DANCE MUSIC FROM 2YA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 475, 30 July 1948, Page 20

DANCE MUSIC FROM 2YA

Rhythm and Humour in Freddie Gore Show

VERY Monday evening since June, 1945, Station 2YA has given its dance-tune listeners the popular songs of the day through Freddie Gore and his Orchestra and Marion Waite (vocalist). For the last three years the combination has continuously featured the same Freddie Gore and the same Marion Waite, whose fan-mail shows no signs of easing off, but there have been many changes in the orchestral membership.. Dance-band players come and go. Some receive calls to other fields of music and young new players are constantly coming on to fill up the blank files. Two former members. of this band, Robert Girvan (bassoon) and P. Watters (clarinet) are now playing with the National Orchestra of the NZBS. : Gore’s ‘band started with 12 players; then its numbers dropped to 10; and now its strength is 14 instrumentalists, including the conductor. Ali the song arrangements are carried out on -the home ground by five members-Freddie Gore, Bill Hoffmeister (deputy-conduc-tor), S. Dorward, G. Michaelis and D. Cameron, and the soloists are J. Williams (tenor-saxophone), Eric Foley (clarinet), Michaelis (alto saxophone), Hoffmeister (pianist) and J. Loper (trumpet). * Continuity Programmes Recently the band was completely reorganised, with the object of introducing greater variety into its presentations. Each week a guest artist-local or visit-ing-takes part, and a new feature is "Song of the Week," chosen by Marion Waite from what she considers to be among the most popular melodies of the moment and best suited to her particular style of singing. The compére is Briton Chadwick. Unlike the usual run of dance band performance in which the only spoken words are announcements of the song titles, the new show uses a connected script of dialogue, introducing humorous interludes. The Freddie Gore Show with Marion | Waite (to give the correct programme title) presents dance music which is considered by the more ex-

clusive swing experts to be soberly orthodox, but which a large number of ordinary listeners find acceptable. Though the songs are specially arranged, they do not depart from the melody to the extent of becoming unrecognisable. Nevertheless’ the band is still a product of a movement that started 37 years ago, when "Irving Berlin set the world dancing to ragtime in 1911. Percy Scholes declares that there was ragtime before Berlin; that it was known in the 1880's. The whites of. North America derived it from the Negroes, developed it, and business-like composers like Berlin communicated it to wider circles with considerable cash profit. One writer on jazz music, H. O. Osgood, is quoted as saying, "Irving Berlin may be described without exaggeration as the Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven of jazz-all the old masters in one!" No Bebop Included The vigorous use of noisy instruments and implements has to-day died out of fashion, except in the case of Spike Jones, who uses them for his own nefarious purposes. Swing music became current about 1935, this term being descriptive of the phase into which jazz had then passed.* And now there are some samples in New Zea- land of "bebop" music, which is claimed by its inventor, Dizzy Gillespie (a Negro trumpeter) to be of a very definite style, demanding a high technique in playing. In the last few weeks a number of these recordings have been heard in NZBS programmes. To the ordinary listener they contain no set melody that anybody could sing or whistle, or a rhythm that anyone could dance ‘to, but the local swing fans and swing clubs are said to have welcomed them with fierce enthusiasm. Whether "bebop" will make any impression on the majority of New Zealand dance followers remains to be seen. So far no local dance combination has tried it on the air. In the meantime Freddie Gore and his party are swinging along merrily at 2YA on Mondays between 7.50 p.m. and 8.20 p.m., presenting a mote recognisable kind of arrangement of the world’s song hits.