Radio doings (Dec 1930-Jun1932)

This Quintet Takes U p the Torch and Carries On With the Folk Lore and Songs of Long Ago — Echoes of a Lost Page in American History. One of Them is the Writer of Such Well-Known Mountain "Disaster' Ballads as "The Death of Floyd Collins" and "The Fate of Mildred Dor an" — Songs That Mirror the Fears and Blasted Hopes of a Doomed and Nearly Extinct Tribe of Pioneers "Mountain Williams" of NBC SCRAPE of fiddle-bow and stamp of feet, quaint old folk-songs and racy American humor — thousands of NBC listeners wait eagerly for the program which brings them this echo of a type fast disappearing from the United States. The Hill Billies of NBC reincarnate the music and spirit of the mountain people of the South and West, sturdy and pure-blooded descendants of the first English settlers, who dwelt for almost two centuries in the hill and mountain regions, isolated from the rest of the nation as it grew up around them. Almost unlettered, and speaking a dialect in which the quaint turn of an Elizabethan expression handed down from generation to generation, mingles with the crude language of the pioneer, they have contributed a rich folk-lore and folk-music to the intertwined pattern which is America of today. No more suitable group to interpret their melodies and legends could be found, than the quintet of musicians and singers who appear before the NBC microphone weekly in the Hill Billy program— Charlie Marshall, Ace Wright, Charles Craver, Johnny O'Brien and Johnny Toffoli. Charlie Marshall, guiding spirit of the Hill Billies, has been an ardent student of old-time American music ever since he started his career. Born in Cloud County, Kansas — the Marshall family settled there before Kansas was a state; — Charlie has a restless spirit which has caused him to travel over a considerable portion of America. Educated in the University of Kansas, he studied music at the Boston Conservatory of Music, and then embarked on a profession which kept him traveling for many years. Strangely enough, for a theatrical person, Charlie has managed to do much of that moving about in the open, for his love for his work is equalled only by his enjoyment of outdoor life. Charlie plays many instruments, including violin, saxaphone and his own steel harp-guitar. He was a member of a saxophone orchestra once, and traveled over 31 states with it. The tour included Novia Scotia and the lumbercamps of Maine. Then he joined a minstrel show in which he supplied most of the songs and instrumental music. He still regards the concocting of a good minstrel show as "a good day's work." In Providence, R. L, Charlie met a pretty school-teacher, and showed her that a wandering minstrel could make a pretty good husband if given a chance. Mrs. Marshall shares her husband's interest in woods and open spaces, and their honeymon was a jaunt — on foot — all the way from Boston to Kansas. Charlie carried a 75 pound baggage pack on his back all the way, but he and Mrs. Marshall still regard their by Mary Castle long trek as the most carefree vacation they ever had. Radio work at NBC has taught Charlie to "stay put," but a big country place on the San Francisco peninsula gives him room to stretch his six-feetplus physique, and to entertain the Hill Billy group at frequent barbecues and picnics. Incidentally, Charlie cleared the ground on which his country house stands, with his own hands, and the hospitable, rustic home contains many samples of his craftmanship as cabinetmaker, carpenter and general handy man. The voice of Charles Gardner Craver, who sings many of the Hill Billy ballads, sounds familiar to many of his radio listeners, and with good cause. They probably have heard it on records many times, for Craver has made most of the "Disaster" ballads on the market. He writes them too, and more than 150 melancholy melodies relating the sad deaths or tragic happenings which have occurred to persons and communities of the present-day, are his work. Some of the unhappy events he relates are purely imaginary; some are founded on headline stories and topical subjects, such as "The Fate of Mildred Doran" and "The Death of Floyd Collins." All use the traditional form which has been handed down in the "Come all ye's" of folk-melodies which were founded in turn upon the ballads with which the street-criers of the seventeenth century used to chronicle the (Turn to Page 42) Page Twenty-six RADIO DOINGS