Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 717, 10 April 1953, Page 24

Open Microphone

-~ | NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

EFERRING to a recent paraFX graph ins Open Microphone "= "about Benny. Goodman’s change of clarinet technique, I. R. Maxwell-Stewart, Wellington, writes: "I think I could successfully support the contention, against all comers, that the advent of jazz has revolutionised the instrumental technique of brass ‘and reed instruments, with a consequent considerable enhancement of the work of the new generation of legitimate players, opening up new possibilities to the composer. It is ironic that Goodman should have decided it was necessary to make a complete change of playing technique. to put his legitimate playing on a par with that of Kell, and, to do so, take lessons from, or exchange lessons, with him. "The embouchure used by Kell was developed by a famous jazz reed player, Ross Gorman, and ‘the first notable occasion of his using it was in the original rendition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The glissando in the opening cadenza caused speculation in its day as to the instrument used, for at that date all the professors in all the conservatoires of the world declared a glissando or portamento impossible on the clarinet. It remains impossible for players using the legitimate clarinet player’s embouchure with teeth holding the mouthpiece at the top and the lip or teeth pressing on the reed at bottom. The Gorman technique of lips only means that the sphincter muscle of the mouth must be considerably developed before sound can be produced, and six months of daily development are necessary before 10 minutes’ consecutive playing can be tackled. The technique is today practically universal among jazz reed players, and it is puzzling that Goodman should have been an exception. The explanation lies, apparently, in Goodman’s musical beginnings. Given a clarinet at 14 and being a natural musician, he played professionally almost immediately, It seems that he adopted the easiest method of producing sound, i.e., the old legitimate technique, and once having done so it would involve a cessation of playing to drop it. For a good example of the complete difference of tone produced by the two methods, compare Kell’s recording of Weber’s Concertino with that of, say, Draper or Thurston. It is possible that this revolutionising of technique in reeds and brass . . . may prove to be jazz’s most noteworthy and permanent contribution to music as a whole. . ." *

FIFTY YEARS OF SONG

REX HARRISON, Christchurch baritone, who has just completed a series of broadcasts of Negro Spirituals from 3YC, has been a singer for 50 years. There was alwavs miisic in the

Harrison home, for his mother was a _ singer and pianist and his

father an organist, choirmaster and band conductor. Before he reached 20 he spent a few years on the West Coast of the South Island. Contemporaries will remember him as the lead in some of Greymouth’s musical productions. Rex Harrison then went through the competition stage (which has drawn public attention to virtues of many a young performer). He won several New Zealand Championships, and in 1928 was winner of the Sydney Sun Aria Contest. Mr. Harrison recalls. an interesting experience in Perth. When no theatre was available for a public

recital, the Governor-General allowed him to give it in the ballroom at Government House-a large oval room with the best acoustics he has ever encountered. He has now been broadcasting regularly at 3YA for 23 years. Gardening is his hobby and his show piece is a grape vine which astonishes visitors to his home, *

IN REALITY

t NOST New Zealand listeners have heard the imaginary life of Ted Ray as portrayed in the BBC show Ray’s a Laugh. The facts are that the real Ray gets up at 7.30 a.m. ‘and takes a cup \

tea to his wife, Sybil. He is often helped in

the kitchen by his young son Andrew; there is an elder boy, Robin. Following the family breakfast Ray, just like any other man, attends to his mail; but unlike many other men, he has to open more than 200 letters a week. If he finds it necessary to use the telephone he goes to a near-by public call-box. He had his personal telephone ‘cut off some time ago-not because he

couldn’t pay for it, but because in¢oming calls got too much for him. A seript of Ray’s a Laugh means about two days’ work, and rehearsals and the actual broadcast take up another day. Ted géts back home well after 11 p.m., to find supper waiting for him in the kitchen and a note from Sybil referring to the major happenings of the day and end-, ing with the ‘letter "Q and Q." They mean quickly and quietly-an order, says Ted, which he always obeys. An odd visit to a football match and invariably. golf on Sunday mornings are his recreation, — x

GUITARIST TO RETURN

/ICTORIA: KINGSLEY, guitarist and! singer, intends to return to New Zealand in September of this year. After her New Zealand visit last year, she went ‘to India. Writing to Keith M.,

