Singers and Storytellers Page: 28
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SINGERS AND STORYTELLERS
knew Captain Frank Hamer of the Texas Rangers so well as I
wanted to know him. One night in the latter part of his life at
a dinner out on a ranch, before we had eaten but not before
we had drunken, he unloosed his word hoard on the creatures
of the Southwest as he had observed them while riding for
years on a horse and sleeping on the ground. That night he
made me realize what a delightful, although not historically or
biologically accurate, observer he could be in narration. Any
good talker, no matter how many non-facts he employs, is
better than the encyclopedia.
I never heard a really good talker who could not narrate.
I suppose Roy Bedichek was the most excellent civilized
narrator I've known. He seldom told folktales. He excelled in
sketches of people and in narratives of incidents out of his own
life, weaving in enrichments from the classics and also from
barbers, cedar-cutters, farmers, freighters, cowboys, and other
men of the earth who had never read a classic and very little of
anything else, infusing humor and humanity into the whole.
John Lomax could not be surpassed in stories of human
beings connected with his own wide experiences. Many of
Carl Sandburg's best stories do not grow out of his own
experiences but out of what he's heard and read; perhaps
Abraham Lincoln gave him something in the art of applying
a story. Will Burges, lawyer of El Paso, is gone now. In his
gusto for life he was one of the best eaters I've ever seen eat
and one of the best talkers I've ever heard talk. He never let
his eating interfere with his talking or his talking interfere
with his eating. All he needed to turn a feast of beef into a flow
of soul was a good listener. I tried more than once to get him
to put down some of his stories. He would merely laugh and
say, "O that mine enemy had written a book." His lack of
ambition to make literary use of what he knew made his talk
better, I suppose. Dr. Samuel Johnson became the great talker
after he had ceased to write much.
Walter Webb, the thinker, does not weave narratives into28
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Singers and Storytellers (Book)
Collection of popular folklore of Texas, including personal anecdotes about storytellers and singers, as well as folk songs, myths, and ghost stories. The index begins on page 295.
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Boatright, Mody C. Singers and Storytellers, book, 1961; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67655/m1/34/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.