“Finally Ryan pulled off the trade with Griffith, and Graham come on our club. Then they wasn’t no more solo work. They made a bass out o’ me, and Art sung the lead, and Mike and Lefty took care o’ the tenor and baritone. Art didn’t care what the other boys wanted to hear. They could holler their heads off for Mike to sing a solo, but no sooner’d Mike start singin’ than Art’d chime in with him and pretty soon we’d all four be goin’ it. Art’s a nut on singin’, but he don’t care nothin’ about list’nin’, not even to a canary. He’d rather harmonize than hit one past the outfielders with two on.
“At first we done all our serenadin’ on the train. Art’d get us out o’ bed early so’s we could be through breakfast and back in the car in time to tear off a few before we got to wherever we was goin’.
“It got so’s Art wouldn’t leave us alone in the different towns we played at. We couldn’t go to no show or nothin’. We had to stick in the hotel and sing, up in our room or Mike’s. And then he went so nuts over it that he got Mike to come and room in the same house with him at home, and I and Lefty was supposed to help keep the neighbors awake every night. O’ course we had mornin’ practice w’ile we was home, and Art used to have us come to the park early and get in a little harmony before we went on the field. But Ryan finally nailed that. He says that when he ordered mornin’ practice he meant baseball and not no minstrel show.
“Then Lefty, who wasn’t married, goes and gets himself a girl. I met her a couple o’ times, and she looked all right. Lefty might of married her if Art’d of left him alone. But nothin’ doin’. We was home all through June onct, and instead o’ comin’ round nights to sing with us, Lefty’d take this here doll to one o’ the parks or somewheres. Well, sir, Art was pretty near wild. He scouted round till he’d found out why Lefty’d quit us and then he tried pretty near everybody else on the club to see if they wasn’t someone who could hit the baritone. They wasn’t nobody. So the next time we went on the road, Art give Lefty a earful about what a sucker a man was to get married, and looks wasn’t everything and the girl was prob’ly after Lefty’s money and he wasn’t bein’ a good fella to break up the quartet and spoil our good times, and so on, and kept pesterin’ and teasin’ Lefty till he give the girl up. I’d of saw Art in the Texas League before I’d of shook a girl to please him, but you know these left-handers.
“Art had it all framed that we was goin’ on the stage, the four of us, and he seen a vaudeville man in New York and got us booked for eight hundred a week—I don’t know if it was one week or two. But he sprung it on me in September and says we could get solid bookin’ from October to March; so I ast him what he thought my Missus would say when I told her I couldn’t get enough o’ bein’ away from home from March to October, so I was figurin’ on travelin’ the vaudeville circuit the other four or five months and makin’ it unanimous? Art says I was tied to a woman’s apron and all that stuff, but I give him the cold stare and he had to pass up that dandy little scheme.
“At that, I guess we could of got by on the stage all right. Mike was better than this here Waldron and I hadn’t wore my voice out yet on the coachin’ line, tellin’ the boys to touch all the bases.
“They was about five or six songs that we could kill. ‘Adeline’ was our star piece. Remember where it comes in, ‘Your fair face beams’? Mike used to go away up on ‘fair.’ Then they was ‘The Old Millstream’ and ‘Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet.’ I done some fancy work in that one. Then they was ‘Down in Jungle Town’ that we had pretty good. And then they was one that maybe you never heard. I don’t know the name of it. It run somethin’ like this.”
Bill sottoed his voice so that I alone could hear the beautiful refrain:
“Years, years, I’ve waited years
Only to see you, just to call you ‘dear.’
Come, come, I love but thee,
Come to your sweetheart’s arms; come back to me.”
“That one had a lot o’ wallops in it, and we didn’t overlook none o’ them. The boys used to make us sing it six or seven times a night. But ‘Down in the Cornfield’ was Art’s favor-ight. They was a part in that where I sung the lead down low and the other three done a banjo stunt. Then they was ‘Castle on the Nile’ and ‘Come Back to Erin’ and a whole lot more.
“Well, the four of us wasn’t hardly ever separated for three years. We was practisin’ all the w’ile like as if we was goin’ to play the big time, and we never made a nickel off’n it. The only audience we had was the ball players or the people travelin’ on the same trains or stoppin’ at the same hotels, and they got it all for nothin’. But we had a good time, ’specially Art.
“You know what a pitcher Mike was. He could go in there stone cold and stick ten out o’ twelve over that old plate with somethin’ on ’em. And he was the willin’est guy in the world. He pitched his own game every third or fourth day, and between them
