Down Beat's Tenth

E. Hines sliphorn man uses buffer on his slide.

Buzz tone strictly kazoo, says Dick Stabile.

Fetch that gin son and I'll spill payoff.*

These are characteristic headlines from the semimonthly Down Beat of Chicago, a raucous trade journal for U.S. dance musicians and their multitudinous fans, which last week celebrated its tenth birthday. Down Beat lacks the dignity of its chief rival, Metronome. It lacks the pure devotion to hot jazz of such earnest little sheets as The Jazz Record. But Down Beat is certainly the most faithful reflection of the whole noisy medley of U.S. dance music, from the blues to the samba, from the mechanical to the inspired. And Down Beat, with a wartime paid circulation of 87,000, is a highly successful ten-year-old.

It all began as an insurance salesman's teaser. Its publisher, lean, lively Glenn Burrs, was once a saxophonist of small distinction from Dixon, Ill. In 1933 he began selling insurance on the side and talked his partner Albert Lipschultz into financing a small throwaway sheet of musical chitchat for their dance band clients. The venture was a net loss, and Lipschultz finally sold out to Burrs for $873.

Burrs filled Down Beat with columns of musical gags, gossip, criticism and advice, spiced with pictures of shapely vocalists.

He agitated for higher musician's pay. Down Beat usually contained something to interest every holder of a musician's union card.

A man who has given a numerous section of the public what it wanted, Burrs has an appropriately elastic philosophy:

"There's some good in every person and some good in every band, but some are better than others."

* 1) A trombone player in Earl Hines's band uses butter as a slide lubricant. 2) Saxophonist Dick Stabile dislikes a buzzy tone effect on the saxophone. 3)Give me a drink and I'll tell you everything.

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