Jazz on the Verge

Jammed into Philadelphia's Academy of Music, the biggest audience of the season rubbered last week when Jazzmaster Paul Whiteman stepped briskly forth in a black coat, striped trousers and chalky spats, sporting an overgrown carnation and a yard-long baton. They rubbered also at the 25 musicians Mr. Whiteman had imported from his celebrated band to augment the efforts of 101 regular members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. For two hours, supported by the orchestra, the newcomers tooted saxophones, snorted through trombones, rattled wind machines, picked guitars, shrilled police whistles, thumped tom-toms, pumped accordions, wailed on bagpipes, clicked typewriters, crashed dishes, rang alarm bells and discharged revolvers to make memorable Paul Whiteman's winter debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Beginning modestly with a simple dance number from The Big Broadcast, the Orchestra got warmer on Berry's syncopated satire of William Tell, warmer still when Jack Teagarden rose and blared trickily on his trombone. Critic-Composer Deems Taylor, hired as oral annotator of the program, proposed that the jazz concert be considered "a vacation from culture," warned: "You have heard scandalous things but worse are coming."

Negro Composer William Grant Still's dull, pretentious Ebon Chronicle followed, then Van Phillips' saucy, syncopated fugue called Thank You, Mr. Bach and a harp solo of the St. Louis Blues by World's Hottest Harpist Casper Reardon. Biggest hit of the day was All Points West by Rodgers & Hart. Here, against a tragic throbbing of strings and weird wind effects, Baritone Raymond Middleton Jr. called trains, recited the cynical, sentimental, sniggering thoughts of a train announcer, was unexpectedly shot by a stray bullet.

The natural owner of a tremendous baritone, young Mr. Middleton made it terrifying in the loud passages by blaring through his microphone. Dark, good-looking, 28, Mr. Middleton studied music at Juilliard for four years against the wishes of his father, a member of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Co. He took a nonsinging role in Roberta for two years, made his baritone debut last summer singing Gilbert & Sullivan in St. Louis and Central City, Colo. To replace Baritone Julius Huehn, he went to Chicago fortnight ago to sing star parts in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and Gruenberg's Jack & the Beanstalk, was engaged to repeat the performance. The latter role requires a shrill falsetto. Undaunted, Baritone Middleton boasted: "I have a freak voice, a peach of a falsetto. I'd make a good yodler!"

Less impressive than Middleton's recitative were: a Scottish Suite by Adolph Deutsch, Whiteman's short, bespectacled chief arranger; the now familiar cacophonies of Ferde Grofe's Tabloid; Deutsch's Essay on Waltzes wherein the hybrid orchestra pieced together remnants of Beethoven, Gounod, Delibes, Tchaikovsky, George Evans, Chopin, Franz Lehar, Oscar Strauss and Johann Strauss. A blues clarinetist leaped into a long, screaming, upward run; Roy Bargy followed with incredibly nimble piano work and splashed hot chords into the Rhapsody in Blue. Beaming, Paul Whiteman about-faced, took many bows, and the All-American jazz concert was over.

A little worried at first, Conductor Whiteman wagged his head and shuffled his feet in the fast, hairbrained style of most jazz leaders. Quieting down, he developed the orthodox swoops and pirouettes of a symphony conductor, trying thus to dignify one of the more significant moments of his life. His concert in Philadelphia was an important stage in his fight to make symphony-goers take jazz seriously. With that end in view he offers scholarships to students of nonclassical music, hopes to establish a research centre for them at Williams College. As the first step he is building there a Museum of American Music, has already donated a vast library of records, will give Gershwin's original manuscript of the Rhapsody in Blue and many others, also a big collection of American instruments including a strange gourdlike zeezee such as African slaves brought to the U. S. In December 1933, Whiteman took an orchestra to New York's Metropolitan Opera House. In the summers of 1935 and 1936 he was guest conductor at Philadelphia's Robin Hood Dell. Last week was the first time he had entered the Academy of Music to give one of its regular winter concerts. This week at New York's Hippodrome he was to repeat it for the benefit of his foundation at Williams. Jazz-King Paul Whiteman will scarcely be satisfied until he has a full dress performance in New York's nearly-holy Carnegie Hall, with the Philharmonic.

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