A reader writes:
I'm a production manager on a country music documentary for the BBC over in the UK and I wondered if you owned the rights to the painting/picture of the Wabash Cannonball please?
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Sorry, no. I believe the original painting was made in the 1920s and is in public domain, but I'd have to get home and check my records to be sure where I got the image and if there were any sign-offs. Memory is not what it was.
The "Wabash Cannonball" that the song is about is entirely fictitious so a photo of ANY old American steam locomotive would be just as "authentic." (Years after the song came on the radio, probably decades after it was originally written, a real Midwestern US railroad named one of their passenger trains the "Wabash Cannonball," but that's not where the name came from.)
Let me know when the documentary comes out - we don't always get BBC specials over here.
Say, are you aware of any documentaries on the Skiffle movement that might be online or available otherwise? When I try to explain the Skiffle movement to fellow North American Folkies, they just look at me like I've lost my mind.
Have a great day,
Paul