The MTA Song
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The MTA Song, often called Charlie on the MTA, is an old song about a man trapped on Boston's subway, the MTA (since superseded by the MBTA).
Made popular in 1959 by The Kingston Trio, an American folk group, it tells of Charlie, a man who gets on the system and can't get off because of the "exit fares" established to collect increased fares without the expense of upgrading fare collection equipment. The exit fare for Charlie's trip was 5 cents, but he only brought a dime to pay the entrance fare, and therefore (apparently) can't get off the train. His wife comes down to the station every day to hand him a sandwich "as the train comes rumbling through" (though it is not clear why she does not instead hand him a nickel).
The song is best known for its catchy chorus:
- Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned.
The song, based on a much older tune called The Ship that Never Returned, was written in 1948 as part of the re-election campaign of Walter A. O'Brien, a Progressive Party candidate for mayor of Boston. O'Brien was unable to afford radio advertisments, so he enlisted local folk singers to write and sing songs through out Boston on a truck with a loud speaker on it (he was later fined $10 for "disturbing the peace"). One of his major campaign planks was to lower the price of riding the subway by removing the complicated fare structure involving exit fares. In the Kingston Trio recording, the name "Walter A. O'Brien" was changed to "George O'Brien".
The song has Charlie boarding at Kendall Square and changing for "Jamaica Plain". There has never been a Boston subway stop called "Jamaica Plain", but there are several in that neighborhood of Boston on the Orange Line, and there were also on the Green Line until 1985. If his wife visited him every day at the Scollay Square station (now called Government Center), he must have been on the Green Line. His "change for Jamaica Plain" must therefore have been at Park Street.
The Boston Punk_rock band Dropkick Murphys has a cover entitled Skinhead on the M.B.T.A..
The MBTA's "Easy Way" card-based fare collection system, which will replace the traditional token-based system starting in 2006, has been officially nicknamed the "CharlieCard" in homage to this song.
