It's Back

MANNERS & MORALS

Along New York's Swing Lane (sand Street), where nightclubs in sorry brownstones crowd each other like bums on a breadline, an era was all but over. Swing was still there, but it was more hips than horns. Barrelhouse had declined. Burlesque was back.

No fewer than five clubs had gone in for a touch of Minsky. In place of swing bands they had installed knockabout comedians in baggy pants, and strip-teasers in net brassieres. The town hadn't seen so many strippers since 1942, when Fiorello LaGuardia sent them packing.

The strippers hastened to explain that they didn't peel any more. They just did "exotic numbers," "bacchanales" or "veil dances." But it looked much like the public disrobing of old, although not quite as thorough. One night, when the cops warned Stripper Georgia Sothern to watch her bumps, she replied: "Those are fake bumps, honey." The cops went away.

There was little jazz left on 52nd Street. Even the customers had changed. There were fewer crew haircuts, pipes and sports jackets; more bald spots, cigars and paunches. Said an old swing musician : "It was a pretty rugged street to start off with and you couldn't hurt it much. But it's lost its charm."

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