Ballad Hunter

The U.S. Library of Congress has gone into the radio business. To a dozen radio stations--from Brooklyn, N.Y. to Yakima, Wash.--the Library last week had sold records of canal-boat ballads, loggers' songs, spirituals, blues, "hollers," recorded all over the land during the past 30 years.

Each 15-minute program takes up one side of a $2.50 commercial disc (not playable on an ordinary phonograph). "The Ballad Hunter," whose commentary is part of the programs, is John A. Lomax, honorary curator of the Library's great Archive of American Folk Song.

Convicts, cowboys, housemaids, hillbillies have sung for him, and the Ballad Hunter programs were chosen from the 12,000 records he has given to the Archive.

Some of his items now on sale:

P:Songs by Captain Pearl Nye, a jovial, bearded, retired canal-boatman; a cook in Livingston, Ala. named Vera Hall; a fake blind man and his fake gypsy wife from Texas, who in 1909 sang for Mr. Lomax the now famous Whoopee Ti yi yo, Git Along Little Dogies.

P:A program devoted to boll weevil songs,

P: A program of songs recorded at Sugar Land, a Texas penitentiary.

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