You know the tune. Now learn the astonishing tale behind (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66

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Route 66 was 20 years old and World War II had just ended when Bobby Troup, an aspiring songwriter from Pennsylvania, decided to go west.As it turned out, that drive in early 1946 did more than anyone could have imagined to establish the road as a symbol of footloose American freedom.

Stories, photos and travel recommendations from America’s Mother RoadTroup, 25 at the time, had already earned an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania, written a hit song (1941’s “Daddy,” sung by Sammy Kaye), worked for bandleader Tommy Dorsey and served as a Marine through the war years.But to restart his career as a songwriter and actor, he believed that he needed to be in Los Angeles.

So he and his wife, Cynthia, pointed their 1941 Buick toward California.They started on U.S.40, then picked up Route 66 in Illinois.

Along the way, as Troup told author Michael Wallis in the book “Route 66: The Mother Road,” Cynthia came up with a phrase she thought was songworthy.“Get your kicks on Route 66,” she said.Troup took it from there, creating “a kind of musical map of the highway.”As Troup later recalled in an introduction to a Route 66 book by Tom Snyder, they heard Louis Armstrong play a club in St.Louis, stopped at Meramec Caverns in Missouri and found that “a good part of the highway was absolutely miserable — narrow, just two lanes, and very twisting through the Ozarks and Kansas.” Then came a snowstorm in Texas.By the end of the drive, the up-tempo tune was half-done.

Then, not quite a week after arrival, Troup landed a chance to pitch a few songs to Nat “King” Cole, who had already won fame with hits including “Sweet Lorraine” and “Straighten Up and Fly Right.”They were sitting by a piano on stage — after Cole’s last set of the night at the Trocadero on Sunset Strip — when the nervous young songwriter decided to share his unfinished roa...