You Take Nice Jumps

Horace Grenell is a square-rigged man of 40 who has built a big business out of making records for little people.

Three years ago, when he first got his Young People's Records, Inc. started, he asked questions in schools, children's centers, and in his own home (three children), to get an idea of what children want to hear. From three-year-olds he got reactions such as "I like my horsy record --I put it on the victrola . . . take my bicycle and ride through the dining room, galloping, galloping ..." So Grenell put out plenty of that (The Little Fireman, The Circus Comes to Town, etc.).

On the advice of his editorial board-the Eastman School of Music's Howard Hanson, Columbia University's Douglas Moore and Child Psychologist Randolph Smith--he also started putting out the kind of music children didn't know they would like until they tried it. He began to get reactions from seven-and eight-year-olds such as "I like Stravinsky . . . You take nice jumps and land on your toes." As fast as Grenell could press them, kids all over the U.S. began devouring such nutritional morsels as Haydn's Toy Symphony, Mozart's Country Dances, Liadov's Russian Folk Songs and Prokofiev's A Summer Day.

Last week Juilliard Graduate Grenell could point with both pride and profit to the third birthday of his Young People's Records, Inc. He had been cited by the Review of Recorded Music as "a major cultural influence." The membership in his Y.P.R. Club (one record a month for $15 a year) was above 100,000. Some of his subscribers: New York City Board of

Education, Los Angeles Board of Education--altogether, 200 public-school systems and more than 1,000 private and parochial schools. He was selling over a million records a y.ear.

One big reason for his success is the quality of his recording artists. To play The Wonderful Violin he got the NBC Symphony Orchestra's Concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff. Another reason: the New York Philharmonic-Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony and the Dallas Symphony, among others, have found Y.P.R.-commissioned scores (e.g., Alex North's The Waltzing Elephant, Walter Hendl's Little Brass Band, Douglas Moore's The Emperor's New Clothes) good enough for their concert programs.

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