Page: 14
Now
jazz is looking so respectable
by RAMSDEN GREIG
WHILE rock 'n' roll is slithering into blessed
oblivion, jazz booms.
Witness the tremendous success of Edward. Kennedy "Duke" Ellington's present British tour. Fans pay 268. a seat to hear him. And there are more affluent fans than there are seats available.
In the basements of London He is 31 years of age. Ho there are
sports jackets. in now mort than 60 weark tweed gold-mines known na jazz clubs, the hope that they will make more robust, They Suddenly toot on a flute, piny him look
He sull, looks Uke an ed jazzwise, becomes blg.busi- fail.
cmagiated 'Frank Sinatra.
He conducts' a profitable band
nean.
•
4
Jazz hun also become respect able. Pilpress Margaret la devotee. The Queen's cousing Gerald Lascelles Is an accepted authority on the subject.
Sanic of the beat British Jazz is pul on record by a disc com- pany owned by Lord Donegnil.
Jazz is afro trying to get the Queen herself to lend an appre- elative ear to it
Today and tomorrow she will be attending the Leeds Festival of Music which, apart from Yehudi Menuhin, chamber music and the like, includes con- tributions from Duke Ellington,
Dankworth Johnny
und anc
Muddy Waters.
The National Jazz Federation to tell the Queen's ls trying advisers that she would really put jazz on the map if she look- ed in on the jazz concerts.
The Queen's advisers are re- plying that they expect her to stick to chamber music.
Dignified
Jazz, 100, is becoming digna. fied. Here a Jazzman Johnny Dankworth preparing to lift no
the less august a body than London Philharmonic Orchestro on to the juzz bandwagon.
During spare moments these days, Mr Dankworth is holod up with Mr Matyas Seiber, a very straight musician indeed, some where in Surrey, busy writing a new work called improvisations for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra,
The plan in that the Dank- worth band and the London Philharmonic Orchestra will per- form the work in London next June. Al the Festival Hall, of courge.
Who is this Jazzman who hopes to bridge the gap between bebop and Bach?
business from a cubbyhole office in Denmark Street, where he has the part-time services of a Press agent, whose other clients
are a two-way stretch manu- faqturer and a hula-hoop cham- pion.
The Press agent goes to great paing to impress the visitor with on Mr the Information that Dankworth's fair head rests the crown he got last year when hlo band was voted the top com bination playing jazz in Britain.
Top man
Mr Dankworth himself, the man adds, was also voted the Musician of the Year, Top Com- poser, Top Arranger and Top Alto Sax Player.
Mr Dankworth says: "Il "gives a guy confidence, that does."
Unlike some rock 'n' roll stars who used to take just under a weck to leap from coffee bar television and obscurity to record notoriety, Johnny Dank- Werth has been plodding his way to the top ever since his lungs were strong enough to blow an
ito saxophone.
A bo
In his office he sits under
painung that surrealistic uvers is a picture of his band
explains: and
"I was playing jizz at school-even before I Did got around to Pythagoras. the job properly, though. Want to the Royal Academy of Music,
didn't know I was "They
music in order studying become a jazzman. I don't think
they would have made me leenlate of the academy if they had.
to
#
"Perhaps they will forgive me when they hear Improvisations for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra,"
--(London Express Service),
IN
THE CHINA MAIL,
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1958.
THE ROBERT PITMAN BOOK PAGE
The lady author shakes
Park Lane with
a strange oath
TN a club off Park Lane a jewelled hand was wafted, beneath my nose. "Sometimes that hand writes. Words which I simply don't under stand," the hand's owner told me. "Words like 'Slubber-degullion."
"Have you ever heard of a word like that? I hadn't. But I found myself writing it when I was working on a novel about the Cavallers and Round- honds. Later I found that it was really used as an insult in the seventeenth century. Yes: spell t right. Stubber-degullion;"
An elderly club waiter turned in surprise. Round the club's sodate walls the strange oath echoed afrilly.
The name of the vivacious woman behind the hand: Lady Fergusson, Hannay. Her pen-name: Doris Leslie.
In her writing career, author' Lealle has made herself one of the most envled women in the book world.
She has been Hated as one of the Queen's favourite authors (some others: Margaret Irwin, Steinbeck, Agatha Christie).
