ASCAP's First Blow

The airwaves gave off strange sounds last week. Ray Noble's magnificent band was reduced to rendering a super-syncopated version of De Camptown Races, followed by Liebestraum in rumba time. Kate Smith's big new number was There I Go, new some months ago. Lucky Strike's Your Hit Parade was a parade of the only "hits" it was allowed to play--the well-worn There I Go, So You're The One, Frenesi, seven others. These had been frantically cooked up in the past months by the big broadcasters' Broadcast Music, Inc. to broadcast after their contract with the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers expired Dec. 31.

ASCAP, whose members include every big name in U. S. music and whose contract calling for a percentage of the networks' take caused the breach, set up monitors in 31 U. S. cities. First to get the crackdown was the Fred Allen show. Twice, claimed ASCAP, the program had allegedly tootled the strains of the late ASCAPper George Gershwin's Winter-green For President. Legal talent prepared to sue CBS and its stations which carried the program, Texaco, the ad agency.

The panic was on. Band leaders like Glenn Miller, Sammy Kaye, Eddy Duchin decided not to take the legal risks involved in being wired onto sustaining network broadcasts, and at week's end the networks were showing a willingness to give the band leaders protection provided arrangements were submitted to them a week before being aired. Those bands that risked it were subjected to grueling auditions by the networks' lawyers and tune detectives. B. M. I. took out $1,000,000 worth of copyright insurance.

With sufficient money in his war chest to carry on the battle for over a year, ASCAP's Broadway-wise president, old Songwriter Gene Buck, was feeling pretty pleased with himself. Lucky Strike's Hit Parade he called the "bit parade." Meanwhile B. M. I. President Neville Miller, hero-mayor of the 1937 Louisville flood, boasted that many a station had been complimented on "the freshness and adequacy of B. M. I. music." Some listeners reacted otherwise. Ten thousand musicians, composers, educators signed petitions asking FCC to knock both B. M. I.'s and ASCAP's heads together so that radio listeners would have something fit to listen to.

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