One of the syndication services did a piece on F.E. Boone in 1937.
Descendant of Daniel Boone Does His Pioneering at Microphone
TOBACCO AUCTIONEER BIDS FOR FAME WITH WEIRD CHANT
By NORMAN SIEGEL
NEA Service Radio Editor
New York. Dec. 2—The “Tobacco Leaf Caruso” whose rapid-fire chant has become radio’s newest novelty is a Kentucky Boone, all the way back to Daniel of the coonskin cap. Forest Boone is his name and he’s a nephew four or five generations removed of the famous Indian scout of the history books,
Daniel Boone probably never suspected, when he began raising tobacco out in Kentucky, that his line would produce a new kind of radio announcer. But that’s what happened when Forest Boone began opening the “Hit Parade” program on the Columbia network with his weird chant.
Actually his announcing rigamarole is perfectly intelligible. It consists of a series of numbers and the words “dollars” and “bid.” The secret of the confusion is the speed at which tobacco auctioneers, of which Boone is one of the best known, have to talk. Tobacco auctions are carried on at break-neck tempos in order to accommodate all the farmers who bring their crops to the big selling warehouses.
Has to Work Fast
A fair day’s selling for Boone is between 300,000 and 400,000 pounds of tobacco. He has been known to auction as high as 700 piles an hour. The auction takes place in a huge warehouse with about a dozen buyers grouped near the auctioneer. An appraiser sets the original figure. Then Boone begins his work.
The buyers seldom speak. Competition is keen and they’d rather not say what they’re bidding. Each buyer simply indicates, by a series of almost imperceptible gestures, whether or not he accepts the figure Boone is chanting. One may wiggle the little finger on his left hand. Another twitches a muscle in his jaw. A third may wink, or tug at his coat lapel.
Boone never misses such a gesture of acceptance. Immediately he raises the price. His eyes are so well-trained that he follows this by-play with the greatest of ease, although he finds it difficult to focus his eyes on his own name on a calling card. He considers himself a sort of umpire between the warehouse and the tobacco buyers.
“I call the strikes,” he told us.
He is also a little like an opera singer. He has a practical and instinctive knowledge of voice production. Although he never took a lesson, he talks about keeping his throat “open” and never “forcing a tone.” He has learned to say “hawlf” just like a singer. “Forty” is also a danger word. It closes both lips and throat Boone modifies it to something that sounds like “whorty.”
Must Get Back on Job
He started in the field when he was 19. His only training was listening to all the auctioneers at the tobacco warehouses near his home in Lexington, Ky., until he could imitate some of them.
Then he went to a Lexington warehouse and asked for a job. The warehouse manager let him put on a mock sale. Afterward the manager took Boone regretfully aside and advised him to take up some other line of work. He’d never make an auctioneer. Two months later he was auctioneering at Mt. Sterling, Ky.
His radio experience began several years ago. He has never been the least bit nervous before the mike, though he says he does miss the excitement of studying the reactions and the pantomime of his tobacco buyers.
Next month he’ll be going to the biggest burley tobacco market in the world at Lexington to handle the sales. However, his chant will still be on the airwaves as it will be picked up from his hotel room. It’s a voice you can’t forget.
transcribed by Yhtapmys
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