Joe,
Thanks for posting that good info! The song about Birger was printed in Charles Neeley's (Possibly spelled Neely's) Songs Of Southern Illinois--1933, or maybe it was Songs And Tales Of Southern Illinois. (memory problems again.) I think Neely listed it as traditional---and had no author or tune for it. He, also, had heard of the Shelton song but was never able to find it.

Folklorist Harlan Daniel, sent Dalhart doing "The Hanging Of Charlie Birger" to me on a cassette in the late 1960s. I tried doing it with a guitar for a few years, and then I quit doing it altogether. But when I was in the studio recording Songs Of The Heartland -- on a whim -- I tried playing it on the banjo -- one time only. The tape was rolling and that was the single take I did of it. I thought of the song as a good historical document but not a great song. The basic details of the story were there, but it didn't contain good vivid emotion like "The Death Of Carl Shelton." -- Actually it bored me.

By the way, Vernan Dalhart (actually Marion Try Slaughter) recorded under 60 different names. Harlan Daniel did an article for a one-issue-only folk magazine called "The Folk Music Occasional." The article listed a huge number of 1920s and 1930s era old-timey performers alphabetically---along with ALL the other names they recorded under. It seems it was done quite a lot back then. --- Vernon Dalhart, himself, took his own name from two Texas towns. (Vernon, Texas and Dalhart, Texas.) --- So Dylan wasn't the first.

Onward and upward,

Art