[Tiffany Sun's Post]

In the lyrics of the Grateful Dead’s version of “Casey Jones”, there is a notable change in expression of the singer right before he sings the line about “the lady in red”.  He drawls out the word “the” right before singing “lady in red” to draw more attention to his advice: “you’re better off dead.”  There is another notable change when he sings “train one hundred and two/ is on the wrong track and / headed for you”.  The first and last line is sung the same way, both with a drawl and stress on the last word, and in the second line the stress is in the middle of line on the word “wrong”. There are two distinct changes in the singer’s expression when the idea of death appears in his lyrics.  The Grateful Dead’s version of this song dabbles into folk music characteristics, in the sense that it also has tension between music and idea.

Throughout the song, the tone of the singer and the tempo doesn’t dramatically change until the last verse of the song.  In the last verse of the song, the drums and the singing gradually picks up tempo and then it slows down on the second-to-last line “and you know that notion just crossed my mind”.  The line is then repeated again for the last time, but is only accompanied with the guitar.  The absence of drums in the last line stresses the last few words of the song.