If you absolutely, positively have to have everything ever done by Jimmy Stewart, this one is going to keep you awake nights searching the internet. It is not known how many copies were made, but the number is undoubtedly small; the number that still exist today is smaller still.
This 1957, twelve-inch, two-sided, 78 RPM, demonstration acetate features two versions each of the two songs for the film – You Can’t Get Far Without a Railroad and Follow the River.
Stewart sings a version of each of the two songs accompanied only by a piano, while the other versions, marked “Demonstration,” are by an unknown singer – possibly Ned Washington who wrote the song’s lyrics (the music was written by Dimitri Tiomkin). It is interesting to note that the “Demonstration” version of You Can’t Get Far Without a Railroad on side two of the disc is three minutes and forty-two seconds in length and some of its verses were not used in the film.
Here are the Stewart songs:
You Can’t Get Far Without a Railroad
Follow the River
These are apparently test recordings made so the film’s producer and director could evaluate Stewart’s singing voice.
The film version of You Can’t Get Far Without a Railroad, lifted directly from the film’s soundtrack, has been released on the German CD, Wand’rin’ Star (Bear Family BCD 16166AR, released in 1999).
Recently, while researching another Stewart radio show, we discovered this article in the March 25, 1957 edition of the Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY:
Apparently, Decca wasn’t as excited about Stewart’s voice as Tiomkin seemed to think, as none of the songs from Night Passage were released. However, eight years later, they did release his The Legend of Shenandoah (Decca 31795) from the film Shenandoah.
