-CHAPTER ONE....
COUNT BASIE
the titled cat
by Noel Wain
Co
CONVERSATION stops. Everyone listens to the band warm up. Can it be true? Is this going to be a comeback which pays off? Or will it be another case of someone who should have quit years ago?
Count Basie le at Birchin. In the amoky, murky atmosphere of that Manhatten jazz hive. Through lie kaze comes that old, familiar, plano tong. All cars are periced. News has spread that the Count has onco again assembled a fabulous band, The music
takes over
Pure, smooth, rocking music, The melody suggests almost as much as is stated. The long moments of aflence are. 11 pregnant as the notes themselves.
more
BO
The Count 15 bnck o bandstand. Thrilling ngala; twinkling Those brown eyes set in that round. brown face, The blurk hair THE
perhaps a little thinner, moustache Just as trimmed.
Stamped
carefully
THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1957.
THE FLOATING OF
T
by TOM STACEY with John King
HE Mayflower II, now sail- ing a little becalmed maybe in the fierce Atlan- tic, was first floated at a public house by a talkative man with a pint in his hand.
That was soon after the last war. The Man With The Pint, by name.
idea Warwick Charlton, found the vociferously taken up by his pals along the bar......
But it takes more than pub-talk and platitudes to launch a ship which has cost, by the meanest estimate, £80,000-and gri her to New York. In the bold language of the flery Australian salt who is master of the ship, Alan Villera, "How the hell did it happen?" The first man to come into the saga and the Arst man to go out-wag Bir Patrick Hannon, a notable industrialist.
Then came the Duke of Argyll --he slayed.
The idea, explained the Man with the Pint, was to build en exact replea of the first May- flower, the little 183-ton wooden ship that carried the Pilgrim Fathers and their families from Plymouth, England, to Ply on the AIR muth, Moss, in 1820.
The organisation would be entirely non-profit making, like the original.
THE
MAYFLOWER
--and we don't mean
From Tàt Júde:
HONG KONG AIRWAYS
KONG AIRWAYS
JET-PROPS COUNT
to
services
the-floating on THE SEA! TOKYO
The Bailing date, originally fiancee of John Lowe had her planned for May 1956, was put photograph
published standing
Down
the keel was laid by him in July 1955.
This was the signal for the off to October more suitable, in a bathing costume in front of
the completed ship. explained the master, "because dance to begin. A barrier was
the first
"WC the that was the month
came Mrs Percy Upham: put up at the entrance to
his- (Our
never expected such goings-on went up: Mayflower mailed." yard ant notice
in our shipyards." "Come and lank round the hull tory book says it was August). The little people along the of the Mayilawer 11. Entrance
seafront were getting very be- fee: 25."
They nicknamed the wildered wooden shape across the cove The Floating, Funfair," "It's a bit of a juwke," said one, "It jowles is what you like,"
there
was
By the time that notice went pold and down 245,000 people peered Florin by florin that come to £24,500. Hig trademark indelibly
Aha! But when you got inside Any money made by the way stamped
the on
music. In
ag thai hull. be given over to
u chap would Than come the rhythm section.
educational trust, The ship there who was selling splinters beat is boosted, The cymbals
itself." it was added, "will be at Mayflower (1) oak for what- Bizzic. Five sixes take up the
presented es a gift to the ever you thought you ought to melody. Seven brass chop Anterior people. For obvious give. Farty tons of Devon oak against
it. Suddenly-crash!
not going to ac- passed out in proud pockets → retsons we're The snare drum explodes like
parcels for sale in single cent from our and band sept a
American well-wishers."
Amerira. car-
Mentine a first-rate Alm on Was only maiter of months before
General Si how to build a Mayflower Francis de Guingand and Sir shat by the B.B.C.
The
whole
succession of
gun. releases a dazing chords. back.
The Count is
The climax mounts la Crescendo. Hearts beat faster,
וע
Alfred Bossom, a
excitement
Count 19 buck. mistake about that.
the Mulce no
of an MP.
enter- redoubtable commercial prise, had joined the board of the educational trust.
Parties THE sleepy bay
ruler: Yes,
WAS
Berths
DRESS hand-outs from May- Hower Enterprises proudly recited the support they were res ceiving. "Already," said me, “the project has cost £200,000." For wood ship, that is a 183-1on most expensive.
Things got to such a pass that the Man with the Pint had to write to the Manchester Guardian to explain the motives of the of Brixham
enterprise. "It is mistaken to say began rapidly to bounce. )!
that berths aboard the ship are But the money, very impor- bounced with motor-coach loads tant in building ships, was still at tourists who wanted
being sold to television and film in fact, no berths companies. At 48, Count Insle was not quite handl. And it was how it was all going. (Actually, again fronting a 18-plece band at this moment on spring work was suspended for a few are being sold.
pain üfter an ....back
day in 1955-ha!
given to "They Mr Felix months to give the sightseers a
are being enforced lour with Emall Fosten, enters the seene--and chance.)
people we think deserve them, combo during and after the Fenston is a real estate bounced with champagne such as representatives of boys'
beard,
cluby. It is true some of the long years of the Second World wizard with a golden War,
who has our fine home in May-
merchants of England are usso- fair and another at Guilford.
ciated with the project, as were They say Mr Fenston
merchants of England in 1820. millionaire.
This is historically appropriate."
