Like disc jockeys the country over, Alan Cummings of Washington's WWDC was snowed under with requests for Mule Train; his listeners could not seem to hear it often enough. Early one morning last week, Cummings struck back: he began playing, one after the other, recordings of Mule Train as sung by Frankie Laine, Bing Crosby, Gordon MacRae, the Syncopators, Buzz Butler, Arthur Smith, Vaughn Monroe and Tennessee Ernie. Before long, the unrelieved barrage of whipcracks and clippity-clops jammed WWDC's switchboard with phone calls from desperate night owls crying "Uncle."
Cummings, with his ninth...