J. C. Cohen Lyrics

Listen, all you children, to my sad refrain,
About a subway conductor on a runaway train.
Squeezing people into cars, he won his fame.
(yeah) And John Charles Cohen was the great man's name.

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor,
IRT, that's a subway line,
And if you gotta travel uptown,
He's a greater conductor than Leonard Bernstein.

'Twas on a Sunday in the summer, and from everywhere,
People planned to take a subway to the World's Fair.
A half a million people tried to push and jar,
All of them determined to get in one car.

But the IRT depended on their finest men.
J. C. Cohen could pack a subway like a sardine can.
He pushed the people up and back and 'round about.
He squeezed so many in, he squeezed the engineer out.

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor,
How he'd moan, "Step to the rear."
J. C. Cohen, he really had a problem,
On a subway train without an engineer.

J. C. tried to get into the engineer's place,
But when he look inside the cab he saw a strange man's face.
A half-pint drunk with a full-pint bottle.
He emptied out the bottle, and he yelled, "Full throttle!"

They passed Columbus Circle doing 82,
'Couple minutes later they were under Bronx Zoo.
J. C. shuddered, and he said, "I guess
This used to be a Local, but it's now an Express."

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor,
Kept his head when everyone was tense.
He said, "When we pass the city limits,
Everybody pays another fifteen cents."

J. C. said, "We're heading north, my friends,
But not a man alive knows where the subway ends."
The train went under Albany at 90 flat,
And Governor Rockefeller hollered, "What was that!?"

A lady said to J. C. Cohen with indignation,
"If this is Albany, then you have passed my station.
So either you should take me back to Fifty-ninth Street,
Or ask one of these gentlemen to give me his seat."

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor,
J. C. Cohen noticed something odd.
When he saw lobsters on the roadbed,
He said, "I got a feeling we're beneath Cape Cod."

Oh well, the train kept speeding to the north, my friends,
Finally came to where the tunnel ends.
When they came up to the surface from the long, long hole,
They were 27 inches from the great North Pole.

J. C. hollered, "Everybody out!
This is the end of the line, beyond the shadow of a doubt."
They went out to get some fresh air, and before they took a whiff,
Cohen and all the passengers were frozen stiff.

J. C. Cohen, what a great conductor,
Bless his soul, he ran out of luck.
J. C. Cohen, he was really frozen,
And he had to be brought home in a Good Humor truck.

When they told Mrs. Cohen that she'd lost her man,
She said, "Must you interupt me when I'm playing Pan?"
Then she said to her partner, Mrs. R. J. Rosen,
"Cohen was a lovely husband, but he's no good frozen."

Then she went to her little boy, and took his hand,
And she said, "I'm going to take you out to Disneyland.
So Melvin, little darling, don't you weep or wail,
'Cause you got another papa on the monorail."

(Got another papa on the monorail.)