Your Ballad Man: Nonsense Show (part 1)

Audio file

Date recorded: May 8, 1948
Contributor(s): Performer: Dick, Elsie; Performer: Lomax, Alan; Broadcaster: Mutual Broadcasting Company
Subject(s):
Location:
Track Number: 1
Archive ID: B067
Original ID: TD195R01
Note: A program concerning America's "crazy songs and fool ditties," with Alan Lomax performing and playing an assortment of nonsense songs, jokes, and poems. Includes Josh White's "Tree Song," Red Foley's parody of "Jole Blonde," Carl Sandburg's "Horse Named Bill." Lomax tells a tall tale and trades knock-knock jokes with Elsie Dick, MBS Program Manager.
Transcript:
Belongs to: Your Ballad Man 1948–1949
About the session: Lomax's thematic program featuring "recorded folk songs from here, there and everywhere." John Szwed, in his The Man Who Recorded the World, writes this about the show: "The best experience [Lomax] ever had in radio is how he described it. He'd walk in off the street with a pile of records and improvise his comments for a half hour. 'I have been able to talk about race relations, psychological problems and the oneness of the human family, as well as purely folkloristic matters.' Being a DJ was 'not nearly as bad as it sounds.'"
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