Cafe Music

In Paris after the War one Louis Moyses, a demobilized soldier, tried his luck in the cafe business. Soldier Moyses had no money, no notion of attracting a smart clientele. He had a sister who, he figured, could be a cashier, a half-brother who could be waiter, a soldier-friend who played the piano. He assembled a few tables and chairs in a room near the Madeleine. With his last few francs he sent out to an epicene for a bottle of cognac and a bottle of whiskey. A third bottle he filled with colored water, then set the lot on a display shelf and declared himself open for business.

Louis Moyses, a very important gentleman with a long, full beard and a fat bank account, now runs several cafes of conventional night-club description, but his name and the name of his first cafe he owes in good part to Jean Wiener, the friend who played the piano. Poet Jean Cocteau drifted into the bare little shop one day, heard Wiener play Bach, told others. Cocteau named the place Le Boeuf sur le Toil (The Bull on the Roof). Wiener soon afterward acquired a partner, one Clement Doucet who drifted into Le Boeuf to display an elaborate invention, part organ, part piano. The invention ir.ade slight impression on Wiener but Doucet's lazy, easy way of playing fascinated him. The pair went in for two-piano music, particularly for flowered transcriptions of U. S. jazz. Composers Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel started going to hear them along with Composer Darius Milhaud, who named a pantomime Le Boeuf sur le Toit. Also went Writer Paul Morand, Painter Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Fisticuffer Georges Carpentier, the late King Ferdinand of Rumania, musical Prince Charles of Belgium. Six years ago as Le Boeuf began to take on a smug, profitable air, Wiener & Doucet left it, started giving serious concerts which (radically, then) featured jazz. Last week in Manhattan they began their first U. S. tour. Quick and sharp as a weasel, Wiener sat over his keyboard last week, played brittle melodies while opposite him Doucet, slow and enormously fat, kept up easy-running accompaniments. The Vivaldi-Bach Concerto and a Mozart Sonata made the bulk of their program, but the U. S. has been used to hearing its own Maier & Pattison team (now disbanded-- TIME, March 2), play the Great Ones with far nicer balance and finesse. The Frenchmen scored with their jazz, the sort of thing which made Le Boeuf s reputation and has since stood transplanting into a thousand and more concerts. There was an arrangement of Braham's "Limehouse Blues," given a dozen sombre shades by Doucet's insinuating bass, one of Gershwin's "That Certain Feeling," another of Youmans' "Tea for Two." Unlike Maier & Pattison who took turns carrying the melody, Wiener always plays first piano,

Doucet the accompaniments. As was the case with Maier & Pattison, the two men have little in common. Wiener is Parisian to the finger tips, loves any city. Doucet spends his spare time on his farm near Bordeaux where he makes wine, raises cows and pigs. Since their arrival in the U. S. Wiener has been able to stomach only the finer kinds of U. S. cooking, such as chicken a la king. Doucet proudly eats griddle cakes & maple syrup, pork & beans.

Their first night in Manhattan, Wiener spent in a Harlem cabaret, came in at 6 a. m. just as Farmer Doucet was getting up.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.