The Billboard 1922-10-07: Vol 34 Iss 40 (1922-10-07)

4 att Se a ane. Pe “ ae ii. ll The Bi sr irae: iin liboar OCTOBER 7, 1922 bon Uy Yj Yj Conducted y FRED HIGH Should We Have Lecturers’ Conference or a Musical Festival? The Part That Music Plays in Our Life—Two of Our. Own Have Opened a New Field That Ought To Mean Greater Opportunities for Thousands —The Song Hit of the Convention We think the I. L. C. A. is making the mistake of its life in running wild on lectures when it comes to debating and pretending what the lecturer is to this movement. Not when it comes to booking lectures. No, when that time comes the managers book lecturers very sparingly. When jt comes to talking contract they talk in lecture terms very cautiously and the better the lecturer the fewer the dates they can get on him. ere is a case that illustrates the way a course runs nowadays. It was picked at random, and happens to be from The Westerville, 0., Public Opinion: “Entertainment ranging from a comedy, ‘Cappy Ricks’, to a scientific lecture by Dr. Hilton I. Jones interspersed with musical numbe and lectures has been provided by the Citizens’ Lyceum Committee for the 19221923 lecture course, The comedy “Cappy Ricks’ will be presented by a high-grade company. Dr. Hilton I. Jones, a noted scientist, wll bring to Westerville a number of interest‘ng experiments of a scientific nature that wi'l appeal to all, amusing as well as instructive. Phildelah Rice, who is known to Westerville audiences, wil! bring some interesting impersonations. The DiGiorgious Orchestra is a brand new number that promises big things. Another musical number will be a concert by the Harp Ensemble Company. Jess Pugh winds up the season with a lecture, ‘Just for Fun’. Chairman N. E. Cornetet* predicts the course will be one of the best yet given."’ There is one lecturer, one impersonator, one humorist and two concert or musical companies on that Redpath course. There are not less than eight times as many musicians as lecturers on that course and it is a fair sample of the courses held thruout the country. Still the I. L. C. A. goes in for a Lecturers’ Conference and does everything that hostility can do to prevent the music people from being ip. evidence. if you want a fight, or more likely a look of pity for your feeblemindedness, just try to get the I. L. C. A. interested in a Musical Festival as a part of the I. L. C. A. And yet about 80 to 85 per cent of all the I. L. C. A. dues-paying members have been musicians. They furnish the great attractions for the L-L. ©. A. programs; then why not give them @ square deal? There are a few managers who are so selfish that they hate to ree the musicians favored even by having the publishers come to the convention and try to meet the artists. Some managers are s0 unsoph'sticated that they think they are ‘‘out-Locheing’’ Loche for logic when they .try to show that there are just as good reasons why dressmakers and clothiers should come from New York to cultivate our trade as for music publishers to flock to our gatherings. Well, our way of thinking is that there are ‘THE SONG-HIT TRIUMVIRATE a yo Mt adie Roscoe Gilmore Stott, Sam Fox, Geoffry ®'Hara. Photo by R. E. Morningstar, and now bei~g used in his lecture, ‘Celebrities I Heve Shot’’, ’ just as good reasons, not so many of them and not such valuable ones from our standpoint. But whenever we get big enough to measure our standing socially and; professionally by some other method than by pointing with pride and great gusto to the fact that we don't wear celluloid collars any more then maybe we will see tailors and dressmakers hunting us up. “The Outlook’’ ef August 9 said: ‘‘Next to the phonograph the chautauqua is the greatest distributor of music in the land,’’ and for that reason the musician should have what is coming to him in the way of recognition. We are strong for the music publishers who want to exhibit at the conventions. Their rooms are among the most popular features of our gatherings. They are among the most profitable to our sco ers of any of the activities of our annual ju.berinvs. They benefit more individuals than ny cthe~ feature, We think the music journals should get A. C. Co't to write an article on why the chautauqua conventions should not be littered up with music. He is one of the managers who has had years’ of experience und his views ovght to be very valuable. There must be reasons why Mr. Coit is so often quoted as being opposed to the music activity in connection with the I. L, C. A. Conventions. His address is Coit-Alber Chautauqua Bureau, Cleveland, 0. Now over and against this line of activity here is one that shows