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Each Sunday night, Dick
finds his heart in his throat —
but his fingers go right
on playing that winning accordion
By DICK COJVTHjVfl)
I CAN hardly believe all the wonderful things that have happened to me in the
last six months. But there are a few million witnesses from coast to coast who have heard it as it happened. And, maybe if I tell my story, other boys and girls who have dreams like mine will be encouraged to have faith in themselves and keep trying.
A year ago I graduated from Fresno High School at seventeen and entered Fresno State College. I majored in music because that was the only thing in the world I cared about After two weeks at college I grew restless. Just having music in the classroom wasn't enough for me. I had to get out and make music.
I talked the matter over with my parents, and because they understood me completely, they agreed that I couldn't be happy unless I was playing my accordion.
So, with their approval, I went over to the Fresno Musicians Union to see about outof-town bookings. I had joined the Fresno Musicians Union two years previously, and all the men had been especially kind to me because I was their youngest member when I started at the age of fifteen.
That night there were no spectacular skyrockets lighting the Fresno skies, but there might just as well have been for me. Be
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'I've made tomt wonderful friends in all the places we've itopped."
cause it was the evening I bumped into one of Horace Heidt's scouts who was looking for performers to compete in the Horace Heidt National Talent Contest radio program.
He explained to me that Mr. Heidt was starting on a cross-country tour, looking for talented boys and girls in some of the smaller as well as larger towns all over the United States. Every week the Heidt scouts would gather up all prospective contestants in these towns and audition them carefully. The field would then be narrowed down to four or five acts which would appear on the Sunday night program over NBC. The winner of each week's contest would be carried over to compete against new rivals in a new town on the following week.
Thus one individual could continue to compete as long as he continued to win.
The weekly prize was two hundred and fifty dollars; the quarter-finals award was seven hundred and fifty, in addition to the chance of becoming a regular member of Mr. Heidt's troupe.
That same evening I was auditioned. After waiting around for a bewildering half-hour with my fingers turning from water to ice, I found myself standing in the middle of a bare stage, playing "Lady of Spain" with a kind of earnest desperation. (Continued on page 88)
«*.!•• ShmUt niahi fM|Ur*ofi NBC at l#»J» P.M. BUT.
"Mom and Dad ram* all the way from Freano to Ne* Vorl for the quarterfinal*. I knew I to win, for them!"
"Whni I iiarted out with the ih.»w, llor IfBj llri.tl told "'■ folk. I'd he welt taken rare ol. Thoaa
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