Town Hall Debut

Into Manhattan's Town Hall where many earnest musicians have made drab little debuts and never been heard from again, there crowded one afternoon last week flashlight and newsreel photographers, traffic cops and star reporters. The occasion was just one more debut. A product of Manhattan's lower East Side was going to show how he could sing. But this one's name happened to be Alfred Emanuel Smith. He was making a debut to boost the New York Infirmary for Women & Children for which Banker Frank Arthur Vanderlip's comely, energetic wife collects funds.

Many an uneasy debutant has blurred the beginning of his Town Hall recital. Singer Smith attacked his first notes so nervously and late that he had to signal to the orchestra to start over again. But with his second attempt he had mastered his vocal powers like a seasoned artist. Manfully he proceeded to display a firm, dark-hued tenor voice. It had no great volume, no ringing top notes. It had evidently been strained, misused. His sunken chest and relaxed abdomen were witnesses of faulty breathing which must have gone on for years. But the tones of his middle register, though slightly nasal, had clarity, directness. His legato was not languishing but neither did it have the vibrato so regrettably common among inexperienced singers.

Singer Smith's selections called for no fancy, bravura vocalizing. He sang two simple folk songs--"The Sidewalks of New York" and "The Bowery"--and so far as his audience was concerned his vocal shortcomings were more than atoned for by his obvious sincerity of purpose. Be fore he had finished he had everyone singing with him, even the traffic cops. Professor John R. Jones, long-haired music-master who usually supervises Mrs. Vanderlip's Infirmary sings, stood in the background, beating orthodox time. But the audience ignored him when Singer Smith grinned a wide grin, waved his own tempo.

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