Variety (March 1950)

Wednesday, March 1, 1950 Chicago, Feb. 28. Complete realignment of Mercury Records personnel has Occurred as an aftermath of the Mitch Miller departure to Columbia. Setup, as cited yesterday (27) by president Irving Green here, has tw6 musical directors, Harry Geiler, who will locate on . the Coast, and Joe Carleton, formerly of Varsity Records, who has been named a vice-president in charge of all eastern operations. . Geiler will be given the title of musical director in charge of pop artists and repertoire. He will operate from the Coast, ; but will range the country to supervise important dates. .Carleton will headquarter in New York in complete charge of eastern . operations, including sales. Norman Granz is in , charge of all jazz, race and folk music. Under his supervision will be Murray Nash, head of hillbilly, and David Hall, iii charge of classical. John Hammond has resigned as vicepresident, and is reportedly: going into the publishing business. All five execs, Geiler, Carleton, Grahz, Nash and Hail, will be di. rectly responsible to vice-president in charge of public relations and . advertising Art Talmadge, who operates out of Chicago and who is . Green’s direct subordinate. Geiler Will drop his recording activities for other firms, but continues his iradio and film scoring. Carleton, in addition to his other duties, : Will supplement Geller’s musical directorship as the need arises. When Geiler is on the Coast and pop records are to be cut in the east, Carleton will supervise. . Miller’s departure a month ago for Columbia: Records left . Mercury execs in a state of bewilderment. For a week, nothing happened. Then Green went into New York and came back without any comment. While rumors continued to fly, Talmadge met with Green and then flew to New York Thurs(Continued on page 42) Kenton’s Smash $18,600 In 2 Chicago Concerts Chicago, Feb. 28. Stan Kenton orch topped smash $18,600 in two concerts last week-: end at the. Chicago Opera 'House, playing at a $3.71 top. The new 40-piieee band played to full house plus people sitting on chairs in the pit. Weekend * gross would have broken jazz concert record for the house, set on a previous Kenton concert, had management been able to place chairs On stage. In previous concert, 700 people sat on stage. • CoL Records Staff Percy Faith has been added to the. Columbia Record staff in New York, in the post of musical director, assistant to Mitch Miller, head of pop artists and repertoire under Goddard Lieberson. Faith’s position will call for him to run recording dates, conduct backgrounds for the labels singers and also to make recordings under his own name. For the latter chore, he has a regular royalty arrangement. Faith succeeded Hugo Winterhalter, who shifted over to RCAVictor in a similar capacity. He preceded Manie Sacks to RCA, whose place Miller took, moving over from Mercury. Decca Records will market a line of religious records March 20, after several months of preparation. New series, to sell fpr 75c — the same price as Decca pops— -Will be called the Decca Faith series and will be supervised by Leonard Joy, former head of Decca’s Hollywood office. Top Decca stars1' will be utilized. Initial release consists of Bing Crosby and the Ken Darby Choir doing four sides, “What a Friend We Have In Jesus,’’ “He Leadeth Me,” “Mother Dear, O Pray For Me” and “O Lord 1 Am Not, Worthy.” Andrews Sisters and Victor Young’s orchestra made “In the Garden’V'Count Your Blessings”; Mills Bros., “Old Rugged Cross’VTn the Sweet By and By”; Jack Owens and Vesper Singers, “My Jesus, I Love Thee’-“Have Thine Own Way”; Red Foley, “Steal A way ’’-“Just a Closer Walk With Thee”; Ernfit Tubb, "When I Take My Vacation in Heave n”“Stand By Me”; Hamilton Quartet, “Now The Day Is Over”-“God Be With You”; plus one chimes and one organ record carrying the respective, “O Come and Mourn With Me Awhile” “S t a b a t Mater,” “Christ The Lord Has Risen Today”-“0 Filii Et Filiae.” Disks will go through regular Decca distributors, with gold on purple labels. Dare Kapp to Coast; Music publishers who have ih recent months been acceding tb the quest by recording companies for temporary “exclusive” rights to new tunes aren’t happy with results so far; Practice of giving a copy of a new melody to one disk company and withholding it from Others until the first comes out has a great many drawbacks balanced against the extra .promotion likely to be given such a sOrtg by the disker who has it alone* For years music publishers have agreed that it takes only One particular record to really make a hit; that followup disks by rival labels, even if there are many of : them, don’t do nearly as much of a buildup jpb as the first to hit. That is the angle that makes the “exclusive” cutting a huge risk. Nobody can tell whether the performances On that exclusive planter will be the one to make the song involved a hit. And if it doesn’t Show immediate sales: strength upon release, the song/is wasted. Because in that event the chances are that rival