"The Triumph of Honesty"

Two days after the election, the telephone rang in the plush Chicago offices of the American Federation of Musicians.

It was Niles Trammell. the softspoken, spectacled head of the National Broad casting Co., calling from New York. He begged to speak to Mr. Petrillo.

Sitting at his gigantic mahogany desk (the biggest he could buy at Marshall Field's), stub-legged James Caesar Petrillo, czar of U.S. musicians, picked up the receiver. Mr. Trammell said he would like to see Mr. Petrillo soon in New York. Barked Caesar Petrillo: "I'll come only if you're ready to sign. I'm damned tired of all the meetings we've had in the last 28 months."

Wearily, Mr. Trammell said that he, representing RCA Victor, and CBS (Columbia Records) were now ready to sign. His cupid's face lit with cupidity, Little Caesar said he would go to New York immediately. He suggested, with spider-like politeness, that Mr. Trammell come to his office.

Thus the beginning of the end for the long ban on new recordings by Columbia and victor, producers of two-thirds of the nation's 150,000,000 new records annually. The ban had begun in August 1942, when Petrillo demanded that the record companies pay his union treasury a small tribute on every record made. Since then, Little Caesar had won every battle. He had split the solid record-company front by signing up Decca (and 100-odd small-fry companies) a year ago. Then he defied the War Labor Board, boldly ignored an appeal by President Roosevelt. Suddenly, Violinist Jascha Heifetz switched from RCA to Decca. Victor and Columbia could see droves of other topnotch artists leaving their stables. After last week's election, they caved in. All hope of beating the union boss had gone.

"Slaveowners." Two days after the phone call. Caesar Petrillo sat in another of his offices, this time on the 34th floor of Manhattan's General Electric Building, surrounded by his henchmen. In filed the representatives of Victor and Columbia. For five hours they struggled over the exact contract language. Finally, Caesar handed them a pen and the woe-to-the-vanquished terms he had given Decca: a fee on every record, ranging from 1/4-c- to 5-c-. the money to be paid into a special Musician's Union fund.

Then, somewhat in the manner of a fraternity president ordering initiates to "assume the angle," he gave the two companies a special crack across the backside. He inserted a special clause permitting any Victor or Columbia artists to break their contracts in the event A.F.M. called a strike against the companies.

This accomplished, Caesar telephoned the Manhattan press to announce his victory.

Caesar Petrillo was not a graceful winner. The companies, he said, had resorted to "bitterness, injustice, trickery and reactionism which would do justice to slaveowners"; they had engaged in a "vile, indecent, malicious and filthy campaign of libel, slander and vilification." Crowed the Czar: "Honesty and fairness had now triumphed over falsity and fraud. ... If they, the companies, fail to change [their past course], the A.F.M. will not hesitate to break off relations and leave them to die by their own nefarious schemes."

Newsmen asked him what he would do with the special fund, estimated to yield $4,000.000 a year. Said Caesar Petrillo: it will not be touched "until we have a couple of million bucks" and then it may be used "to bring good music to places like perhaps Butte, Montana."

CBS said: "We . . . must either sign or go out of business. We are finally "accepting because of the Government's unwillingness or incapacity to enforce its orders." Asked for comment on the companies' statement, Caesar said: "Why should I? I've already called them every goddamned name I could think of."

The Trolley Song. The companies were anxious to get to work to feed the boom in record sales. Less than 24 hours later, into Victor's recording studio on Manhattan's East Twenty-Fourth Street trouped 16 musicians, followed by Bandleader Vaughn Monroe, in polo coat, grey flannel suit, sunburst tie. After a few quick choruses with a singer named Marylin Duke, who calls herself a "haunting contralto" (and who sang in stocking feet), they recorded the first new big-company record since August 1942: The Trolley

Song, from a new motion picture Meet Me in St. Louis.

By special permission of Caesar Petrillo, the U.S. can now hear new music by Popular Bandsmen Harry James, Benny Goodman, Kay Kyser, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Charlie Spivak; Popular Singers Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore; Classical Artists Helen Traubel and Rudolf Serkin. The New York Philharmonic, the Boston, Philadelphia and NBC Symphony Orchestras will also be permitted to start recording again.

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