What, Never? No, Never!

The pitch was petulant, as usual, but the lines had the lingering quality of an old torch song at midnight. "It's never, never, never," intoned James Caesar Petrillo. "That's all there is to it." And at midnight on New Year's Eve that was all there was to it.

Not a single record was cut thereafter by any one of the 216,000 members of Petrillo's American Federation of Musicians for any one of the 771 U.S. recording and transcription companies. Tired but outwardly happy, the musicians sat back to wait for Jimmy's next move. Nobody believed Jimmy's refrain, but everybody knew that some time would elapse before he stopped chanting it.

Hymn to Soup. For months the record companies had stockpiled master platters like an Army cook turning out buckwheat cakes (TIME, Nov. 24). For a long while to come there would be enough new records around to choke any disc jockey. Estimates ran as high as three years for popular tunes. And almost all the great classical compositions are already filed away on master discs.

On the last day, the record companies worked long, shirt-sleeved hours to wax what they could. On the Coast, Decca's Jack Kapp personally supervised the last output (with orchestra) of his longtime meal ticket, Bing Crosby. In Chicago, the virtues of soup, soda, beer and cheese were hymned by singers and small bands right up to midnight. From now on, singing commercials could be made with voice and ocarina or harmonica accompaniment, but not with union musicians.

In Manhattan, ski-nosed Comedienne Bea Lillie ended her day at RCA Victor's big, bare Studio 2 just two minutes before midnight. She did her own offbeat version of Atlanta, a number from Inside U.S.A., a musical show that won't hit Broadway until March.

River to Cross. The radio networks, which rebroadcast some of their shows to iron out time differences over the country, won a grudging reprieve. They would be permitted to make program transcriptions until Jan. 31, when their contracts with A.F.M. end. Petrillo and the broadcasters would start discussing new contracts next week in Manhattan. It was anybody's guess whether they would come to terms or whether every musician would be yanked off the air.

At week's end the musicians' potato-faced little boss had one more river to cross. He had stood trial in U.S. District Court in Chicago on charges of violating the Lea Act, a law designed specifically to keep Petrillo from forcing radio stations to hire more musicians than they need. The station in this case was Chicago's one-kilowatt independent, WAAF.

The testimony had lasted three days; the judge reserved his decision until next week. Petrillo could be fined $1,000 and sent to prison for a year. He mused thoughtfully: "The U.S. attorney didn't say I should go to jail."

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