Jive for Epicures

U.S. jive epicures consider the jazz played by such famous name bands as Tommy Dorsey's or Glenn Miller's a low, commercial product. Their heroes are unsung swingsters who improvise nightly for a favored few in hotspots like Chicago's College Inn, Manhattan's Nick's. Their treasured classics are discs made in the '20s by such Chicago immortals as the late Leon ("Bix") Beiderbecke and King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band.

Last week at Manhattan's Town Hall, Guitarist Eddie Condon and a group of top-flight jazz artists inaugurated a bimonthly series of jive concerts cooked to the epicure's taste, proved to their own satisfaction that the grand tradition of the "Chicago Style" is as alive as ever. At the opening concert Pianist Mel Powell, Trombonist Benny Morton, Cornetist Bobby Hackett, Drummer Zutty Singleton got off to a methodical start, ended in an inspired jam session. The audience of epicures (who consider it sacrilege to dance to jive) sat rapt in their seats. By the time the players were really hitting their stride. Town Hall's furniture movers started clearing the stage for another concert. The players kept right on playing. Only the ringing of an alarm bell stopped them. When Guitarist Condon asked the audience whether it wanted a second concert, it roared Yes.

So did the Herald Tribune's long-haired Critic Virgil Thomson. Said he next day: "The nine-part tuttis were of a grandeur, a sumptuousness of sound and a spontaneous integration of individual freedoms that makes one proud of the country that gave birth to such a high manifestation of sensibility and intelligence and happy to be present at such a full and noble expression of the musical faculties."

There was less sumptuousness of sound from Manhattan's jive epicures. Classicists from Nick's, who stickle for the traditions of the Chicago Style, nodded their heads in austere approval. But the Romantics from Cafe Society, who prefer the smoother, pianistic blues (boogie-woogie) of Meade Lux Lewis, turned their noses up. Said their crop-haired angel, John Henry Hammond Jr., about the Condonites: "They're working toward an artistic dead end.. . . About five years ago they reached a stage of musical sophistication that predicted a revolution in modern music, but they stopped there."

But Classicist Condon is undaunted. With the financial help of jive-struck Ernest Anderson, assistant vice president of D'Arcy Advertising Co., Condon hopes to make Manhattan's Town Hall a temple of pre-boogie-woogie tradition. Angel Anderson, like Classicist Condon, thinks Angel Hammond's barrel-shaped maestros of boogie-woogie are modernistic and monotonous. He is willing to risk $6,000 this season on Town Hall concerts to prove the superiority of the Chicago Style.

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