1936-12-10 — Page 6

THE HONGKONG TELECHAPH, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1936.

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IDEAL CHRISTMAS GIFTS

"H.M.V." SERIES OF THE WORKS OF GREAT COMPOSERS-INTERPRETED

BY LEADING

ARTISTS AND ORCHESTRAS.

Album

No.

Composer

223

BEETHOVEN

211

BORODIN

242

BRAHMS

198 CHOPIN

248

DVORAK

164 ELGAR

210 FAURE

Work

Choral-Symphony Quartet in D Maj. Sextet in B Flat Maj.

Four Ballades

Symphony in G Maj. Violin Concerto Quartet in C Min.

GILBERT & SULLIVAN Complete Operas

195

LALO

224

LEONCAVALLO

50

MENDELSSOHN

216 MOZART

103

84

232

PUCCINI

RACHMANINOFF

RIMSKY-KORSAKOFF

68 SCHUBERT

209 SCHUMANN

54 STRAVINSKY

192 STRAUSS

TCHAIKOWSKY

114

237

WAGNER

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Hongkong Eclegraph.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1936,

BRITISH LABOUR

CONDITIONS

SWING!

OMETHING has happened to jazz. A thing called swing.

A

year ago only initiates had heard the word. Now there are a hun- dred and ten swing clubs in the country. totalling well over 10,000 members.

The biggest club is London No. 1; the keenest, Dundee. Members meet of an even- ing. talk about their heroes and play their records.

There are sixteen clubs in London and Clubs throughout the the suburbs alone, country are welded together by a central organisation known as the British Rhythm Club Federation. Members (maybe we should call them delegates) from clubs come up to town for big swing "dos."

Recent information regarding

THE peak of British Rhythm Club the conditions of British labour

Federation activity is reached demonstrates two outstanding with highbrow Sunday concerts of jazz. and important facts. During They had one at the Grotrian Hall, you

Since then, mon the past few years there have remember. been few industrial disputes, Foresythe have drawn the faith Hike Larry Adler and Reginald while wages in many industries by their Sabbath interpreta

shown (Complete Opera) have

appreciable in- tions.

PACLIACCI (Complete Opera) Trio in D Min.

Concerto in A Maj... Madame Butterfly

Concerto No. 2 Scheherazade (Symphonic Suite) Album of Songs Concerto in A Min. Petroushka (Music for the Ballet) Rosenkavalier (First Act). Pathetique-Symphony

Die Walqure (First Act)

A LIST OF OTHER ALBUMS INCLUDED IN THIS SERIES WILL BE PUBLISHED LATER.

S. MOUTRIE & CO., LTD.

York Building

Chater 'Road

ELIZABETH ARDEN

TREATMENTS

WILL BE GIVEN BY AN EXPERT FROM MISS ARDEN'S LONDON SALON:

APPOINTMENTS MAY BE MADE. UNTIL THE 18TH DECEMBER.

PLEASE MAKE YOUR APPOINTMENT

IN ADVANCE.

LADIES SALON

Then a member will play a programme of records. And maybe the evening will be topped off with "hot renderings of old favourites" by local five, six, or seven-piece combinations. Amateurs all.

out of Ragtime came Jazz: and out of Jazz has come-

"Swing," fans call it

A:

The terrific swing he produces? he plays modern jazz in the Mozartian manner.

Wilson is twenty-three. He WAY educated at the vast coloured Tuskeegce University in Alabama. Both his parents are teachers there.

Two more. You wouldn't think Rachmaninoff would care for swing? He goes to the Central Park Casino, New York, to listen to Eddio Duchin, who goes to Chicago's Grand Terrace Cafe to study Earl Hines.

about.

MORE

men

the rhythm fans taik

There's Bud Freeman, saxo- phonist, and Jack Lacey on the trombone, and Johnny Hodges, who is Duke Ellington's head sax man . we hadn't men- tloned Duke.

