Ernest and Clarence Iverson
Together they performed an eclectic mix of music ranging from country western and Tin Pan Alley to gospel hymns and Scandinavian ballads.
[1] Ernest Iverson left the Midwest as a young man and after an injury in the oil fields of Texas made heavy work impossible, he turned to radio for employment.
[2] By the early 1930s Ernest and his younger brother Clarence had reunited and formed an act as Slim Jim and the Vagabond Kid.
[1] One of Slim Jim's longtime sponsors was the Town Market Furniture Company, whose working class clientele were well suited to the unpretentious performer.
In the 1940s and 1950s Slim Jim and the Vagabond Kid released about thirty songs — primarily for the FM Recording Co.[7] — but also for the Soma and Twinco labels.
One of the most popular efforts was The Drifting, Whistling Snow, an inspired take-off on the 1955 country western hit The Shifting, Whispering Sands.
The tracks included comic dialect songs, the plaintive ballad Jeg Er En Fattig Liten Dreng (I Am A Poor Little Boy), Nikolina — in both Norwegian and English — and the gospel hymn A Beautiful Life.
[9] In 1980 Howard Pine, who had worked on Slim Jim's radio show, released the first of four albums taken from the artist's broadcast performances.
In 1980 Clarence Iverson came out of retirement and recorded an album, produced by Pine, called "The Vagabond Kid sings Great Grand Dad".
The brothers' 1939 songbook was mostly in English but had a few Norwegian songs such as Kom Til Den Hvitmalte Kirke (The Church In The Wildwood) and Det Døende Barn (The Dying Child), whose author was Hans Christian Andersen.
[11] Slim Jim and the Kid were songwriters with such titles as My Gal With The Pretty Red Hair and Can I Play My Guitar In Heaven to their credit.
[12] On the radio the Iversons would even sing current hits like When It's Lamp Lighting Time In The Valley and Mockin' Bird Hill.
In conjunction with the festival she recorded three albums of folk tunes, emigrant ballads, hymns, waltzes and comic songs.
