Cannon Ball Blues: A Song History

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The Carter Family recorded "The Cannon-ball" for Victor in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 24, 1930, with Maybelle Carter on guitar, Sara Carter on autoharp and Ralph Peer supervising the session.[1] Victor issued it as V-40317 with A. P. Carter credited as songwriter, and it also appeared on Bluebird and Montgomery Ward.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index describes a string of floating verses in which the singer, whose sweetheart has left him and who is leaving her in turn, plans to board the Cannonball train running from Buffalo to Washington.[2] The index lists the author as unknown and gives 1930 as its earliest date, citing both Lesley Riddle and the Carters' record.[2]

Wood engraving of a man, a woman and a child hurrying across open ground as a train steams away in the distance

Honoré Daumier, The Railway: Too Late, wood engraving, 1862, printed 1920. Shown for its departing train; it has no connection to the song.

Riddle, an African American musician and song collector born in Burnsville, North Carolina, became A. P. Carter's friend in 1927-28 and went on long song-hunting trips with him; a state highway marker west of Burnsville now honors him.[3] The essay accompanying that marker, from North Carolina's Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, names "The Cannonball Blues" among the songs Riddle passed on to the Carters.[3] According to an American Folklore Society profile, when Mike Seeger asked Maybelle Carter where she had learned "The Cannon Ball," she named Riddle, and Seeger, who sought him out, interviewed and recorded him from 1965 to 1978.[4]

The Ballad Index connects the song in words and tune to "Mister McKinley (White House Blues)," a song about the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley.[2][5] Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers recorded that relative as "White House Blues" for Columbia in 1926.[5] The index also lists a recording by Kilby Snow and printings in the New Lost City Ramblers Songbook and in Botkin and Harlow's Treasury of Railroad Folklore.[2] Jim Miller includes it in 15 Tunes In The Public Domain Recorded By The Carter Family, Volume 1, a set of 15 solo mountain dulcimer arrangements with tablature, lyrics and chord symbols, published by Fingers Of Steel.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Cannon Ball Blues"

Sources

  1. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-59979. The Cannon-ball / Carter Family".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Cannonball".
  3. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: "Lesley Riddle 1905-1979 (N-14)".
  4. American Folklore Society, Notable Folklorists of Color: "Lesley (Esley) Riddle".
  5. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Mister McKinley (White House Blues)".
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Jim Miller, 15 Tunes In The Public Domain Recorded By The Carter Family, Volume 1".
  7. Image: Honoré Daumier, The Railway: Too Late, wood engraving, 1862, printed 1920. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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