[Ads-l] Antedating of "Funk" (Musical Genre)

[James Landau]

On  Thu, 5 Mar 2026 15:10:47 Zone+0000 0 "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:

>I have long been puzzled by that question but never really looked into it.  My impression of their music back in the day was that they were a hard rock band.  >Now I have looked into it, and it appears that Grand Funk Railroad was not a "funk" band in the usual sense, their name was some kind of wordplay on the> word "trunk."
The band's name was a wordplay on "Grand Trunk Railway" aka "Grand Trunk Railroad".  The Grand Trunk in 1969 did run through Flint, Mi.  

>From WIkipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Trunk_Railway
<begin quote>Nearing bankruptcy in 1919, the entire [Grand Trunk] system was nationalized: the government merged the Grand Trunk, the Grand Trunk Pacific, and the National Transcontinental lines into the new Canadian National Railways. The process was completed in 1923. The Grand Trunk lines in the United States, however, kept their distinctive name.The Grand Trunk legacy seeped into late 20th century popular culture, when a hard rock trio from Flint, Michigan, called itself Grand Funk Railroad in 1969.<snip>

In popular culture

In Series 3, Episode 1 of Downton Abbey, which takes place during the spring of 1920, Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham learns that he has lost most of the fortune that he received from his wife Cora, which Lord Grantham had largely invested in Grand Trunk Railway stock.
<end quote> 

James Landau
jjjrlandau at netscape.com


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