Businessman's Bounce

A disc jockey in Charlotte, N.C. reached deep into his pile of old records and played a 1932 piece called Heartaches. It had a bouncy tune and a catchy whistling chorus. Soon dozens of requests were coming in for Heartaches. Decca hurriedly began pressing copies of the old recording. In the past six weeks it has sold over 500,000 copies.

The popularity of Heartaches was also doing a lot to restore the popularity of the Ted Weems band that recorded it. Weems had his big day in the mad '30s, took half his band into the merchant marine with him during the war, and is now making a comeback--without one of his earlier singing stars, Perry Como. Last week Weems & his band opened in a famous jive spot, the College Inn of Chicago's Hotel Sherman, the oldest nightclub in the U.S., where Jazzmen Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Gene Krupa made some of their loudest noises, and biggest successes.

But Wilfred Theodore Weems is no hot jazzman, though his first job after leaving college in 1924 was blowing the trombone in a group called the California Ramblers (other Ramblers: Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Adrian Rollini). Weems soon started a band of his own, specializing in what he calls "businessman's bounce." His College Inn audience last week was mostly people in their late 30s or early 40s, who got nostalgic memories when Weems played his old theme song, Out of the Night, and could remember the last time Heartaches was a hit.

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