Take The "A" Train

The first New York subway line both owned and operated by the city and named the "A- Train" celebrates its 75th birthday, and the Metropolitan Transit Authority strung together a train with historic cars for the occasion, as William Neuman reports ( New York Times ). The first A-Train carried passengers on February 10th, 1932. And the jazz connection? Well, of course Billy Strayhorn's composition "Take the A Train", the signature tune of Duke Ellington's Orchestra, which was played by a saxophonist in one of the cars and which in the early 40s already celebrated the "A-Train" as the quickest way to get to Harlem.