Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 793, 1 October 1954, Page 24

Open Microphone

BEDTIME THRILLER

| ea. EDEN, of Christhas had her novel Bride by Candlelight adapted by the BBC for reading in 14 instalments in their Light Programme session A Book at Bedtime. According to a note in the latest copy of Radio Times to reach this

office, "Dorothy Eden’s Bride by Candlelight is the sort of book which makes you feel that you

must go to sleep with the electric light full on, in case anything ghastly happens to you when you are not looking." The reader of the programmes is Veronica Laird, and the first instalment,’ called "Shepherd’s Warning," was apparently respectable enough: Poor Julia thought, ‘But nothing would happen. It was sheer imagination. Her chilly hand moved the pen over the paper. .. "Well, — of course," says the Radio Times, "something did happen, and Julia’s hand grew a great deal chillier as time went on in the eerie old house in New Zealand." Dorothy Eden’ will be remembered? for the NZBS adaptation of her eighth novel, The Voice of the Dolls, which tan from ZB stations in 1952. She was

also a broadcaster in several ZB Book Review programmes. She was born in New Zealand of a Danish mother and an English father, and her grandparents on both sides were among this country’s earliest settlers. Her novels include The Laughing Ghost, Summer Sunday, Walk Into No Parlour, The Schoolmaster’s Daughters and Crow Hollow.

THE "DIAMOND" PROMS

ESLIE REGAN, who will give an appreciation of Sir Henry Wood and the "Promenade Concerts in Music Magazine next Tuesday, October 5 (all YC stations at 7.30 p.m.), is an examiner for the Associated Board of the Roval

Schools of Music at present visiting New Zealand. The Promenade Con-

cetts are this year celebrating their Diamond Jubilee in London, and Mr. Reégan is well qualified to speak about them and their founder, as he has had a long association with them as an active member of the Promenade Concert Society. He was born in London 55 years ago, and after studying at the Royal Academy of Music became a professor and examiner there. He has been Principal of the Watford School of Music and conductor of the Watford Philharmonic Society and Amateur Orchestra of London. He was organist and choirmaster at Christ Church, Greyfriars, from 1916 to 1921, and of St. Peter’s, Cranley Gardens, from 1921 to 1947. Music Magazine is, of course, the monthly feature edited by Owen Jensen.

PALS AT THE PALACE

[-RANK BROAD, Takapuna’s veteran of variety, wrote to us the other day about the BBC programme Palace of Varieties (currently being heard from 2XP, 3YZ and other stations) and its producer, Ernest Longstaffe. "It is in-

deed a great consolation to me, an old trouper, to meet so many people who never fail to tune

into this grand old session,’ he wrote.

"I myself manage to pull in half a dozen programmes from __ different stations in some weeks. It is a jolly fine show and one that all old timers love. In the words of Will Tipple, the chairman, ‘We’re all pals at the Palace,’ and long may we be so." Frank mentions that 20 years ago he used to write articles on variety for the old Radio Record under the title Music Hall Ditties. "Today these songs are as popular as ever, and take me back to the shadowy past when at some time or other a man visited his music hall, paid his nimble bob for a tip-up chair in the — stalls, where he could listen to his fav- — ourite music hall artist and relax for a couple of hours. It mattered not whether his favourite was Harry Lauder © or Marie Lloyd, for in either case he would get more than his money’s worth and come away from the theatre feeling rejuvenated and fit to face any problem which might befall him the next

day at the office, shop or factory. "When I-tune to Palace of Varieties there is never a dull moment as I listen to many of the artists I knew im the hey-day of their careers, such as Gertie Gitana (‘The Old Mill Stream’), G. H. Elliot ("The Chocolate Coloured

Coon’), Marie Kendall, Hetty King. and many others, Ernest Longstaffe wrote to me just a few weeks &ago and told me how happy he was to be in a position to give these old timers an occasional engagement, because with the decline of variety many of these veterans are feeling a draught. ‘This week,’ Ernest wrote, ‘I have Margery Manners, John Rorke, Jack Warman, Bertha Willmott, George Betton and G. H. Elliott,

with Rob Currie as chairman. Of course, G.H. is in a category of his own. A fine artist who, I should think, is worth a lot of money, but has _ thoroughly earned it.’ " *

>» MODERN SOUNDS

IZZY GILLESPIE’S record, "Salt Peanut," * broadcast recently in "Turntable’s’ Rhythm on Record from 1YD, has prompted Phil Warren, of Auckland, to write to us for further

information about Dizzy. He is, of course, one of the originators of what has sometimes been called

| "progressive jazz," le jazz nouveau, or

simply "modern sounds." Dizzy is one of the handful of musicians-the others include Charlie Parker, Tadd Dameron, Thelonius Monk and Kenny Clarkewho evolved the style known as bop

around 1940. According to one report, "to know and understand Dizzy is an indispensable key to an understanding of the contemporary jazz scene.’ He was born John Birks Gillespie in 1917 in Chehaw, South Carolina, and became a professional musician in his teens, playing in bands led by Frankie Fair-

fax and Teddy Hill. By 1937, when he went with the Hill Band to the Paris Exposition, Dizzy’s trumpet playing already seemed rather strange to the critics. Later he joined the big bands of Edgar Hayes, Cab Calloway and Les Hite, and soon his "strange" playing was causing considerable comment among the new generation. At Minton’s on 118th Street in Harlem the young experimenters were getting together and . comparing notes. They were breaking away from the stereotyped riffs used by the big swing bands of the time towards a more complex rhythmic and harmonic pattern. Their solos especially became freer, and they blew new melodic lines against the established chord structure of the tune, rather than over the established melodic line. After playing with Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington, Dizzy joined Billy Eckstine’s Band and there met Charlie Parker, Tadd Dameron, one of their arrangers, and Sarah Vaughan. While the band didn’t make money, it exercised a tremendous influence on other’ musicians and gave the new movement needed prestige. In 1945 Dizzy went out on his own. He formed a band at Billy Berg’s on Vine Street in Hollywood, and his career since has been spectacularly successful. He has played throughout the United States and Europe, has recorded for many companies, and has composed tunes that are now standards of the modern idiom. One critic has described his tone as the «most beautiful trumpet tone in modern jazz, and his flamboyant, intricate solos on fast numbers are said to be so good they are beyond the scope of any other modern trumpet player. .

ENEWS OF BROADCASTERS, ON AND OFF THE RECORD