And this week, when her latest book is published, I be- ileve that her reputation will be pushed still further upwards Its title: AS THE TREE FALLS | ((Hodder and Stoughton, 16). Its subject: the great Norwich Rebellion led by that premature Robert Kettset democral against the scamy, sex-inden background of Henry Court.
VIII's
I predict that it will satisfy both the scholars and the book- buying public.
What is Doris Leslie's secret? In the West End club the "Hard hand gestured again. work, my dear" Lady Fergus- son Hannay told me, "I've work od on this books for 14 months. 1 document on the get every perlod
"I read until two or three in the morning when my hus band's snoring away like any- thing. But by that time I'm so excited with all the history that I simply have to drug myself 10- get to sleep. Then I have to
VIGNETTES OF LIFE
WHEN IT COMES TO
FOOTBALL
MASCOTS,
THE TRUE ANIMAL
LOVER PLAYS
NO FAVORITES-.
TIGERS, OWLS,
BEARS. MULES, GOATS, GOPHERS, BULLDOGS,
HORNED TOAds. PANTHERS, WOLVERINES, WILDCATS, WHATHAVEYOU —
SHE
LOVES 'EM ALL.
-10-12
Cosma i ChEAL SATURES
CON, IM WORLD IT T
1
IT'S A BONANZA
FOR HAWKERS-
ALL THEY
HAVE TO DO
IS BE
CAREFUL
TO HAVE
THE RIGHT -
| MASCOT FOR
THE RIGHT.
GAME.
ין
#
1
L.-
EXPLORER WHO WORE
PINK SILK PYJAMAS
1
recommend an dinidual travel - story QUEST FOR FAITITI (Parrish. 27%. 60.) by Jullan Tennant
་
In 1954 Tennant was groom' at a glittering (800 mesta) society weddlag. But the previous. six months he spent as amateur explorer in Peru. -
Tennant was not the orthodox, Iron-jawod travel man.. When he Brat saw the grim jangje from the air he admits : "1 wondered what un earth I was doing here and why I had coma.“ Of local food he says: "The sauce was so hot and strong that I was obliged to hang my tongue In a glass of water after every mouthful."
In his jungle hammock he wore pink lik priamne. At night, he confesses: E kept on reliving some of the ghastly incidents of the day,"
An amusing, human book,
drug myself in the morning to Fergusson Hannay, continued:
things You see Pie "But strange
happen. get awake, again. has to get away so carly to There are those old words which Hurley Street."
I find myself writing. Perhaps I have simply soaked them in un- consciously. I don't know.'.
The hand pointed downwards, At the club bar on the floor below Sir Walter Fergusson Handy, physician to Earl Attice and other eminent patients was waiting., Upstairs his author wife and I drank Pimms from silver mugs.
Д
"During the war Walter and I invited an Intelligence man in the Black Watch to dinner. He did handwriting work for the Army, and, be asked to sco sample of my manuscript. Well, all I could find was a shert covered in my curious, hiero-- glyphics,
IN LONGHAND She went on: "But the book "He looked at it and sild: can only begin. when I start to "This isn't your handwriting, write in longhand. I can't dietato a word. My right hand It's the writing of a consumptive simply takes control. That's why musician." I have insured it for £10,000.
III.
"Of course, I chock and check each word. I read a story the other day in which people called
*Your Majesty. Richard
"That's quite
ridiculous. Но опе spoke to a king like thắt · until the middle Henry VIII's reira, when he began to suffer from folle do grandeur."
The silver mugs crowned with mint sprigs rose and fell. Lady
most "My dear, he is my valuable critic. I mustn't tell you where 1 read my chapters to him..
His wife said: "in As The Tree Falls I have a scene where a.maa is burned at the stake. I wanted to make the horror of it seem quite real. So I first wrote about a smell like burned porks. Dat my husband told me I was wrong,
Lady Fergusson. Hannay look ed round and lowered her voice,
"In His bath. Ea would be. : vld if you printed that.
Physician Fergusson Hannay But he loves to soak. So he pointed a finger at me. listens
while the steam's "Have you ever smolled rising. And now and then human flesh burning? It's more that word's like the smell of a horse being any: 'No, wrong.'"
ho
shod."
Outside the club the shadows
At the top of the club's big staircase o genial, dapper figure of the parking meters grew emerged. It was Sir Walter longer. We descended the stair A monacle dangled at his waist- his wife's new book. himself. He offered me emuff case. Sir Walter talked about cont.
