Blues and Gospel Train: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and others at Manchester station, 1964

This is the program from which that Sister Rosetta Tharpe song, Didn't It Rain, is taken. You know, the one everyone shares and says it's rare. The film also includes Muddy Waters (a bit) and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee (a lot).

Many English people study trains and train stations the same way some people study the blues. So unlike most YouTube videos, you get comments like this:

mlw61
Exactly 50 years on. The recording was made on a rainy day in Manchester (UK) on 7th May 1964. There is dispute about exactly where it was filmed, but TV producer Johnny Hamp says it was on Wilbraham Road, Chorlton Cum Hardey in South Manchester. The station was closed around 1959, but still had freight trains rolling through. I think it was closed permanently in 1967 and was knocked down. The site was used as a cycle way, with Safeway opening a store next to it (this is now a Morrisons). Over the last year or so, tracks have been re-layed and it is now part of Manchester's Metrolink Tram Station. 

mlw61Around 11 minutes in, you can hear the rain battering down. Manchester has a reputation of being a rainy city (and here's proof). This lead to Sister Rosetta Tharpe to change the song originally meant for the programme to "Didn't It Rain". Hence the hilarity at the start of the song :-) 

Neil Ferguson-LeeHi mlw61 - can I add to your observations? The station was indeed called Wilbraham Road and did close in 1958 although you are quite right that trains were still running down that line including through passenger trains. Having a TV show there that evening would have been rather disruptive and they would have had to have diverted trains off that line. As it was a Thursday, it must have been extra disruptive.Just one detail: you have got the station confused wit Chorlton-cum-Hardy which is the one next to Morrisons. That one did close in 1967 although at Chorlton Junction (which is where St. Werberghs Road tram stop is), if you turned left then the next station was indeed Wilbraham Road.What would I give to have been there on that night!

(I have no idea why one of them uses "freight" instead of "goods" train though. Maybe that's English now.)

The BBC ran an article in 2014, interviewing Johnny Hamp and an attendee. This tells the whole story.