Confused, was that his version of “City of New Orleans”? I know that was a hit and maybe Alice’s Restaurant doesn’t count.
He’s got taste. What a long pointless meandering waste of time. This thread gets the :dubious: from me every year.
Alice’s Restaurant was not released as a single, so technically it never made the charts. Same thing for Don McClean’s American Pie.
Guthrie’s only top 40 chart hit was “City of New Orleans,” which was written by Steve Goodman.
Considering the length of the song, how could it be released as a single? I had a vinyl copy of the album on which the song took up the entire first side.
Songs can be broken up to take up both sides of a 45 single. Like Don McLean’s American Pie (@1) and The Animals’ Sky Pilot (#14).
Googling, it appears that Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone was released as a 6:13 single. So if you could do that on both sides of single, that’s still only two-thirds of the eighteen-minute length of Arlo’s song.
American Pie was definitely released as a single.
I wonder if there are any covers of this song? I’ll have to hunting to see if there are.
We’re not proud.
Although you’re wrong about the pointless part.
I’ve never listened to it on Thanksgiving, but on my senior ditch day in 1969 we went to the beach for a while, then, somebody got the idea to go to this miniature golf course on La Cienaga. One of my friends had brought his guitar, and when we got in the car he started playing and singing “Alice’s Restaurant.” He finished just as we pulled into the miniature golf parking lot.
Which means you read it every year. What a pointless meandering waste of time.
The chorus and a crappy guitar solo that clocks in at 3:25. Truly crapadelic.
Or tired. 
. I’m laughing, this ‘tradition’ question has been going on for 8 years now. I’m old enough to remember the song and the movie, but most young people now probably don’t know who Arlo Guthrie is. … Playing ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ as a ‘tradition’ is not unlike our great-grandparents playing ‘Goodnight Irene’ by the Weavers as their anniversary song tradition. I’m not criticizing anyone’s taste, and the song makes me feel nostalgic…I’m just poking a little fun at the passage of time.
I didn’t realize the thread was 8 years old. Arlo is still out there performing. He’s currently on tour for the 50th Anniversary of Alice’s Restaurant. He’s still not proud…or tired.
I’m surprised so many of you wait to listen on the radio! Don’t you own it? 
I dutifully cued it up on Spotify for my drive home today, as I always do this time of year. But this time I got about 10 minutes in and impulsively shut it off in favor of silence, which I enjoyed much, much more.
So, to answer the OP…it *used *to be a tradition.
This child of the sixties(ten years old when the song came out) is on the Group W bench, I guess, but hey - if you like it go for it.
I’m a big fan of folk/traditional music but have never liked the political crap that got thrown into sixties songs. Alice’s Restaurant is certainly not embedded in my psyche - it’s just another hippy-dippy song that a few of my older cousins listened to(the ones with long hair).
Well, apparently 12 inch singles existed, though I’m not easily finding how long they were. Though I do know that the original 12-inch LP was about 22 minutes per side, so they could theoretically get up to 16 minutes or so on one side (33.3/45 * 22), though I understand they packed the grooves less tightly on singles to allow for greater amplitudes to give 45 singles higher audio quality.
Still, that does make it seem like you could get all of Alice’s Restaurant on a double sided 12-inch single, if they’d wanted to. Though, honestly, if you’re going to make a 12 inch, why not make it an LP like you described?
If one side is one song, then it basically is a single in the LP format. The back just contains the B-side extras.