Bennett, Community Arts Service tutor for the Regional Council of

' Adult Education in Wellington, she says that she worked extremely hard at Tagore University o~ns ».

and. led the life of an Indian student. She gave three recitals and a Shakespeare reading, and sang some Shakespearian songs. "Since then I’ve been

in Benares, staying with a musicologist who is recording a lot of Indian music. Much, of this I enjoyed from an upstairs balcony and behind a stone trellis, as women did in the old days," says Miss Kingsley, "and my own practising of Bengali songs mingled with the temple bells. I now have an authentic folk music drum-a little two-ended barrel-and it will accompany me to Australia in June and later to New Zealand.’ She made a few recordings in Delhi for All India Radio before flying to London. .

SCOTTISH DANCING

x W HEN it started at 4YA in September of last year Dunedin’s Reel and Strathspey Club’s programme became popular overnight. It closed down in

December, but now it is back-on Thursdays, at’ 8.30 p.m. Joe Wallace.

who conducts the club, was quite surprised by the large number of let-

ters he received regularly, but he was even more astonished to find that Scottish country dancing is practised in many parts of New Zealand. The bands of Jimmy Shand, Jim Cam--eron, Bobby McLeod, and others, are providing the music. , iw a

CLOSE SHAVE

a K \V HEN Walter Midgley swallowed his false moustache as the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto at Covent Garden recently he was, it appears, ‘following good Royal Opera House precedent. The story goes that when the tenor John

Templeton was singing in I Puritani he in-

haled his false beard and ejected it so forcibly that it temporarily blinded a _ violinist in the orchestra pit. It is reported that Midgley, who carried on with the performance though in some pain, said that the quality of his singing was affected by the foreign body on his larynx. A member of the audience, however, said there was nothing to be noticed. A ctitic has commented that Mr. Midgley still sounded a lot better than some tenors one could~name who usually sound as if they had swallowed not merely their moustaches but their whole wigs before the performance began.

BACK TO SYDNEY

* puss: before he left for Evans» Bay ~ to catch the Sydney flying boat the other day, Pat Searson called with an introduction from a mutual friend in the North. This tall and pleasant young Australian-born singer came’ to New

Zealand with his parents when he was 10 years old. Since then he has been a

school teacher and dance band leader as well as a singer with Auckland cabaret and dance engagements. On a recent visit to Australia he made something of a name for himself as a guest artist on the ABC nef work, and with Australian commercial stations. He has appeared with the Limb

Teenage Show at 2UW, and with Jim Gussey’s Barid. Now, he told. me, he is hoping for greater things in Australian radio,

BREAKFAST WITH SHONE

[OR the last four years, during the summer, Phil Shone has taken his morning microphone from the studio to open-air lookouts round about Auckland to give 1ZB listeners descriptions of all sorts of shore and maritime acti-

vities. You may hear him say something like this: "This is Station

1ZB Auckland, broadcasting from the top of a building on Parnell Rise. It’s a lovely morning; the Baroona has just pulled into the wharf from Waiheke and here’s the Rangitane coming up Rangitoto Channel. And as I’m talking to you, you may hear the sound of the Tasman flying boat as it roars overhead on its way to, Sydney." With a cheerful brightness, just done to a turn, Shone makes a valuable contribution to the popularity of 1ZB’s Breakfast Session. He gives frequent and regular time announcements, information about* the weather, tides, shipping and so on, and varies these with an occasional broadcast of a school choir Yrom as far afield as Ngaruawahia, Warkworth or Pukekohe. He is always on the lookout for items to interest children, and his latest idea for varying the programmes is the reading of letters from overseas travellers. Not long ago Hazel Downey, aged 13, of Te Kauwhata, when travelling through the Australian States regularly sent back entertaining descriptions of her tour. Then an Auckland businessman sent a weekly bulletin of his travels on the first leg of a trip round the world-all making first-class broadcasting material. *

THREE QUESTIONS

VV HATEVER else he may do, a reviewer has to ask himself, and answer to his public’s satisfaction, three basic questions. First, what did the

writer of the book set out to do?

Second, did he succeed in doing it? and third, was that sort of book worth writing, anyway?From a New Zealand Broadcasting Service Book Shop programme.