Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 779, 25 June 1954, Page 28

Open Microphone

», NEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD,

By

Swarf

TOP DRUMMER

N'ce COLE (Auckland): Gene Krupa was born in 1909 in Chicago and the beat of the drum first called to him when he was 13. His parents wished him to enter the. Church, and he studied for awhile with this in mind. But music proved the stronger

call, and Krupa joined Joe Kayser’s Band in 1928. After that he joined band after band. learning

all the time, and in 1935. started his famous association with Benny Good-

man. In three years he won a reputation as the finest technician in the profession. In 1938 he formed his own band, which he led until 1942, and a year later he rejoined Goodman and then Tommy Dorsey. In 1944 he led his own band again, and his dynamic drumming encouraged arrangers to turn out some unusually exhilarating scores. Krupa is an authority on drums, and how to use them, and has given lectures on the subject at many universities. He appeared in person in the film The Glenn Miller Story, when this photograph was taken. a:

N.Z. MUSIC FROM BBC

NEw ZEALAND was well represented at a concert broadcast recently in the BBC’s General Overseas Service by the BBC Scottish Orchestra conducted by James Robertson, the new conductor of the National Orchestra of the NZBS. One of the performers was

Esther Fisher, Christchurch born Pianist, and one of the works played by the orchestra was Douglas Lilburn’s Aotearoa. Esther Fisher gained at an

early age admission to the Paris Conservatoire. She was a student under

isidore Philipp in Paris, and under Artur Schnabel in Berlin, and she made her London debut .at the Wigmore Hall in 1924. Since then she has been continuously before the public. For some.time she was pianist with the viola player Lionel Tertis. An interview with James Robertson was scheduled in the second programme by the New Zealand Music Society for broadcasting in a link of YC stations on June 22; that programme was one of a series of six recorded for the NZBS in London by courtesy of the BBC. * "(C)PERA LOVER" (Timaru): Grace Moore first became known here through three films. The first, shown in 1930, and piquantly entitled A Lady’s Morals, purported to portray the life of Jenny Lind; then came New Moon, which featured her with Lawrence Tibbett; and the third, One Night of Love, showed her as a café-concert artist who rose to become an internationally famous prima donna. A banker’s daughter, she was born in Del Rio, Tennessee. As a girl she was closely associated with Church work, taught a Sunday-school class.and led a choir. Her earliest ambition was to become a missionary in China, but this project she abandoned after hearing a song recital by Mary Garden. After a short period at a music school near Washington her family decided that singing was far more satisfactory as a pastime than as a_ profession. Grace Moore, unable to see the wisdom of this sentiment, packed her bag and ran off to New York to sing in a cafe in return for board and expenses. A theatrical producer took an interest in her and she "understudied the lead in a musical comedy that went by the hardly euphonious name of Hitchy Koo. The-principal fell ill-as, happily for understudies, principals sometimes do-and Grace filled the part admirably. Success in miuisical comedy and revue enabled her to study in Paris. A trip to Italy led to a: meeting with Mary Garden-the singer; you * remember, who years before had made

Grace forsake her missionary aspirations. A course of study was taken and it was not long before she was singing Mimi in La at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. That was in 1928. From then on she made her way steadily to the first rank of operatic artists. Grace Moore was killed in an air crash en route from Denmark to Sweden On January 26, 1947.

| [ERE is a portrait of W. J. Hicks, one of the BBC’s expert sports com- ° mentators and a regular contributor to , Sports Review, the popular magazine programme which New Zeandé

land shortwave listeners can hear in the General Overseas Service of the BBC at 7.30 and 11.45 a.m. and 6.30 p-m. on Sundays (N.Z. time). Bill Hicks, who is sports editor of the London News Chronicle,

is a Cornishman wBE who in his time has been a very useful amateur footballer and cricketer. His speciality is Association football, about which he broadcasts frequently, but he

HER STAGE A SHOP COUNTER

is knowledgeable about all sports and is greatly in demand for both Home and overseas broadcasts. * ROSEMARY CLOONEY, the American singing star who has taken part in BBC sound and _ television programmes, began performing at the age of three, making personal appearances

in her. grandiather’s Maysville (Kentucky) jewellery store. She used the counter for

pa Stage, to the delight and amazement of the customers. A few years later her younger sister Betty joined her. And it

was the same sister who, years after, appeared with her and Tony Pastor’s Orchestra, when they were billed as "The Clooney Sisters." When Rosemary was 13 the Clooney family moved to Cincinnati. She had been listening carefully to records of all the famous dance bands and studying the styles and phrasing of their vocalists. When she heard that Cincinnati’s radio station WLW was holding an audition for singers she rehearsed long and hard with sister Betty and entered for the competition. The Clooney Sisters won first place. In May, 1949, Rosemary realised that she was about ready to graduate from dance band singing to solo work. Pastor encouraged this step and along came a contract with the Columbia Recording Company. Rosemary Clooney is said to be a. well-read, intelligent girl with dramatic aspirations.

AND TO PROVE IT HE’S HERE!

AX BYGRAVES (you have been hearing him in Educating Archie, the BBC comedy session which has its final broadcast from the four ZB stations this Sunday, June 27) is one of the rare cases of a comedian who found~fame in a night. When he was playing at a

music hall in the London suburbs he was asked to take Ted

Ray’s place for one evening at the London Palladium, that Mecca of Variety in Britain. Max was such a success that he was booked for a month’s engagement. Son of a London docker, Max had a happy-and busv--childhood. Before he went to

school in the mornings, he worked on a newspaper round, rising at 5.30, and after school be used to sing in workingmen’s clubs for a shilling or two. "Wally ought to go on the stage," neighbours told Mrs. Bygraves. (Born Walter William By-

graves, he was nicknamed Max because of ‘his impersonations of Max Miller.) He did ‘a good deal of R.A.F. concert party work and after the war joined a road show of ex-service men. It was hard going, though, until he had the luck to be spotted by Vic Parnell, the Palladium chief, and offered that one-night engagement. Now Bygraves is a top-liner with an appearance at the Royal Variety Show and a successful tour of the United States to his credit. He has even been called-no doubt with a compliment in mind-"Britain’s Danny Kaye." Educating Archie brought Max Bygraves instant fame. His catch-phrases: "That’s a good idea-son!" "I’ve arrived -and to prove it I'm here!" and "Big ’ead" have become common catchphrases. Bygraves lives at Edgware with his wife Blossom and their three children, Christine, Anthony and Maxine. He’s 31 years old and although he has made a fortune he keeps his old carpenter’s tools in first-class condition as a reminder of the few years he spent

in the building trade. The show busi- ~ ness, he says, is pretty chancy, and he might need them again. Educating Archie, by the way, will have its first broadcast from 2ZA on June 27. oe

VOICE OF SOCCER

HARLES BUCHAN, formerly a topflight footballer and now a sports journalist and radio commentator, is heard regularly in the BBC’s Home and Overseas Services, broadcasting about Association football. New Zealand listen-

ers to the U.U.S. will know him best for his frequent appearances in

"Sports Review’ (Sundays, 7.30 am., 11.45 a.m., and 6.30 p.m.), and in "Sporting Record" (Thursdays, 10.45 p.m., and Fridays, 8.45 a.m. New Zealand time). He made his first broadcast in the very early days of radio when he spoke from 2L0O as captain of Arsenal’s Cup Final team. A _ sports writer in a London daily newspaper has referred to him as "the greatest player Soccer has ever known," and he was capped for England five times. He also played cricket for Durham"in the Minor Counties League and he is a first-class golfer. "