Obscurity of the Day: Broadway Ballads

Here's a delightfully witty series by cartoonist L.W. Ford titled Broadway Ballads. The panel series, which offered off-the-wall ideas for novelty songs, ran sporadically in the New York Evening World from October 18 to November 22 1913.

I rarely get to say anything positive about features that use poetry. It is almost always horrifically bad (at least to my ear). So I delight to say that I really, really enjoyed the verses that go along with the ersatz songsheets in this series. Hip-hip-hoorah for the versifier!

Mr. Ford only produced three known series, all of them for the Evening World, all printed in late 1913 to early 1914.  What became of this promising cartooning talent? Well, you'll just have to wait until tomorrow, and Alex Jay's Ink-Slinger Profile to find out.