As rock standards go, one of the best is “Train Kept A Rollin’.”
The version I heard first was Aerosmith’s cover, from the “Get Your Wings” album of 1974. That I heard it first makes it the definitive version for me.
(I originally wrote that Joe Perry played guitar on that. He did not. It was Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, as Willie graciously explains in his comment below.)
Tiny Bradshaw, one of the early R&B artists who paved the way for rock, did it first — in 1951. He wrote the tune along Howard Kay and Lois Mann and/or Sydney Nathan.
Sugarloaf also covered it on its self-titled debut album in 1970. The version they used, though, was a version first done by the Yardbirds.
It’s a hybrid, part “Train Kept A Rollin'” and part “Stroll On,” the latter a tune for which Jeff Beck recycled a riff from the Yardbirds’ 1965 cover of the original. The writing credits for “The Train Kept A-Rollin’ (Stroll On)” went to Beck, Jimmy Page and fellow Yardbirds Keith Relf, Chris Drega and in some cases Jim McCarty.
“The Train Kept A-Rollin’,” Sugarloaf, from “Sugarloaf,” 1970.
It’s one of the tunes on tonight’s side over at The Midnight Tracker.
One slight correction to your reference to Joe Perry’s guitar work on “Train” from “Get Your Wings.” Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, best known for their work on Lou Reed’s “Rock n Roll Animal,” were brought in by producer Jack Douglas to supply the guitar parts.