view raw text
, _ — — ON THE BROADWAY SCENE by Bun Bmr NEW YORK. May 2.— I dont know whether this is the proper place or the proper time, but Id like to engage in a , _ little little philosophical philosophical dis little little philosophical philosophical dis discussion at this juncture on whither are we drifting and how come. The other nighfr on CBS Television. Garry Moore was scheduled to play host for an all-star jazz concert, the third or fourth undertaking of this nature to have been put on the air in only a couple of of months months or or so. so. Over Over — — of of months months or or so. so. Over Over at the Waldorf-Astoria, Maurice Chevalied is singing things like "Mimi" and "Valen-tina" and "Every leetle breezs seems to whisper Louise," during the course of which Chevalier wryly noted the other day, the faces of the audience light up with pleasure as if they had all met up with a long lost friend. AAA One night last week I attended an amateur talent contest at a private .party, the winner of which was a girl who did the. Charleston the way Ginger Rogers used to do it on the stage of the Paramount. And, of course, the papers and the streets are filled with young women these days wearing those weird sacks and sheaths and trapezes andsuchattrie j5 E ETAOINtaoi trapezes and such attire, topped off by hats thot look like inverted flower pots, and sometimes with long strings of pearls daigling to their hips. Wry, just this week there was eye na new book published about F. Scott Fitzgerald, including some ex- cerpts from the stories he wrote about the. so-called jazz generation of the 1920s. AAA Something seems to have swept over us for which there is no accounting.. That Garry Moore jazz program, on CBS-TV, following in the wake of similar affairs flone by the recent "Seven Lively Arts," by Steve Allen, and by a Benny Goodman program called "Swing Into Spring" a couple of weeks ago, obviously seized upon a sudden new interest in Dixieland music that has been revived after a lapse of more than 20 years. Danny Kaye is even making a movie about Red Nichols, one of the great names of jazz, and along- with this some note must be made of "St. Louis Louis Blues," the film biography of the late W. C. Handy . Record albums of the Dorsey brothers, names like Jacli Teagar-den and Gene Krupa, the international concert tours of Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton are all gaining attention these days to an astonishing degree. In m yown home, a young lady just graduating from her teens, brought up on. the classics of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Rachmaninoff, now spends a good deal of her time, and considerable of her old mans money, searching out old Paul Whiteman records, listening to Harry James,- and sitting for hours on end entranced by vitia-harps and tenor saxophones. ~* AAA I find all this most baffling, in this year of hot too much grace, 1958, and at the dawn of what is supposed to be an atomic-powered, jet-propelled outer space "age. Whats the reason for this wholesale, national nostalgia for the dear, dead days of the 1920s and the 1930s? Why this revival of interest in jazz. In flower pot hats. in flat, shapeless sack dresses? Why is Chevaliers singing of "Mimii" and Valen-! tina" the most popular part of .his night club act? Why was the accolade given at that private party the other night to a girl who did the Charleston, a step, that supposedly went out of style with flagpole sitting, dance marathons at Madison Square Garden and six-day bicycle races? Whats come over us, anyway? AAA Its a little beyond the province of this department to indulge in social philosophy, but if I may be permitted to hazard a guess, it strike me that maybe. were all scared of the prospects held out by the not too distant future, and that wed like to return, if only for a brief space,- to a past that is still fresh and vivid in the minds of millions of still living citizens. The frightful possibilities of atomic war, the deadly perils of radioactive fallout, the un-know nand unforeseeable dangers lying in wait for the expoloration ,of outer space, have somehow produced a reaction that has sent us all back to the days of our youth. AAA Its like the recoil of an immensely high-powreed rifle, the burst of energy and fire goes forward, but true to one of the ancient laws of physics, there is an equal burst of energy that sends us "sprawling backwards at the same time. We seem to .be living in times that are not only out of joint, but may be even double jointed, moving with astonishing speed into the future, and sending us all back into the past at once. It may be -purse coincidence, but call it what you will, a recession, a: slight adjustment of the economy, a leveling off of the boom theres even another Depression around.
