In the cow towns of the Southwest, in the honky-tonks of Memphis, in mountain hamlets in the Blue Ridge and the Cumberland, a perennial visitor for 25 years has been a lean, loquacious man, with a slight British accent and a portable recording apparatus. Grey-haired Arthur Edward Satherly is paymaster, musical coach, father confessor to the blues singers, hillbilly fiddlers, guitar-strummers, jug-players, washboard-slappers who make Columbia's Okeh* records by the dozen. In this grass-roots musical field, only Decca competes with Columbia. Decca's hillbilly man is David Kapp.
Last week, while most record buyers...