Cannonball

The Carter Family's other cannonball song (alongside the more famous "Wabash Cannonball"), known as "Cannonball", "The Cannonball", or "Cannonball Blues". 

Both the music and the lyrics are partly derived from "White House Blues", by Charlie Poole (1892 - 1931).

But whereas the lyrics of White House Blues--about the McKinley assassination--treat McKinley's death flippantly, or with "brutal jocularity"(1), the Carter Family's version renders it into a soft-spokenly powerful, pathos-filled song about the separation of two lovers.

From "White House Blues":

McKinley hollered, MicKinley squalled / Doc says, "McKinley, I can't find that ball." (2)

From "Cannonball":

You can wash my jumpers, starch my overalls. / Catch the train they call the Cannonball. / From Buffalo, to Washington. / Yonder comes a train, coming down the track. / Carry me away, but it ain't gonna carry me back. 

"Cannonball" retains the references in "White House Blues" to Buffalo (the site of the McKinley shooting) and the trip being between Buffalo and Washington. In "Cannonball", the train trip carries the feeling of irrevocable finality, which is hard not to wonder if also derived from the subject of "White House Blues".   

"White House Blues" was recorded by Charlie Poole in 1926.(3) "Cannonball" was recorded by the Carter Family twice, once in 1930 and again in 1935.(4)

I much prefer "Cannonball" to "White House Blues". 

Notes:              

1. Cohen, Norm. Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, page 417.

2. Cohen, page 413.

3. Cohen, page 418.

4. Cohen, page 419.