“Air Mail Special on the Fly” is a brisk travel song written by Ossie Godson and Leon Rusk. Rusk, a country singer and songwriter active on radio in the 1940s, made the first recording in 1946, issuing it on King Records; he died in 1950, and the song has outlasted him as his best-known number.
The lyric rides along with the transcontinental air mail, “sailing through the wide blue yonder” on a fast run from New York out toward California. That sense of speed and forward motion — a hallmark of the era’s train and travel songs — made the number a natural fit for the driving tempos of bluegrass.
Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys made “Air Mail Special on the Fly” their own, first cutting it in the early 1950s and keeping it in their repertoire for decades, including a recording on the album Palace of Songs. With Jesse McReynolds’s crosspicked mandolin driving it, the song has stayed a bluegrass favorite, and it has more recently been revived by Marty Stuart and Billy Strings.