labels won’t touch it at all. And the possibility of a secondary cutting that might have made the song a hit is thus removed. Burkc-Van Heuscn Co.c V Managed by Jack Clark Hollywood; Feb. 28. Jack Clark has: been appointed general manager of Burke-Van Heusen, company operated by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen. Offices shortly will be opened here and in N. Y. Songwriters are how negotiating to permit Paramount’S Famous Music Co. to publish all the tunes they write for Bing Crosby pix in the next five years. They’ll still retain 50% Of such copyrights, ■however,: and, eventually, will slide these Over into the B-VH catalog. First tune their company will bring out will be “Lock Stock and Parrel,” by Sammy Fain. Crosby recently waxed it for Decca with the Andrews Sisters. + . American Federation of Musicians has gotten into the *new squabble between executives of Broadway deluxe theatres using stage shovrs and the AFM’s N. . Y. Local 802* Two factions have for weeks been negotiating on a compromise of 802’S rule, established last summer as an answer: to the Taft-Hc«rtley Act and which, bars j “traveling” bands from playing the Capitol,, Paramount, Strand . ; or im to Hollywood, Feb. 28. Capitol Records, in recognition of the reemergence of Dixieland, has tied three of its two-beat combos to long-term pacts and in each instance given the crews a royalty deal*. Red Nichols’ Five Pennies, Pete Daily’s outfit and Sharkey Bonano’s crew are the recipients. Nichols and Daily are anchored here, Banana is a current rage in New Orleans. It is understood Nichols hereafter will receive the standard 5%-of-retaii-sales-price cut on Cap waxings. Just what slices other bands will get is unknown. Both Nichols and Daily have been regularly cutting for Cap for more than three years, on flat rates per recording. Boiiano was signed late last summer, when Cap’s Dave Dexter went to New Orleans, foufid that some indie, locally lacquered Bonano biscuits were hot in jukes. Still M 78 Ms’ Decca’s recording chief, Dave Kapp, heads for the Coast for a month of disking. He recently returned with his wife from a firsttime flying trip to London and Paris; mostly for pleasure. Decca’s excellent business with 78s causes the veepee to reiterate that “when the time comes to also add 45s we will do so, but right now apparently the 16,000,000 78 rpm machines in American homes seemingly need plenty of servicing with new recordings. Decca added LP (33 rpm) for its mUsicomedy and other albums some months ago. Kapp recalls: his late . brotherfounder Jack Kapp's. credo about the fact that it’s “what’s in the groove that counts” as evidence that the public: will buy what is on wax, and not . because of any new Speed. However, it cari’t be ignored that both RCA Victor and Columbia have done yeoman jobs merchandising and exploiting their own 45 and 33 rpm’s, and thus created a new revitalized, market for their own brands of recordings. Decca’s I2V2C Divvy Decca Records declared a regular quarterly dividend last week of 12V6c per share on capital stock, payable March 28 to stockholders of record March 14. Company’s financial statement on the full year of 1949 is due in 1 about 10 days. Hollywood, Feb. 28* It appears Capitol Records is stuck with a Charlie Barnet bebopped version of late Jerome Kern’s melodic ballad, “All the Things You Are.” Reportedly, label cannhot get a license to release it, due to Mrs. Kern?s dislike of the treatment of the tune. Several times during past several years it is known that the widow of the composer has been irked considerably at some of the weird, jump or bop interpretations which were waxed of some of the bestknown Kern works. Cap execs are reluctant to discuss situation, but fact remains that the Barnet biscuit has been dust-gathering for around a year, and even dealers can’t induce a release of it. It will be remembered that when Kern was alive he nixed Decca on a release of Glen Gray Casa Loma band jamming “01’ Man River” on a disk. Version was made nearly 20 years ago. When Kern heard, of it, he squashed it. About four years ago the nowdefunct Musicraft label tried to get a license: from Max Dreyfus, who published Kern’s works, to let Phil Moore do a jazz frolic on some of the Kern compositions, and Dreyfus nixed it. RCA-Victor has set up an unique: method of scaling retail prices of the 33 rpm Long Playing records it will put on sale March 15. Instead of establishing definite prices for different classes of the Classical selections involved, or varying it according to the size and number of disks involved on a given huirir her, RCA will peg retail costs on prestige and Value of the selection and artist. For example, a widely known selection conducted by Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, on a 12-inch disk, might cost more than an equally wellknown selection by a lesser known soloist. Or the soloist disk could have a higher retail price, if the soloist were Jose Iturbi, than a selection of lesser Importance by a lesser known symphony