After 70 years, music video filmed for 'Chattanooga Choo Choo'

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photo The 32 performers in the music video for "Chattanooga Choo Choo" wore authentic 1940s era clothing that video co-producer Tiffany Muff found on eBay, Etsy and in vintage stores.
photo Tiffany Muff and Landon Steele share a love of American history, particularly the 1930s and 1940s, and used it to make a music video for the song "Chattanooga Choo Choo."

Lyrical alterationsGlenn Miller was a brilliant American musician who died who died while flying to Europe to entertain Allied troops fighting the racist Nazi regime during World War II. Yet the first line of the lyrics to "Chattanooga Choo Choo" are "Pardon me, boy" which is a derogatory way for whites to speak to adult black males. Miller indicates the line refers to a black man in a later line that says, "Boy, you can give me a shine."Muff and Steele wanted to expunge, delete, cleanse, banish any hint of racism from their music video. Muff selected black performers - including 7-year old Zaidrick Hayes - to portray a family of passengers on a desegregated train. She wrote a script that depicts passengers - black and white - arriving at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in vintage cars, dancing on the platform, enjoying the train ride.The song's opening line falls at a point in the video where Muff hops out of her automobile and greets the waiting Steele. Both are white. They decided to delete the second line completely, Muff says.But that now non-existent line would become a problem in a discussion with the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel about putting a bit of the video on the hotel's Facebook page or website. Steele and Muff say the hotel seemed enthused until officials saw an ad that Muff designed featuring black as well as white performers from the video."The hotel's attitude changed so quickly and we felt bad when we heard that there were concerns that people might think the line with 'boy' in it refers to either Zaid or a black adult male," Muff says. "I don't think anyone who sees the video would ever think that."Muff shared an email she sent to Choo Choo General Manager Jim Bambrey in which she offers to scrap the ad and asks the hotel to reconsider promoting the video.Bambrey says he does not recall any concerns ever being expressed about any racial overtones to the lyrics or the video. He says the hotel decided it would be unfair to promote one local project instead of another because Chattanooga is home to so many videographers, artists, filmmakers and musicians with projects they would like showcased.

Like many millenials, 28-year old Landon Steele works crazy hard at multiple jobs - driving a UPS truck from pre-dawn until his day job at a commercial photographer's studio then going on duty as a volunteer firefighter by night.

Yet he still found time to produce a music video gem that depicts a moment in Chattanooga's past - the 1940's glamorous heyday of train travel - that is so charming, it could double as a dream for Chattanooga's future. An interracial cast of 32 performers sings, swing dances and acts their way across the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum platform and trains to Glen Miller's "Chattanooga Choo Choo," a hit in 1941 that remained at No. 1 for nine weeks and eventually sold more than 1.2 million copies.

Steele and co-producer Tiffany Muff, a 25-year-old graphic designer, raised $15,000, enough money to buy the rights to Miller's arrangement, rent a moving train car from the museum and outfit every cast member with exquisite, period-perfect clothing Muff bought on eBay, Etsy and from vintage clothing stores. Steele paid out of his own pocket for his Greyhound bus commute to Nashville for swing dance lessons.

"All the performers did this video for love," Steele says. "Soemtimes we had a little money to pay them for mileage, but otherwise they did it just for love. We never planend to make money off of it. We would like the finished video to have a permanent home."

The video is completed but still needs a permanent soundtrack. Steele and Muff are trying to raise an additional $7,000 so they can hire a band, book a studio and give the music video its final sound.

They are hoping their completed video will be on display where Chattanoogans and tourists alike can see it. Steele and Muff mention highway welcome centers on Tennessee's borders, the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, a performance space or concert hall on the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga campus, the Chattanooga Visitors Center or the Convention Center downtown.

Steele and Muff met at a party when she was a Southern Adventist University student, and they discovered a shared passion for American history, circa 1930s and 40s. Muff's fascination was spawned in her father's weird and exciting basement, where he created an entire alternative universe.

"Yes, he was like those cool Disney dads who invents amazing stuff like (Flubber) in their spare time; my dad built a duplicate of a 1940s Pullman car in the basement and a dining car furnished with authentic props from the period like magazines published in the 1940s," Muff says. "My grandfather designed and built the doors used on NASA spaceships and rockets, so my dad absorbed a lot of his skills at reconstructing entire environments from scratch. My dad had a steam locomotive from the 1940s lowered into the basement then built the house on top of it."

Her father wired the locomotive with a soundtrack of whistles, bells and clicking rails, the same noises an engineer in the 1940s would have heard. He also outfitted the locomotive with a motor that made the cab rock and jolt the way a real locomotive of that era would have done as it sped around curves and up and down hills.

Given her family's love of the 1940s, she was elated when Hollywood came to Chattanooga for "42," the film about Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's racist prohibition against black and white players being on the same team.

She and Steele were hired as extras for the film and, while the crew provided era-appropriate costumes for most extras, Muff was able to wear an authentic ensemble from clothes she owned. And the moviemakers gave each extra a parting gift: a glamorous red carpet photo of the extra in costume. The photos were put on a Facebook page for the film.

When it came time to make the "Chattanooga Choo Choo" video, Muff used the page to track down more than two dozen performers to invite them to appear in the video. Katie Nix and her daughter, Brianna, accepted immediately.

The Englewood Textile Museum near Athens, Tenn., loaned Nix a purple polka-dotted dress with a ruffle collar to wear in the music video. The dress was made around 1940 and belonged to the wife of an Athens drugstore owner. Muff bought a robin's egg blue dress with a lace bodice for Brianna.

"I loved the dress Tiffany found for me; it was so beautiful," says 11-year-old Brianna. "Tiffany even bought a doll that she said looks like me that I could play with in a scene on the train."

In the video, Brianna's curly blonde hair is caught in a blue bow and she wears black patent-leather Mary Janes. The blonde, curly haired doll wears the same shoes and a blue dress.

Muff's attention to detail is even more remarkable considering that she only had performers' measurements to guide her when she bought their costumes online.

"They saw their outfits for the first time the day they performed in them and we shot the video's final and only version," Muff says proudly.

Shooting had to be done in a single day because all the grown-up performers were working for free and had day jobs. Besides, there was not enough money to pay a director and cameramen for multiple takes.

Steele still believes finding the studio that directed and shot the video was a mini-miracle. He was getting off the Greyhound bus in Nashville, worrying about what camera crew was affordable on a teeny budget, when he literally saw a sign.

"The sign across the street from the bus said Seek Find Productions with a Christian cross on it," Steele recalls. "They were willing to do the job for a cut rate. And they directed it all in one day."

Comedian W.C. Fields warned against films that involve working with children or animals because they are labor intensive - and the kids and pets also often upstage the adult actors. But Muff cast two children and a dog who performed perfectly, hitting their marks on cue the first time and charming the camera effortlessly.

Along with Brianna, Zaidrick Hayes, 7, was the other kid in the video.

"The thing that worried me the most when I was in the movie was picking up a dog for the first time because I have a pet fish but I've never owned a dog," he says. "In the movie, the dog gets away from Brianna and I catch him for her. I was able to do it with no problems. Now that's my favorite part of the video."

Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391.

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