Rad -Fergusson Hannay's
er was saying, he mustn't bright eyes peered at me over print anything about your hear. the silver mug. She said;
ing my novels in your bath," "Walter and I clt a cold shiver sald his wife. run through us. You see-al- - though no one else knew and there was nothing on the sheet to suggest it-I was writing my- book, Polondist, about the life of Chopin."
From behind the mint sprigs I asked: "Does your husband ever help you?"
Mascots
THE DISCRIMINATING, CARRIAGE TRADE TYPE- SHE'S HOLDING OUT FOR THE COLLEGE.THAT HAS A MINK FOR A MASCOT.
"HERE YARE¬ GET YOUR
GOAT:4*
"THEN WE HAVE THE INDIVIDUALIST-
THE NONCOMFORMIST, WHO WILL PLEDGE HER SUPPORT TO THE SCHOOL THAT IS REPRESENTED BY A WOMBAT OR A DUCKBILL PLATYPUS.
0
GAME
TODAY LIONS
BEARS
VS
THERE ARE TIMES WHEN A COACH IS CONVINCED HIS TEAM'S MASCOT SHOULD
·BE A TORTOISE.
4
REALISM
Sir Walter morted "why. not? Perfectly all right. I'm not ashamed of having a bath, you can say I bathe in goat's milk-if you like. I don't, of course. But It would sound splendid."-"
*SPLENDID
The best bit's at the end of Chapter Five-at Henry's Court. Perfect, perfect. Then there's that, chap. -Will Keit. The way he goes about the country,
Startled glances turned in our
direction as Sir Walter described exactly what the tough, amorous Kett did in the country.
"Wonderful reading," Walter multered.
By Harry Weinert
IF THE TEAMS COULD CHOOSE THEIR MASCOTS, THEY WOULD VOTE FOR THE BATON TWIRLERS
EVERY TIME.
SOME PEOPLE SAY, AND RIGHTLY 50, THAT THIS MASCOT BUSINESS CAN BE CARRIED TOO FAR.
Avt LEAST
17
ISN'T /ALIVE.
agreed, and so I belleve 'will- many thousands of others who Join
eccentric this splendid, author on her new,' excursion into authentie history..
Eccentric? Well, consider the anta on which As The Tree Falls is published-September 11. -
The author has insisted on that day becouse numerology tells her it is lucky. The author also insists that none of her. books should have green covery,
But who can blame her for
that? She is not the only one. Last year, I can reveal, another author was upset because, his
latest book was covered in un lucky green. His name - Sir Harold Nicolson. ---
The Secret Of
'Israel Gordon
THE
rioters raged Bir T through London. In the summer night the houses of their victims blazed,
The victims were not the coloured people of Notting Hill. They were the Roman Catholics and Irish immigrants of 1780.
London wes gripped by the so-called Gordon Riots...
Who was Lord George. Gor- don, the anti-Catholic agitator who set the whole thing going? The answer is given by Christo- pher Hibbert in KING, MOB (Longmans, 1s.).
In this brilliant book, Hibbert describes the petition against relaxation of snitt-Catholic Inwa which Gordon's followers brouglat to Westminster.
He describes how the rowdies took overy how they forced the Archbishop of York to shout 'No Popery!" (which ho did "in a pitiable and enfeebled voire"), " Above all he describes eccen- tric, immoral, bagpipe-playing Gordon himself—a pazīst and bumanitarian who was 'appalled by the riota
Condemned later on a political charge Gordon suddenly dis- appeared. Months Inter a beard- ed orthodox Jow called Israel bar Abraham Gordon was arrested in a squalid, house In Birmingham's ghetto. It was Lord George who had become a zealous convert to the Jewish Zalth.
In that faith he died. But not before he had held splendid parties in Newgate at which all- comers, including the Duke of York, were welcome-except for Jows whoma boards were not of orthodox length,
FICTION SHELF
By JOCASTA INNES
THE GIRL' AND" "THE BARBARIAN. By Geoffrey Mark
Jarrolda, 12s, Od. Now version of The Shelk, with worne concessiona to Atom Age sophistication. Whd MongoMen pelling, barbarlo. eliumis, (shouki put the high on library sta
THE MAN WHO DROKE THINGS. W John Brooks.
15
·Wall · ́Street setting for an above-averagO novel about the mogay'esme, Mr Brooks does a good, fronde job.
---(London Rxpress Baroloaj.