why the music publishers should be encouraged to visit our convention. At the recent convention two of our members were very active and they had a right to be. They were Geoffrey O'Hara and Roscoe G.lmore Stott. Why were they busy? The following article taken from The Franklin, Ind., Evening Star will tell: “Altho nationally known as a writer and lyceum speaker, Roscoe Gilmore Stott has attained even greater recognition as a writer of songs. His latest lyrc, ‘I Love a Little Cottage’, is the biggest hit of the present season and is now being sold all over America, in England, France and Australia. Sam Fox, publisher of the gong, is so thoroly sold on it himself that he is spending $15,000 in publicity to boost the sales of the song. At the International Lyceum Convention in Chicago last week ‘I Love a Little Cottage’ received a wonderful reception and Mr. Stott and Geoffrey O'Hara, who wrote the music for the song, were given a remarkable ovation. Mr. Stott was personally asked to autograph 150 copies of the song for lyceum solo'sts who attended the convention. “Mr. Stott wrote ‘I Love a Little Cottage’ on an impulse. He had been talking to Mrs. Stott about the tremendous but unappreciated value of the little things in life. The idea took possession of him and in just 12 minutes he wrote his song, which is now being sung round the world, ‘Geoffrey O'Hara ig nationally known as a song writer and composer. @ wrote the famous ‘K-a-t-i-e’’ of war days, ‘There Is No Death’, and numerous other songs that have been sung all over America. He told Mr. Stott last week that he believed the ‘Cottage Song’’, as he calls it, will have the greatest permanent popularity of anything he ever has composed. “Already the song is being featuréd by many of the great concert singers. Edward Johnson, a $1,500-a-night soloist, is singing it. Irva Marshall Morris, formerly of Franklin; Mrs. Clyde Titus, Dean Raymond Carr of the Fine Arts School at Des Moines, Olifford Jolnston, Mrs. Grace Porterfield Polk, and Mrs, Mabel Williams Smith of Colfax, Calif., are among artists known by Franklin people who have ace’aimed the song as a classic lyric and are singing it in their programs. It also is being sung in lyceum and vaudeville. ‘Sam Fox, the publisher of the song, is Zo'ng to spend $15,000 in publicity on this song alone. He is carrying full-page ads in all the leading musical trade journals. It is being advertised on movie slides. In Detroit a music store window has been fitted up with a miniature cottage around which is heaped Zreat pilex of copies of the ‘Cotvage’ song. The Gamble Music Company of Chicago had 1,540 copies of the song in one show window. A thousand cardboard cottages, electric lighted, to reveal advertising appeal for the song, will be distriuted to music stores thruout the country for use during October. Pictures of Mr. Stott. Mr. O'Hara «nd a story about the success of the song will appear in all music journals during the next month. This song will be heard by 25,000,000 peo ple,’ Mr. Fox told Mr. Stott. ‘We will back it with cold cash and it is going all over the world. This song will live where others die. I expect to be selling it heavily ten years from today.’ “The song and the musical setting are said to be ‘100 per cent mechanical’ and as a result the song will be reproduced on all the leading phonograph records and music rolls. It is already on sale now by Pathe and the Vocalion. The Edison and Victor companies will bring out they records of the song within the next sixty days. Mr. Stott has been advised that the royalties from mechanical rights of popular songs often surpass the sheet music royalties. “As a result of his success with ‘I Love a Little Cottage’ Mr. Stott has been requested by three large music publishing houses in New York and Philadelphia to ‘ubmit lyrics to them. He has four songs alread?’ for publication and will add four or five others by spring. He has received more than a hundred congratolatory letters from well-known artists.’” If such writeups as that do not bring inspiration to every ohe in the lyceum and chau tauqua then there is certainly need of a surgical operation, for “‘The-Green-Eyed Monster’’ must be eating the life out of such a one. Such things inspire new hope and make for a greater vision of us all and the things that inspire us should be cultivated. We are for the musicians and for the music publishing business. We hope that they will be given a square deal. We are for them 100 per cent We will go one step farther and say that we feel that each lyceum and chautaugua singer and musician should get a copy of “‘I Love a Little Cottage’’, and if