Black Rascal

Louis Armstrong, maestro of jazz, would be a good subject for one of his own songs--a black rascal raised in a waifs' home, whose first real job was playing on a Mississippi steamboat; a headliner unimpressed by contracts, with a jail sentence in his past for using drugs. Okeh, a subsidiary of Columbia Phonograph Co., knows all this. So does Victor Talking Machine but just the same they were fighting last week over Louis Armstrong. The courts in California were going to have to decide whether he was bound to go on making Okeh records for another year or whether he could sign up with Victor.

In Los Angeles the bone of the contention was doing a nightly turn at the Sebastian Cotton Club. It was a typical Louis Armstrong act, like the one he has given in New Orleans, his hometown, where there is a special cigar named for him; in Philadelphia, where a musician in the audience once accused him of playing on a trick trumpet, enraging him so that he smashed it, sent out for a new one before he would go on with the show; in Manhattan where he once took a phial from his vestpocket, drank the contents (said to be dope) with a swaggering toast to the crowd.

He always bounces out of the wings, a square, bullet-headed man, smooth shaven except for a tiny marceled patch where his fontanel was 30 years ago. He brandishes his trumpet. He gives a roguish grin. His eyes roll around in his head like white, three-penny marbles.

"Ladies & Gentlemen, this is the Reverend Satchelmouth Armstrong. . . ." He gets his head up to an amplifier. His June 13, 1932 natural voice is almost whisper-small. "Chinatown, My Chinatown, Chinatown, Chinatown. . . ." He rarely has more than a rough idea of the words. "All right, boys, I'll take the next, five bars." He throws back his head, raises his trumpet, bleats noisily but marvelously. He has struck 200 high C's in succession, ended on high F. He slides all around a tune as easily as if he were doing it on a saxophone. He triple-tongues it in a way that has earned him the reputation of being one of the world's greatest trumpeters.

The Negroes behind Louis Armstrong are carrying the tune, when it can be detected behind his raspy, comical singing, his fancy trumpeting. Their rhythm is flawless, thanks to their leader who may smoke Muggles* to make his own performance hot but who realizes perfectly the need for tireless rehearsing. Louis Armstrong may have developed a fancy man's taste for clothes, travel with 20 trunks full of them. But no black man works harder than he does. In Depression not many phonograph artists are worth fighting over but Victor and Okeh are both aware that more than 100,000 Louis Armstrong records sold during the past year, that he is one of the few orchestra leaders whom radio has not overpopularized. Radio, as a matter of fact, is a little wary of his improvisations. Several times he has been switched quickly off the air for getting profane or slipping in sly remarks about his friends' extra-marital escapades.

College Music Deplored

Speaking before Barnard College alumnae in Manhattan last week, Writer John (Helen of Troy) Erskine tossed a bouquet to present-day public-school music, and a brickbat to the colleges: "Today there are in the U. S. high schools more than 6,000 full symphony orchestras with all instruments represented, thousands more with only a few instruments represented. In western cities, such as San Diego, these orchestras are taken very seriously. . . . Colleges do not put much emphasis on music or the arts. They emphasize the value of play in all its various athletic forms. . . ."

Dr. Erskine attributed musical inertia in the colleges to "the pressure of two ideals in American education: the English system which is like a hydraulic press, producing its own personality, and the Continental system which does not prescribe every detail of the student's life, but merely provides opportunities for him to be educated." But there are other, more obvious reasons why music in the colleges has not kept pace with the mushroom growth in the public schools. Public schools catch the country's youth before it has subdivided, when the percentage of musical talent is actually higher. Public school students have more foreign blood, more children in whose families music is a habit. High schools all over the country give credits for music but a majority of the big eastern colleges have not yet become reconciled to accepting these credits for entrance.*

Writer Erskine is by no means unaware of the many praiseworthy college achievements. He knows that college glee clubs sing difficult music expertly now. The Harvard singers, rigorously trained by Dr. Archibald Thompson Davison, appear frequently with the Boston Symphony. Princetonians with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Before the War glee clubs were razzle-dazzle groups who knew the college songs with all their ramifications and a few comic numbers. Before the War colleges sometimes had to hire professional bands to help enliven their football games.

The University of Illinois can now commandeer a huge band of its own, a big reserve string-section which converts the band into a 300-piece orchestra. But in general, colleges lack serious orchestras. Instrumentalists instead form jazz bands, often playing to earn money. No student symphony has made a reputation which can compare with the leading glee clubs'. Smith girls have made a brave showing in the enterprising productions put on by Director Werner Josten (TIME, May 18. 1931) but they import professionals to play the difficult instruments. The University of Michigan sponsors one of the oldest and most important of U. S. festivals but it uses the Chicago Symphony soloists from outside.

*Muggle-smoking was the offense for which Louis Armstrong served a jail term last winter. Muggles (also called "Reefers" or "Mary Warners") are shorter, thinner than ordinary cigarets, cause a temporary, happy jag, cost 25-c- in Harlem. The drug in Muggles comes from a variety of hemp called Marijuana (TIME, Sept. 7, 1930).

*A survey by the National Bureau for the Advancement of Music shows that colleges of the Middle and Far West exhibit a more encouraging attitude toward music than those of the East and South. Of 50 private institutions, 16 allow no entrance credits for music. (Among the 16: Harvard, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania, Princeton. Yale.) Of 50 land-grant or State-supported institutions all but six will give entrance credits for music.

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