KINGS OF JAZZ

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 117, 19 September 1941, Page 11

KINGS OF JAZZ

ZB Feature Recalls Bandleader’s Quarrel With BBC

ACK PAYNE, the famous English bandleader, who was once the centre of a stormy quarrel with the BBC, a/ is the subject of a Kings of Jazz session to be heard from Station 3ZB at 10,15 p.m. on Saturday, September 27. The occasion of the quartel was Payne’s

retirement in 1933 from the post of Director of Dance Music at the BBC, which he had held for five years, In an. interview, Payne accused the BBC of applying his ideas of presentation to other shows in which he- had no part, and strongly criticised the fees paid to dance bands. At that time, the fee for a late night broadcast of an hour and a-half was 40 guineas. Payne’s band consisted of 23

musicians, and he complained that the BBC rule which paid the same fee to large or small bands, whether famous or not, was absurd and unfair, The BBC retorted that it had made Jack Payne’s reputation, whereupon Payne in return stoutly maintained that he and he alone had made his reputation. His final shot was that the BBC’s new studios were accoustically bad, and spoiled hig broadcasts. " Whether the BBC had made Payne’s reputation for him or not, he went on from strength to strength. Soon after leaving the BBC, he made a film Say

It With Music, then another, Sunshine Ahead. To-day, what with presentations, entertaining troops, and making recerdings, he is one of Britain’s busiest band leaders. He listens to a dozen or so new tunes every day, and then rehearses his band for several hours. In one four-year

period, he and his band broadcast 3000 tunes (selected from 15,000). The Kings of Jazz session at 2ZB the same Saturday night features Red Nichols and his Five Pennies, an American dance band long noted for its brilliant "hot" playing. Nichols first broke intothe news witha band known as Red Nichols and his Redheads. Records made by this band had a tremendous sale,

and recording companies bid keenly for his services, offering as high as 50 dollars per side per player, with 10 sidés a day as an average "bag," With the depression, the commercial field all but disappeared, but Nichols was "discovered" by radio. His was the first band to be signed for a simultaneous broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company and the Columbia System. Station 1ZB’s Kings of Jazz session (on Monday, September 22 at 10.0 p.m.), will tell something of the life story of Hal Kemp.