1957-05-11 — Page 5

-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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