outfit, Victor expects some dealer objections to the system, since it’s likely that the latter will have to check price lists before quoting value to a prospective buyer. Lowest retail price involved in the initial shipment of 33 selections is $3.85 as against the $2.85 which both Columbia and Decca ask for some of their LP sides. Highest Victor tab is $16.35 for a three-record (six sides) set. Local 802 exfees insist that the theatres use combinations consisting of 802 cardholders: That, however, doesn’t forbid the ; houses from hiring “traveling” bands, i.e., outfits made up even partly of non-802 musicians, so long as the : theatre at the same time uses a group , of /all 802 members. Up until a week or so ago, the possibility of a compromise looked bright. However, within the past week an undisclosed source of irri tation caused 802 to reiterate its original stand against traveling combos. Willingness of both sides to compromise apparently was based on j the theory that unless the deluxers j were allowed to use traveling • • bands, which means the top naines, then the stage show policies would have to be shut down entirely, which would hurt 802: There aren’t enough all-802 groups of any b.o. consequence to sustain ' I the policies for 52 weeks a year. Meanwhile, Les Brown’s orches■ tra is ip a spot. Due into the Parar mount theatre today ( Wednesday ) i with the Bob Hope unit. Brown i had been advised that he couldn’t open under the 802 ban: His out, fit is composed mostly of traveling . men and, since he worked two , days. in New England Sunday and t Monday (26-27), didn’t have time . to reorganize his combination to j include all 802 musicians. No One l prpf essed to know, up until press . time last night (Tuesday), what ' would happen. mim Bernie Woods Becomes Flanagan’s Personal Rep Bernie Woods has resigned as music editor of Variety to become personal manager for Ralph Flanagan, the orchestra leader. He assumes his new post today ( Weid. ) . Woods has been associated with Variety for a number of years, covering all phases of the music; recording and allifed industries. Ethel Smith’s Encore Organist Ethel Smith has been signed for the Palladium, London, April 24 on the show With Tony Martin. Miss Smith’s date is optional, since she’s permitted to change the opening to June on three weeks’ notice, and: she may elect the latter. She played England and the Continent last season. Miss Smith cut a couple of samba tunes with Guy Lombardo Orch for Decca this week. Fulfills Old Capitol, Theatre, N.Y. Booking Capitol theatre, New York, stuck for a band for the late March period because of N, Y. Local 802’s insistence that “travelling’ * orch e stras be barred from Broadway deluxe houses (see separate story), pulled an unusual deal this Week. Remembering an old commitment with George Paxton, the Cap’s booker, Sidney Piermont, arranged for him. to. play the two weeks,; opening March 25. Only fly in the ointment is that Paxton is now a full-fledged music publisher. It’ll be his last maestro date. Paxton currently has the tune, ‘There’s No Tomorrow,” riding near the top of the tune heap, and previously had . “I Wanna Go Home.” And other tunes, already recorded, are coming up for exploitation. However, due to the old commitment he'll take two weeks out to play the house with a band composed of all 802 musicians. Herbie Field* Exits RCA Chicago, Feb. 28. Herbie Fields has left RCAVictor in a dispute over eight sides that Victor has held back from release. Fields has signed with London Records, and cuts four sides here next week. He had been recording for Victor for the past three years. IV* Summer locations for dance bands are already coming alive. ) While few deals have been made so far, considerable discussion has gone on in the past week or so, and bookers feel that the unusually early interest stems from the heavy promotion job being done in recent months on the dance band business, a good deal of it. due to Dixieland disks marketed by various top recording companies. Steel Pier, Atlantic City, which for years has run 'Oh a full-week schedule, is undecided whether it will use name combos on weekends only this year, Meanwhile, it has bought Jimmy Dorsey’s orchestra i for the Easter weekend, April 8-9. for $4,500, RCA’S REVIVAL OF TD’S DIXIELAND JAZZ RCA-Victor is compiling a group of six Dixieland music recordings made by Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra in 1935 and 1936 for release in | an a lbum titled “Dixieland for ; Dancing.” It’s in con j unction with ! the current upbeat of Dixieland and the disks represent a period !; when T.D. leaned heavily toward ! that style. . Among the disks selected for, the album are the leader’s two-faced recording of “Milenberg Joys,” ; “Davenport Blues” and “Wash-board Blues:” Dorsey also re. 1 corded fresh Dixieland material ; Tast week in New York, which will . t be released on single disks. Mills Music acquired western hemisphere rights to “The. Whistling Bobby,” British tune published by Keith. Prowse Co., Ltd.