State

It'll Va.dc- W.lba-4 .-Ь o.i.Sor* -I rial. b. L S I»m« Ballad Singer From I In* Itnnk* to llu* Smokies she hunls elusive folk songs. Black it Ike cola, of »■ I сна to**» bale. HU face U >i>»*«hine tcondroa» Ml'. 7»* Clear*.! .**. and IS* llro-OMl hand. I lor* IS* «'ouod «h*r*.m he Ma*d> I Ion* t>v tor* eol well »* i lot* Ihr orouod icMico» К» *0*1 And Mill I bon* I be (lota «till co»e U'bcn b* and 1 nail be OJ on. On and on go the words of thn beautifully simple English ballad still sung by the mountain people of west¬ ern North Carolina. The did tradition of handing down the tune and verses of ancient ballads has almost disap¬ peared from our State's urbanized acres. Not so in our sparsely settled hills and coastlands. It was to the hills and the coast- lands that Betty Vaiden Williams went when she took up ballad-singing. Last winter she became familiar to tens of thousands of Tar Heels on her regu¬ larly scheduled appearances over WUNC-TV. It all happened this way: Though born in Lincolnton. she was reared in Raleigh, and went on to Converse College for voice-training For many years she pursued serious study in preparation for opera and the concert stage. Visiting in Kentucky, she was attracted lo the ballads she heard there, and brought home several to be used as encores for her professional appearances. Alas, the bug had bitten her! In ift North Carolina, she searched the music stores for ballads and, finally went looking for material not yet written down. Soon all thoughts of an operatic career were abandoned, and her en¬ ergies were devoted lo locating ballads and to perfecting her technique in singing them. North Carolina ballads became her principal interest. At first she used an accompanist on the piano, but each of her assistants wished to play loo stiffly for the sim¬ ple songs. Ballads demand a light, naive, unsophisticated touch When she purchased an autoharp for her own practice, she found it suited per¬ fectly; and those for whom she sang agreed. Zither-like and wistful, too. its keyboard of chords and its plucked strings provide exactly the right back¬ ground for the ingenuous words of the ballads. The search for material led to the collections of Appalachian songs by Cecil Sharpe and John Jacob Niles, the vast storehouse in the Frank C. Brown volumes of North Carolina Folklore. and the book of lyrics from the Albe¬ marle Sound country by Louis W. Chappell. She talked with Professor Arthur Palmer Hudson, the ballad ex¬ pert of Chapel Hill. Her version of "The I -ass From Ihc В ./ ИКИЛШ» IIAIAKII Low Countrec," with its Scottish flavor, came directly to her hand in Cherokee County. Elsewhere she picked up a different reading of "Who’s Gonna Shoe My Pretty Little Foot?” Miss Williams is married to a Ra¬ leigh physician, whose interest in ballad-collecting is fully as energetic as that of his wife. He has an excellent portable tape-recorder, and b always ready lo put it into the automobile and off ballad-hunting whenever his prac¬ tice will allow him lime. Last summer, for instance, when the husbund-and-wifc team were vacation¬ ing at Atlantic Beach, they heard about Roma Salter, skipper of the North Carolina cutter S. S. "Cape Hat- tcras.” Though a man of wide travels and a host to frequent dignitaries on his ship, Mr. Salter is the repository erf more Carteret County ballads than anybody else in the section. Most of them, he says, he learned from his mother when he was a child. When he called at the cottage where the ballad-hunters were staying, he sang for hours in his clear baritone. One of Ihc prize finds, according to Mbs Williams, is "The Booze Yacht Run Ashore,” an original ballad tell¬ ing of the time during prohibition days when a blockade runner was wrecked near Harkcr’s Island. The natives, for days, stopped fishing, scoured the waters for floating bottles of Scotch whisky, and had themselves a right merry holiday. The ballad, based on a true incident, is now in Miss Williams’ repertory. Besides appearing in Bill O’Sulli¬ van’s "Poor Richard's Almanac” pro¬ gram over WUNC-TV. Miss Williams is a frequent entertainer at civic clubs, college groups, and music societies. Always she encourages participation by the audience, who frequently come up later and suggest other songs and sources. Early this fall a record of some of her most successful numbers was issued on a 45-RPM disk with a Colonial Label. The trail from singer of opera to singer of ballads has not been an easy one for Mbs W’illiams. The artfui. sustained high notes have had lo go; simplicity has had to take their place. But she has won her way. Today she is, undoubtedly, the foremost inter¬ preter of North Carolina ballads, the unrivaled trustee of an ancient cultural Tar Heel tradition. TMC ВТЛТХ. остове* 22. 1955