LOOK BEFORE YOU LISTEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 87, 21 February 1941, Page 17

LOOK BEFORE YOU LISTEN

A Run Through The Records

By

B.

W.

Salonika‘s "Roosters" DD any concert party heard over the air ever have a more romantic history than "The Roosters"? They were hatched in Salonika in March, 1917, when a young second-lieutenant gathered a few of the "boys" together to entertain the troops. A good deal of real talent was revealed, and when some old pierrot costumes were found, it was decided that a permanent concert party should be formed. Every aspiring artist in the camp reported for auditions, and the best artists were put into training for a grand opening night on March 28, 1917. The new party was christened "The Roosters" after the Camp-Com-mandant, Captain G. N. V. Roose. By the time it left Salonika, about 70 performances had been given. Then they toured and gave successful shows in the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem, Jericho, Cairo, and Alexandria, where they entertained thousands of soldiers. In 1919, they returned to England, where they have been going strong ever since. The Roosters Concert Party will be heard at 4YA on Wednesday, February 26. He Conquered Brahms N Vienna in 1893, the then venerable Brahms learned that a boy prodigy called Bronislaw Huberman was to play his "Concerto" in public, and the presumption of it filled him with rage. He, in fact, went to the concert for the sole purpose of overawing the lad and rebuking him afterwards. But at the end of the "Concerto" he drew out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. The boy had won. The following day, Brahms wrote a few bars from the "Concerto," with this inscription, in the lad’s album: "To the talented violin-virtuoso Bronislaw Huberman, in memory of his delighted and grateful listener, Johannes Brahms." Bronislaw Huberman, violinist, will be heard by 4YA listeners on Monday, February 24. No Girl Crooners ILLY COTTON will not have a girl vocalist appear with his band-he says that it’s too difficult for a girl to be among the band boys and yet not actually one of them. Besides, in Billy’s opinion, beauty and brains seldom go together. If a girl has brains, she generally looks a mess, he says, and if she looks well, her head is generally empty. So they’re more nuisance than they’re worth. If they’re all up-stage and county, they don’t get on with the boys. If they’re matey and pleasant, they get taken about and given a good time, and then the nonsense begins, There will be no girls in the band you will hear from 3YA on Saturday, | March 1-only Billy and his boys. — Signature Tune No. 1 DANCE BANDS may come and dance bands may go (they do!), but Jack Payne’s band remains. But then it has had an excellent trade mark-a tune

that is at once associated with the band, and at the same time a constant advertisement to its unseen radio audience: "Say It With Music." This was an early "hit" of Jack Payne’s, and he suddenly remembered it when he got the band going. IYA listeners will hear Jack Payne and his Band on Monday February 24, You'd be Right ... If you asserted that hail rarely falls in winter, But I wonder whether you’d quite realise why? The scientific answer to that, of course, is that hail never forms unless there is a thunderstorm going on somewhere-and the conditions that produce thunder are rare in winter. If you insisted that no two snowflakes are identical in pattern. It’s true that Scientists have never managed to find two exactly alike. Which makes the architectural pro lem of the Housing Department seem pretty negligible!