straddled that Greyhound and rode him past Raleigh
And on across Caroline
We stopped at Charlotte, we by-passed Rockhill
We never was a minute late
We was ninety miles out of Atlanta by sundown
Rollin' 'cross Georgia State
We had motor trouble that turned into a struggle
Half-way across Alabam'
And that 'Hound broke down and left us all stranded
In downtown Birmingham

Right away I bought me a through train ticket
Ridin' 'cross Mississippi clean
And I was on the Midnight Flyer out of Birmingham
Smokin' into New Orleans
Somebody help me get out of Louisiana
Just help me get to Houston town
There are people there who care a little 'bout me
And they won't let the poor boy down
Sure as you're born, they bought me a silk suit
They put luggage in my hand
And I woke up high over Albuquerque
On a jet to the promised land

Workin' on a T-bone steak a la carte
Flyin' over to the Golden State
When the pilot told us in thirteen minutes
We'd be headed in the terminal gate
Swing low sweet chariot, come down easy
Taxi to the terminal zone
Cut your engines and cool your wings
And let me make it to the telephone
Los Angeles, give me Norfolk, Virginia
Tidewater four-ten-o-nine
Tell the folks back home, this is the promised land calling
And the poor boy is on the line

A T bone steak a la carte does not sound like too adverse a
circumstance to me.

I am not able to read that NYT article, unfortunately.
  

    
Those lyrics are linked in the first post in this topic (as they are
in each topic, courtesy Alex Allan). Just by the way. 
  

    
Are you admonishing me for posting them in full?
  

    
Ha. No--I guess not...shouldn't second guess you!
  

    
I am continuing to make the point that I don't think it is code for
driving across country while black.
  

    
I always felt the lyrics as a metaphor for the joyful escape (Great
Migration) of one Southern black man to California, overcoming
obstacles with cheerful perseverance. The title of course is a
straightforward allusion to the biblical flight of the Israelites
from Egypt to Jerusalem, and the tribulations of their wanderings
through the desert, paying tribute to the gospel and blues roots of
rock and roll.    
  

    
Yes, my take as well.
  

    
Me too. Hard to see that point about coded references.
  

    
I never looked at that lyric in color.  It could have been any of
us.  
  

    
What Tim said.