“The Streamlined Cannon Ball,” later spelled “Streamline Cannonball” or “Streamlined Cannonball,” was written by Roy Acuff, who recorded it with his Smoky Mountain Boys on 11 April 1940 at Saginaw, Texas, in a session produced by Art Satherley. Acuff sang, with Lonnie Wilson on guitar, Brother Oswald Kirby on dobro, Rachel Veach on banjo and Jess Easterday on bass; the Okeh label’s pressing credits Acuff with the train-whistle effects. It came out on Okeh 05638 (and on Conqueror 9434) coupled with Jimmie Rodgers’s “Mule Skinner Blues,” and Columbia reissued it in 1946. Acuff cut it again in Nashville in September 1960 for the Hickory label, a record issued with “Time Will Make You Pay.”
The lyric is a hobo’s song about riding the fastest train on the line. The singer is on his way home along the long steel rail, calls the streamliner the king of them all, and says it moves like a cannonball and like a star in its heavenly flight. He rides the blinds, loves the lonesome whistle, and sees the headlight and the glow of the firebox in the night. The last verse looks at the old engineer, gray but content, waiting for his call. The song is a different one from “Wabash Cannon Ball,” which Acuff recorded as well.
SecondHandSongs lists versions by Hank Snow, Carl Smith, Chet Atkins, Jim & Jesse, Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Jerry Garcia and Van Morrison, among others.