He is not reckoned in the first flight of performers, but standa alone as a composer of awing. music. He represents the quiet, reflective mood of the cult with pieces like "Sophisticated Lady" and "Mood Indigo." Two years ago the only way they could get the classic "Mood Indigo" on the recording market was by calling it "Dreamy Blues" and hoping for the best. Now publishera would give their eyebrows for one like it.

creases. No doubt both factors. Around the country, though. are due to the steady im- proceedings are hearlier and provement in trade and indus-less formal. Rhythm clubs meet try, though it might be argued and have nice homey debates on that the second condition is in Straight Jazz versus Swing, some measure due to the first, The absence of friction between employers and employed has given general confidence in the

THE birth and the industrin position, and both

growth of modern drunk and slap happy. No, this together for a jam session. sides have reaped the benefit.

Their idea of a gafa night is isn't getting us anywhere. We jam session, that's when you swing music makes good road- There is every prospect that

to attract a professional musi- must try to describe this strange all mug in together on a piece. ing. This is our theory.

Around about the end of the the year now closing will prove cian from one of the big London music.

You play it the way you're fed- the-best-for-wage increases bands to give a lecture... on. There's a man with a wooden ing. Just throw away the rules war dance fans used to shuffle since the immediate post-war technique. The man becomes leg coming fast down a dark of music and play it your al-the-Hammersmith Palais--de-

Danse and at Rector's Club in street. Stop and shuffle: stop way....

London to a combination known boom period which ended in the lion of the evening. 1920. During the first eight It is surprising, though, the and shuffle. That's the rhythm. "Now, I'd say the greatest of number of effective local Suddenly a trumpet flares: them all is Louis Armstrong, months of the year there was a net increase of £362,000 a week amateur jazz combinations there like a baby waking in the night Satchelmouth, they call him.

Twice as many as a year with a pin in its tummy-bless (We remember the great (Le Rocca) wrote "Tiger Rag.' in the wages of 3,250,000 per- ago. The men, maybe, are bank its little tummy. The yell`Satch'mo' ourselves. One night The Tiger is the national anthem sons. The annual value of this clerks, accountants, bus drivers. gradually turns to a lilt.

we went to a party in White of awing. Like "The Blue. increase in purchasing power is Only a small proportion have Then a voice starts gabbling, chapel. One of those parties Danube" and the Barcarolle about £18,100,000. If this state the fatal ambition to be a pro- like a voice in the ear after a where you drink gin and lime out from "Tales of Hoffmann," it Armstrong will never die. The men who of affairs is maintained, there fessional. For most, swing is hat lobster supper. Menacing, of beer tankards,

insistent, never finishing a sen- sat in a corner, quietly playing wrote that tune have split up will have been three successive their hobby.

you've tence. And all the time a piano his trumpet all evening. Silver since. A fortnight ago I heard PROBABLY years of increases. Since the

never heard of many keeps going quietly, like the silvers; daggers of sound he there was talk of reforming the war the changes have followed of their heroes men like Fats noise from a honky-tonk on the played.)

band, with the original members. irregular cycles.

a Le Rocca now lives at his case in According to Waller, Wingy Mannone, Louis ear of a tired reveller trying to Armstrong first sounded Ministry of Labour statistics, Prima, Jack Teagarden. They go home.

trumpet in a New Orleans New Orleans... Sounds crazy? It is crazy. orphanage. He played for years increases in wages were shown) are the new kings of jazz,

These men may still be world- in 1919, 1920, 1924 and 1926.) Trouble is, nobody can define And significant.

in Mississippi river boats. Now famous. It would not be hard Buy a record to-day. But he is the idol of the negroes, the to make out a case to prove that The year from 1927 to 1933, swing.

