From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is KCRW's program of stories and original documentaries. From KCRW's program of Stories and Original Documentaries from KCRW's Independent

Producer Project, a laboratory for independent radio producers, writers, and performers, and

today on the program, a story from musicologist and performer Ned Sublet.

You may know him from his music that combines Latin rhythms with cowboy music on albums like

Cowboy Rumba.

But way back in 1989, he recorded a radio documentary about a very different occupation

that also combines art forms.

Call it a cross between music, carnival talkers, and old time

southern evangelism. On KCRW's unfictional, this is the auctioneer.

Last summer I got to do something I've... This is the auctioneer.

Last summer I got to do something I've always wanted to do.

I went to auctioneer school. One dollar bill in the night, two, will you give me two?

Let's go.

One dollar in a nine, two, now two, now two, will you give me two? Let's go.

One dollar.

Now two, will you give me two?

My name's Ned Sublet.

And for the next half hour,

I'd like to invite you to be a fly on the wall

with me at the Missouri auction school in Kansas City where for 425

dollars in two weeks of your time they'll make an auctioneer out of you.

...