FASHIONS IN FOXTROTS

Shannon News, 13 November 1928, Page 4

FASHIONS IN FOXTROTS

"WAITENG FOR THE BIG HIT/'

Dunce music is changing again. The type of jazz tune that was hugely sue-, eessful a year ago will not sell to-day. The foxtrots of yesterday have gone, never to return. A new fashion is on the way—and someone is going to make a lot of money out of it. It sounds quaint to speak of jazz fashions. But there are fashions in jazz—more so than ever to-day, when the life of tho average jazz tune is down to six months, and may soon have contracted to four. Try a series of June foxtrots for 1925, 1926 and 1927, and the latest for this year on your gramophone. You will find that they date as decidedly as a woman's hat. As for the foxtrots of 1922, to hear them gives one the sensation one experiences on glancing through an old photograph album. . Strange that we

ence looked like that! Strange that we were once ravished, by—that! A new dance music fashion comes by way of a reaction of. the vast dance public against something it is tired of. It has ideas in the ballroom, for it is tho irresistible music which keeps dancing alive and which brings new dances in, and not vice versa. Just now the dance music composer who calls at the music publisher's with a new tango, a new blackbottom number, or a new Charleston tune, is being shown the door. The demand has died. Blues numbers also ha\o lost much of the popularity with which they started the year. Mammy and "Ole Kentucky" songs are as dead as the Livery Stable Blues of 12 years ago. A temple bell in a foxtrot dates it fatally now; so docs a Chinese lilt. The public has, had Indian and-Chinese jazz effect and is sick of tlicm.

Foxtrots that are carried along iVn a full tide of gay moiody are in high

favour. Melancholy themes of the "where-is-nia-baby?" and "miy- broken heart" have had their. spell of popularity. Joy songs of the "mar-vellous-girl " and "June-love" description are in vogue. Waltzes, too, with strong romantic melodies, are the successes, of the hour. Waltzes have been notably weak and sentimental for the last .three or four years—possibly because most of the successful dance music-makers have been putting their best efforts into more lucrative production for the foxtrot market. A good waltz now is a big money-maker. But tho, big hit, another '(Tea for Two" the jazz number that AviJl alone make a musical show and captivate twenty million dancers, has not appeared in the 1928 list yet..