It's just a sensation. It makes Fats Waller playing: "I'm gonna king of melodic invention. So by writing this crazy tune they Inclusive, were bad years for wages. Since then there have your diaphragm curl and your sit me down and write myself great is his popularity, rumours founded the basis of an age's head snap back. It's a peak of a letter." Listen carefully, and follow him around the world. If dance music, just as Strauss did. emotion. It makes you punch if you are lucky you may discern he is in London, America hears

been regular increases. The last really good wage year was 1924, when net wage increases had an annual value of £27,650,- 000. If the last third of this year maintains. the position of the other two-thirds, the annual value of Increases will total £27,150,000, nearly as much us in 1924. Gratifying as these figures are, the stark fact re- mains that there are still many regions in which the jobless find it difficult to keep body and soul together. This is notably true of South Wales, where public attention has again been directed to the lot of the people by the recent tour of His Majesty through the distressed areas. King Edward showed a very real sympathy with those who have been wo long without work, and his re- marks that "Something must be done to find work-for willing. hands," and "Now we must see what we can-do" may be taken to indicate that a special effort will be made on behalf of a section of the community suffered long, and,

LANE, CRAWFORD, LTD. which has Auff trials, ne re-

mained loyal and law-abiding.

are.

Work it out for yourself

Young George was walking in his garden when he narrowly escaped sudden death from a grandfather clock thrown over- board by

1 by a passing airship. On examining it he found it had stopped ut ten o'clock.

To steady his shaken nerves he went inside and tried to read. He picked ·

up on encyclo- paedia at random, which told him that owing to cooling the earth. 'keeps on shrinking. After many centuries, its diame- ter will have shrunk by a mile. George began to work out what difference this will make to its circumference. Do you know?

*

*

Just as George found out, the radio announced that an air- ship, Anding Itself in difculties at a height of 10,000 fedt, had Lightened ship by dropping a grandfather. clock vertically överboard, at exnetly...at exact- ly what time?"! wakalag

If you don't - know, "BCO Column Four.

+ T

a sound basis of sincerity in the that he is dying; that he will music. That is what jazz has never play again. King Louis always lacked.

is quite well, thank you."

Carter there

in

as the Original Dixieland Band.

They were the first swing artists. The leader of the band

F T is possible that the

intrepid reader, hav- ing reached this paint, may be. thinking that a good deal of the.. SWING has made a

THEN, says Benny above is special pleading. But knight's move

are we have a fact up our alceve. chess. Two jumps back and one two great white man. Jack One firm, who turned out ahil- to the side. A jump over the Teagarden is SCUB among ling and sixpenny records, re- sleek, well-tailored orchestration trombonista: Gene Krupa is cently decided on a revolution in policy. They bought from of men like Ambrose (though the Master of the Drums. Ambrose can swing, too); again Most 'original, startling figure America matrices of swing re- over the noisy, irritable jigging in this strange new gallery of cordings and decided to put them of early jazz (the Oom-Pah fame is a giant negro (six foot out at half a crown. school); and a jump to the side tall, weighing 17 stone) called into the swamps of Louisiana. Fats Waller. Fats sits bolt up Swing goes right back to first right, at the piano with a principles of negro music. A "durby" hat on his head. He great artist never plays the holds his wrists high and prods same tune twice alike. He takes at the notes with fingers like Prods delicately the basic melody and im- sausage-rolls, provises. The more he wunders and with terrific effect.

the greater the emotional effect. . Son of B

The first record they issued (it. was Benny Carter's "Nightfall").. sold 5.000 copies in a week.

That's business.

Paul-Holt

negro minister, he Worked out for you

I met a man yesterday who is played the organ in church until one of the new kings of swing the congregation began to sway A quiet-voiced young negre to his voluntaries. He says called Benny Carter. Experts

rank him up among the first Bach was the best part of his training. They call him the ten

sax, Black Gargoyle of Rhythm. The exponents of the clarinet, and trumpet in the best known hit he wrote was work Benny puts it this "Ain't Misbehavin."

As a pianist he has only one) If you don't feel it, Mr. master-a young, alight negro Holt, it isn't swing. You see, called Theodore (Teddy) Wilson, you get half-a-dozen of the boys His touch is incredibly light for

-way

The earth's

circumference

will have shrunk by three and one-seventh miles: because the circumference of a circle always equals its diameter multiplied. by three and a seventh,

The time was still exactly 10. o'clock. The support of the clock's pendulum foll with the same acceleration as the bob, 30 that the, pendulum no longer moved, and the clock stopped.