Kaye and Amateurs

An ambition which comes upon many a citizen, especially when he is in his cups, is to lead a band. Most professional band leaders do not encourage these amateur impulses. But last week Leader Sammy Kaye, a smart, sandy, jug-eared young man whose slogan is "Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye," turned this yen to good account. When he was winding up a recent engagement at Manhattan's Hotel Commodore, Sammy Kaye had let the enthusiastic drunks go through the motions of leading his orchestra, awarded champagne to the best and funniest. Last week, on a tour of movie houses, Leader Kaye put on stick-waving contests which drew 75,000 people to Detroit's Fox Theatre.

The amateurs who supposed, as many do, that all they had to do was keep time with the orchestra got a quick awakening. If they omitted the conventional opening down beat of the baton, Sammy Kaye's men kept mum. The orchestra played exactly as fast or slow as the stick-waver indicated, however unintentionally. If a saxophone or trombone thought he saw a signal to come in, he did so regardless--with the result that periodically everything broke down.

In the finals, the audience's applause gave first prize ($35) to John Richard Pavlock, just out of high school, who conducted Whispering with a dignified beat-result of ten years' listening to the Detroit Symphony. Charles Hill, a fat little high-school teacher, thrashed through the Darktown Strutters' Ball, nearly fell down at the end, won $25. Bill DeHart, gangling 15-year-old, took $15 for his wild, jitterbugging direction of Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet. By week's end, when he moved on to hold contests in Cincinnati, Sammy Kaye was ordering batons in lots of 1,000, giving them away to admirers as well as contestants, at the rate of 50 a day.

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