Here is a youtube video of footage of Cobb playing, which uses as narration a purported radio interview he gave in 1930:
Is it really Cobb’s voice?
I know he was born over 120 years ago, and that accents change over time. And that not everyone from south of the Mason-Dixon line has the same accent. But Cobb was as culturally southern (it might not be an exaggeration to say, ‘violently southern’) as they come, and that accent doesn’t sound very (if, at all) southern to me. Strom Thurmond, born in South Carolina fifteen years after Cobb’s birth, sounded a lot more ‘southern’ to me.
Possibly, Cobb’s professor-politician father may have impressed on his kids accents befitting the educated gentry they were born into?
This isn’t really a question about sports, but I thought it might veer into discussion of Cobb, so I put it here. Mods, move as you see fit.
It sounds southern to me, particularly the “a” sounds. To me it sounds more Tennessee than Georgia, but I don’t claim to have a particularly good ear for the various regional differences.
Don’t forget, Ty Cobb signed with Detroit in 1905, when he was 19 years old. This recording was made 25 years after that. Spending 25 years away from people who talk like you will corrupt any accent.
The origin given for it is also correct, as it did air (as stated in samclem’s link on the radio in 1930, and the broadcast it is a part of is actually one of the most circulated pieces of pre-1932 OTR.
I’m not sure that this would be a correct link (which is why I’m posting it broken), but the whole program can be listed to if the link below is followed:
always happens when i follow a link over there …