Here's the Kingston Trio's performance:
And here's the political history of this campaign song:
http://www.mbta.com/about_the_mbta/history/?id=19582
The well-known folk song about Charlie on the M.T.A. is actually entitled “M.T.A.,” which stands for Metropolitan Transit Authority, the predecessor of today’s MBTA. The song was written as a campaign song for the
1949 Boston mayoral race of Walter A. O’Brien, Jr. O’Brien was the
candidate of the Progressive Party, and the song was meant to call attention O’Brien’s opposition to the recent fare increase, which saw subway riders charged an extra nickel to exit trains at stops above ground. That’s the reason that the last verse of the song goes:
Now, citizens of Boston, don’t you think it is a scandal / That the people have to pay and pay? / Join Walter A. O’Brien to fight the fare increase / Get poor Charlie off that MTA!
As the years went by, O’Brien’s campaign song continued to charm all who heard it. A former O’Brien campaign volunteer taught it to folk singer Will Holt, who recorded it for Coral Records in 1957. Upon its release, “M.T.A.” seemed well on its way to becoming a hit, quickly climbing the music charts. But radio stations suddenly stopped playing the song and record stores refused to stock it after receiving complaints, especially in the Boston area, that the song glorified a “radical” - because in 1955, O’Brien, his wife, and other Progressive Party members had been accused by Massachusetts’ version of the House Committee on Un-American Activities of being “Communists or Communist sympathizers.” The O’Briens denied the charge, and always would, but unable to find work in Boston after that, they moved back to Maine, where both had been born and raised.
In 1959 the Kingston Trio recorded “M.T.A.” Mindful of what happened two years earlier, however, they changed the name of the political candidate mentioned at the end of the song from the real Walter to a fictional “George” O’Brien. Without Walter O’Brien’s name, the controversy disappeared and the single of “M.T.A.” reached #15 on the Billboard chart, and the album on which it appeared reached #1. Since then, “M.T.A.” has become a part of American folklore, sung around campfires and recorded by artists from all over the world in styles ranging from folk to funk and rock to reggae.
Walter O’Brien became a school librarian and later ran a bookstore up Maine. He died in 1998 at the age 83. It never bothered O’Brien that his name had been removed from the song that had been written for him. His three daughters continue to collect the various versions of the song written for their father, even though the songs no longer mention his name.
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