Charlie Parr's song, "1922," used in an ad for the international cell phone company, Vodafone.

The song on the Vodafone ad is a tribute to his father called "1922" — that's the year his father was born. The song is a perfect tribute to the hard-times ballads of the '30s and '40s: "Well I worked all summer couldn't save a cent gave all of my money to the government. I don't know how it got spent but the banks are coming for my deed boys … ain't that the way it is?"

You can imagine, then, Parr's reaction when he first heard his song attached to the good-life imagery of the Vodafone ad. "It's about my father hopping freight trains," he says. "I wasn't thinking about yuppies when I wrote it. It's kind of embarrassing."

MINNPOST.COM: How a Duluth bluesman's tribute to his train-hopping father became the soundtrack for a corporate giant