The Trolley Song

"The Trolley Song" is a song written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and made famous by Judy Garland in the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis. In a 1989 NPR interview, Blane said the song was inspired by a picture of a trolleycar in a turn-of-the-century newspaper. In 1974, he had said the picture was in a book he had found at the Beverly Hills Public Library and was captioned "'Clang, Clang, Clang,' Went the Trolley."

Blane and Martin were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 1945 Academy Awards, for "The Trolley Song" but lost to "Swinging on a Star" from Going My Way. "The Trolley Song" was ranked #26 by the American Film Institute in 2004 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs list. The song as conducted by Georgie Stoll for Meet Me in St. Louis has a very complex, evocative arrangement by Conrad Salinger featuring harmonized choruses, wordless vocals, and short highlights or flourishes from a wide range of orchestral instruments. It was recorded on April 21, 1944, at Decca Studios on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, California.

The song was used daily in Walt Disney Worlds’ Magic Kingdom theme park in Florida as one of the core musical soundtrack numbers for the dance performances during the Main Street trolley show. This show ceased during the global COVID-19 pandemic and has not returned to the theme park.

Covers

 * Five versions of the song charted in 1944-45. Garland's single and a version by the Vaughn Monroe Orchestra—sung as a duet by Monroe and Marilyn Duke—both peaked at number four, but the biggest hit version was by the Pied Pipers, which hit number two on Billboard magazine's "Best Selling Retail Records" chart the week of December 16, 1944.
 * Instrumental versions of the song were used in the scores of several MGM animated shorts, arranged by Scott Bradley, including Swing Shift Cinderella (1945) and the Tom and Jerry shorts Cat Fishin' (1947) and Old Rockin' Chair Tom (1948).
 * Numerous jazz interpretations have been released, such as the one by the Dave Brubeck Quartet in March 1954. The quartet recorded another version in 1962 and included it on the Bossa Nova U.S.A. album. The distinctive structure of "The Trolley Song"—in which the end of the second and third verses introduce a new melodic line and simulate the feeling that the song is taking off like the accelerating motion of a trolley—lends itself to jazz improvisation.
 * In 2021, Randy Rainbow covered the song in a political parody YouTube version called "Clang Clang Clang went Josh Hawley", about Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.