The final hitch before lunch- ing
when the pretty
4
"This
The audience theers, is the greatest no one swings Jike the Count, they say.
he
Bir
And Buslo-what does say? "People were trying to decide whether they were going 10 like Bop. Nobody Was thinking of danring. bands had no place to work."
Soon it becane elear tha? Bop was not for the multitude, Big band musie began to boom again. The Count collected a and brand-new outfit lu 1952
before long he Was bel acclaimed once more as leading "the swingingest band in the land." History repents self!
"Our book was full of bead" arrangements," he says. "I'd start out and the rest would come in when they felt like it The saxes would get together and set a riff. We used to run into some wonderful Things and remember them."
The written
"RIFF"
Nowadays, the Count's men have most of their riffs written out, But when they get round to en old favourite like O'Clock Jump,"
"One that jump sound is pretty much the way it to
"All I had to do to bring the band up to post-Bop fashion," my the
Count, was to put mink coats on the chords!"
That the Count's comeback has been sucessitil, no one can deny. For two years now be has topped the poli of "Dawnbeat" the American magazine, as band of the year.
For the second time in his life, he is being acclaimed as leader of the greatest large juzz outal ever assembled. An idol of the teenagers throughout Americs in the late Thirdles,
No appeal
AND it happened that
is
just
when Mr Fenston stumped on to the serne it was decided to deep the idea of making public appeal for funds to build the ship.
But this mave did not appeal at all in the great men who Brat Adve their blessing to the scheme. In two lines of print. four of them including Admirai Lord Fraser-announced their resignation in the newspaper.
A character of los buoyancy than the Man with the Pint might have sunk under the leaden weight of this announce- ment, But by this time there was an enthusiastic letter from the American Ambassador in London, Mr Winthrop Aldrich, plus highly promising tremors of expectation from American Atlantic seaboard
States 09 extra lift,
And to make it quite certain that he was serious about It the Man with the Pint and buddy of his decided to form a company called Mayflower Enterprises, Ltd., „with a capital of £100.
Meantime, a middle aged Devon shipbuilder, Stuart Upham, upped and said he could- build the ship. First he said £100,000 would do the trick. Then he said he could do grand job for £80,000.
a
Without any recorded healta- tion, Mr Upham hurried off to find out what the measurements of a Mayflower I ought to be --and whom should he come across but an American pro- fessor, Dr Bill Baker, who had been working on the measure» ments of the original Mayflower for nearly 10 years.
10 Без
parties at the hotels which in- cluded real champagne on their wine lists as well as the cham- pagne cider-du-pays parties put on by the man who once had with a pint in
had to manage pub,
came
An old map of a New World
How A
NEW
La
ENGLAND
St. Augustine
BMNIGH ORIOS
BRITISH
Dr
The keol IT was only natural that
design the new vessel. And
William "Count" Basle is at the should be invited to
is not so
top again.
Truc, hla music different now from his post-war But he has incorporated daya,
the ideas many
of the modernista in jazz into hi band. It is a blend of the basi of two important stages in the evolution of jazz. It is rough, rugged, exciting muse that he plays.
And his story Make: fascinating reading. The times when he was so hard up he had to take work in a cinema accompanying allent filma....pt the many hours he spent sitting in a theatre pit latening to "Tats" Waller play the organ
.acclaination his ...or
by hundreds of thousands of young men and women as he band triumphantly tour America disappeared from how he the musical scene almost com
his come- pletely.....and now back with the greatest band he bas ever frunted. Boale Is now 60. He has been through glory and near-deparation,
His story appears daily in the CHINA MAIL,
POCKET CARTOON by OSDERT LANCASTER
"How the hell could I know he wasn't a Půlgrím Pather?!"
WHAT was America
liko in 1620-when the wintry voyage of 10 days was made by 20 sailors and 102 Pilgrim Fathers, Includ- ing one lady who be came a Pilgrim Mother in mid-Atlantic and called the baby Oceanus?
Most of the great American continent be- longed, in those days to the Red Indian's, and their pray, the antelope and buffalo.
The Spaniards THE first real - settle-
ments after Colum- bus discovered: the New World In 1492 were
FRENCH SPANISH DUTCH
made by the Spanish- who were responsible for virtually all the discoveries from Florida south to the Amazon,
The Dutch and the French between them lald claim to the valleys of the Hudson and the St Lawrence. The Bri- tish occupied New- foundland, and had colonised Virginia-dis- covered by Raleigh in the reign of Elizabeth.
But New England did not exist until after the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth and began the rapid British coloni- sation which, in 43 years, took in almost all the Atlantic coastline of North, America,
But it all turned out all right. The East Hara Male Voice Choir at the launch- sang splendidly ing.
There were lears of emotion in sonic eyes when Mr Reis Lem- ming, an American who got the George Medal for saving 22 lives the flood in East Anglia in 1053, and who had flown over throw the to launch the ship, Ilbatory silver goblet into the sea (according to instructions). But a good swimmer, specially ap- pointed, dived in to retrieve it.
Bon voyage
NOW there is nothing more Nthat we can do for the May- flower and its crew (not forget- ting the London night club owner who is dish-washer) and the 250,000 gift cigarettes and the 05 irposure-chests containing manufacturers' samples (freight charge by Mayflower Enterprises £500) except to meet them the
ather end.
The million-dollar reception awalling them would have been enough to turn the first Pilgrim Fathers back homo. But with these Daddies--no,
We would like to bid them
bon voyage, But sadly onough
the ratio operator aboard has told their shore link that they are taking business calls only.
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