you can sing or play enough to justify any bureau in placing you before the public you should honor your own calling and your own fellow workers by using that number. Don't wait until it is old and worn threadbare before you use it. Get it now and introduce it to your audiences. By doing this you will enlarge the world’s view of the lyceum and chautaugua. Whether the lecturers are more important then the musicians rests on the way the musicians act in such matters as this. If you let the lecturers establish their own place by TALK then don’t blame them if you are too selfish, incompetent, lazy or unsocial to play and si music that will place musicians upon the high pinnacle where they belong. TEXAS CHAMBER PLEDGED To Rid District of Lyceum and Chau tauqua System of Guaranteeing Against Loss The following shows to what extent the sent practices in bureau management and methods have brought the Lyceum and Chautaugua. We are not justifying Secretary Blanton, of Pampa, Texas. But we do say that when a secretary of a Chamber of Commerce makes such a thing a plank in his platform and the people of his district give bim an endorsement of his contentions, then it is time to stop and think. We have been accused of being against the guarantee system. We are not. But we are opposed to selling the people a lot of attractions, then going away and forgetting all about it until time to ship the forced sale product into the district and unload upon the people—as many of them as can be gotten together. Here is Secretary Blanton’s platform as published in The Amarillo, Texas, Daily News: ‘Here are five things Secretary W. N. Blanton told the Panbandle-Plains Chamber of Commerce convention delegates that should be accomplished for this section of the country: ***Organize million inhabitants’ club for Panhandle. ***Game reserve and fish hatchery for Panh andle, Agricultural improvement program for Panhandle. ***Program of publicity for Panhandle. “*To oppose guarantees on Lyceums and Chautauquas.” ” If you do not think that such stunts burt then read this editorial which was taken from the same paper: “Pampa evidently didn't ¢ettend the Chautauqua at that place overly well, for the eommittee there reports a deficit of about $700. It begins to look as tho the Chautauqua, under the present plan of a guarantee, is about ‘blowed up’. For no town that has a deficit as large as that will sign again, and there are towns without number that have refused to sign contracts for another year. But the time of the guaranteed Chautauqua is gone. “Those Chautauquas are continually coming before the people. Panhandle town after town has refused to endorse the Chautauquas for another year, The guarantee plan has made the Chautauqua people rich during the past few years with the towns as the goats. A number of business and professional men sign the guarantee and foot the deficit should there be any. But it secms that Panhandle towns are quitting the guarantee of profits to such a business institution. When a business enterprise is put over in such a manner that it is guaranteed aga‘nst loss, you can certainly put it down that it has smooth promoters The theaters, carnivals and circuses do business without guarantees, The theaters are in the towns year in and year out. When thev lose money, the ‘owners take the loss. But the Chautauqua does not take the loss, It passes the loss on to the people in the very community that it asked for support. No one denies that Chautanquas are all right. The average Panhandle town does not bave much amusement. A Chautauqua of five or six days or a week during the summer is a wholesome change. One objection that may be offered to a plan net to guarantee the Chautauquas is the fact that the community may not become interested and force an unnecessary loss on the Chantanqna people. But there is going to be a readjustment of plans for the Chautanqua in the Panhandle or there won't he many evidentiy. The right thing te do would be Y Y UZ y Yi to make it a 50-50 proposition on the deficit, but local committees would have to watch that the contracts are not hiked to cover any loss by the Chautauqua peeple.”’ Our idea is that it would be a great deal more profitable, genuinely helpful and cer tainly more effective if, instead of going to Washington to hold a eturers’ Conference that will be mostly foreign in personnel and purpose, we would meet and discuss how to sell our own wares to our own people at Prices that are not exorbitant, and sell them so that -we do not require the services of the sheriff to collect. Sticking guarantors for the deficit is not building up America, It is not a g000d way to make Americans fee] the kindliest towards the greatest American institution in America. NOTED GEORGIAN SENATOR Di SUDDENLY es Early in his public career Thomas E. Watson devoted quite a great deal of his time to public lecturing and was a lyceum favorite in certain circles, but his economic theories soon made him unsalable in the towns and cities. His pevetiatie ideas were not made for city folk. His advocacy of the then idealistic dream of having free rural delivery of mail was enough to make him too impractical for city folk for “Free Delivery” was meant only for city people. But while a member of Congress Tom Watson fathered and put thru the first bill that started the R. F. D. system that has done so much to bring the country and the city closer together. Tom Watson was redheaded by nature and often got that way by inclination. He was a fighter with much of the spirit that actuated the Crusaders. He was a sort of Peter-theHermit. He didn't know what fear was and policy was hardly in his makeup. But few men in the South since the days of the civil war have ever exerted such influence as Tom Watson. He was a bitter enemy of Woodrow Wilson and his policies and he rode into the United States Senate on a platform of anti-Wilsonism, anti-war, anti-league of nations. He was elected elector at large on the Democratic ticket in 1888 and went to Gon gress as a Populist in ‘91. He was defeated twice on this ticket, then nominated for vicepresident in 1896, running with William J. Bryan, who was endorsed for president by Pops. In 1904 be was nominated for president on the Populist ticket and made a very active campaign thru the country. _He started Tom Watson's Magazine in New York City in 1905 and a year later he started Watson's Jeffersonian. Both of these publications were later on transferred to mson, Ga., where they were continued up until the time President Wilson let their contents and the fiery darts of the keen-kutter pen of the fiery Southerner get under his skin, when he had the postoffice department suppress them. This act_of despotic power helped to put Tom Watson the U. S. Semate and helped to humilia Woodrow Wilson in the eyes of his own State people, for be it remembered that Mr. Wilson was also born in Georgia. Tom Watson accumulated a large-sized army of real fighting enemies when he made war on the late Leo Frank, whose case aroused the American people into a discussion of his probable guilt or innocence. The fact that the newspapers took it up and discussed it al! over America only agitated it. This brought the Jews as a body into open hostility and they raised a great budget and spent fortunes on this case. Frank was taken from jail and lynched, and the case ceased to have public interest. But the hostility to Tom Watson never died. In 1914 Watson was indicted in the Federal Court at Augusta on the charge of sendin obscene matter thru the mails. He espearel as chief counsel in his defense, and charged that the indictment was the result of his attack on Catholicism. There were many stormy court-room scenes during the trial, which resulted in his acquittal. Later on he started The Columbian Sentinel at Thomson, Ga., and was editor and proprietor of this magazine up to the time of his death. He was a very clear-cut and able writer and thinker. He was a great scholar and a noted ecomomist. His life of Napoleon was classed by French students as the greatest book dealing with this noted character ever written. He will probably be known longer in the field of literature than in any other for his books have that something that makes them live. As an author, Watson's best-known work was “The Story of France’. Among his other works were the ‘Life of Thomas Jefferson” “The Life of Napoleon’, “The Life Times ef Thomas Jefferson’’, ‘‘Bethany”’, “‘A Study and Story of the Old South’’, “The Life and Times of Andrew Jackson’’, ‘‘Handbook of Polities and Keonomics’’ and “Life and Speeches of Thomas E. Watson’’. We bave given extra space to the details of Tom Watson's life as there are so many things about it that should be studied by our lecturers. They are asking themselves man of the same questions that Tom had to as himself. They are talking about whether the platform js free. It is if you have nothing to say and do not run counter to other people's interests, but just as soon as you do that ther it is not free, never has been, and never can be so long ag there are le in the world. The question is, are you willing to pay the price? Lockhart, Tex., Sept. 26.—The twenty-second’ annual season of the Lockhart Lyceum Association will be opened in the Dr, Eugene Clark Library on October 9.