Variety (November 1954)

56 MUSIC Wednesday, November 17, 1954 Bing Started Somethin’ Continued from page 53 chalked up a firrtv vote for Crosby. “Let’s face : it,” he says. “Bing’s really right- We’ve got to take the responsibility for the things that hit our turntables. We have be come the medium of exposure for new songs and new artists. Many of us Have become so occupied with trying to come up with something ‘different’ that, we’ve lost sight of everything save 'self 'promotion’.” “A disk jockey," he continues, does not lrave to play a record just because it’s new or because a good friend hands it to him.. He has a responsibility to his listeners (if he wants to keep them) to know what he’s playing. Let him use his judgment Once in a while, analyze his listening audience and play ito them. Give them what they want; yes,, but if it’s obviously bad material, leave it alone.” . Buddy Deane (WITH, Baltimore) demurs, “It is true that popular music is in a deplorable state. The jockeys may be partly, responsible, but I don’t believe as responsible as Bing has led his readers to be- lievb. As always, the public is the final judge in all things; They make, the hits. No , single disk jockey or group of jockeys has aver forced the public to buy a record they didn’t have to buy. I have seen jockeys try to ; push records that were of excellent quality time and time again . . and although the disk may have been played time and time again, nothing, but nothing has happened. On the other hand, I’ve seen technically bad records by singers, who were completely off tune and had no con- , ceptioh of a professional delivery, get smash hits With only two or three plays. “The average disk jockey, if "he wants to maintain a decent rating and keep his sponsors happy, will play the records from which he gets the heaviest reaction. Can he be blamed if the phone jumps off the wall demanding he play a cur- rent novelty 'nothing’? No, the disk jockey does not control the public’s taste. The public taste controls him!” In Crosby’s corner, Russ Coglin says; “Too many guys in this field are inclined to look at being a d.j. as Something more than a business. The way I look at it, I’m a busi- ness man;. My inventory is the music that guys like Bing turn out through record companies every day. If it weren’t for songwriters, pluggers. artists and musicians, I’d have no business. On that premise, I believe that everything I can do to help the inventory be more valu- able. is aiding what I have to sell. If I’m in the. clothing business. I’m sure' not going to ‘bug’ a suit to a potential buyer even if I think it’s a rag; Who am I to set my- self up as a judge of quality re- garding my inventory when the guy that rhanufactures.it has sold it for years? Biz Has Changed Vastly Says Hub’s Norm Prescott For a more general view, Norm Prescott (WORL, Boston) states that “Bing’s article was an honest attempt to compare the music busi- ness past and present, but can the two really be compared? I don’t think so. There are too many fac- tors involved. When times change so do musical tastes. Look at all the things that have happened in the ,years Bing talks about, .... the advent of the pop singer the passing of the dance band . . new sounds .a whole new generation of writers . the hit‘tong today that can sell a million and the. hit song of the old days that never came close . . . the tremendous in- crease in phonograph sales , . ..the LP and the EP and the disk jockey! • “To say that the songs qf today are not as well written as the songs of his era is only to look at the. picture from one angle. You can’t do it. “To say that the songs of today are not as well written as the songs of his e ’ only to look at the picture from one angle. You can’t do it. “The music business, today is a big business, far bigger than it has ever been. The. record companies are making more coin than ever before.. 'The: Crosby monopoly ho longer exists. The music business has opened up a Whole new world, of opportunity for singers, arvang- fs, writers, musicians, publishers, etc. Why? Because of the disk jockey! “This monster, as lie is sdftie- . times called, took the phonograph record and instead' of just playing it, a job that any engineer could do, he made it a product. He. sold it, stimulated Interest in it and presented it so that it now had newborn significance and' meaning. He did all that and more with, cre- ative talent, imagination and plan- ning.” Tony Donald (WITH, Baltimore) says Crosby is wrong if he thinks disk jockeys make the hits.. “There are fellows,” Donald says, “who feel , they, are. the makers of. hits and stars . . , and these are the fel- lows that have given Bing the wrong impression about those of us who- just try to entertain the public and bring the music the^ want to hear.” ! Donald, however, says Crosby “is absolutely right in regard, to the trend of hit tunes today. I think a majority of us in the disk jockey field would go along with Bing’s opi ions. I personally cannot see. the screaming offkey tunes that have been hits today, but it’s the public that makes these numbers hits.” In the acerbic vein versus the. Groaner, Bill Dawson ' (WAKE, Greenville, S. C.) asserts, “Crosby should realize that the majority of jockeys program their platters arid chatter for the teenage set which Bing has left far behind, . . The Old Groaner must have been think- ing of -his record, “Y’all Come” When he mentioned songs with nothing .but nuisance value. . . . Crosby is right ii\ his' contention; that songs with nothing but nui- sance Value will give the business a short haul and bad Shake. But these are still the minute minority and will never dominate truly good songs pointed for young lovers. Fads in melody and rhythm Will come and go, but the love song will still prevail.’’ ‘Just Staff Announcers’ Mike Woloson (WNOR, Norfolk. Va.) is another vote, for Crosby. "A lot of d.j.’s;” he says, “are just staff announcers Who have been given a spot on the air by some misdirected management and they are told to play records. They have no knowl- edge of music, of the artists or their backgrounds, have no ear for music, or any idea whatsoever what the worth variety, means/ Add to this a couple of flattering letters from some; highschooi kids, and these boys in the woods are sold on theniselves and.are thus open for more flattery, from the song- pluggers who have, a dog or two to foist on the public. “Solid entertainers, like Crosby, who go along year after year, are the backbone of,, the industry. Naturally, the novel tunes, the crazy .sounds, the gimmicks , attract attention, but don’t last long eriough to do more than make a few people rich, f compare it to the auto industry . . , each year, a great big hullabaloo about the new thing- amabob, the improved whatchacall- it. the tremendous new horsepower, firepower, power-plus-power are great stimulants.. But basically,, you’ve gotta have four wheels on the ground or the other stuff ain’t pworth looking at.” Gordie Baker (WSPR, Spring- field, Mass.) says: “Certainly Bing is right when he says that nobody can pick a hit tune. AS has been said many times, the. first person who can accurately and un- failingly tell if a song, will be a hit or not is bound to become a millionaire several times over in the space of a few hours. Crew Cuts Vs. Mills Bros. ‘Many..people maintain that the music business runs cycles. This I believe to be basically true. At the preserit time,, it is evident that we ace going through the!, phase of group singers. If we try to analyze the styles of the Four. Aces, Crew Cuts, Gaylords or Four Knights, we find their, style of singing is considerably differ-' erit and much louder than the styles of the Ink Spots arid the. Mills Bros, of the ’40s. Of course, this is not meant to be. a criticism of the present-day groups, but it’s quite "obviously what the public wants. “A disk jockey’s job is to. pre- sent the music, as it is released to his public arid let them decide What, they like,” From the deep south, Pat Chamburs (WFLA, Tampa, Fla.) sees the music biz as a highly complex phenomenon; "The elder statesmen of music,” he says, Best British Sheet Sellers (Wee)c ending Nov; 6) London, Nov. 9. .Wood ... .Chappell Hold My Hand My Friend., .. I Give My HeartRobbins .My Son .... . .Kassner Smile „.... ....; Bourne Things Mean a Lot... Robbins This Ole House . .. Duchess Story of Tina. Maemelodies Must Be' Reasori.... . Connelly Coins in Fountai Feist Sky Blue Shirt. .Wright Happy Wanderer Bosworfh Second 12 Cara Mia ..... Robbins Sway ,...... .. Lati American Wait For Me .. , : . .Lafleur Gilly Ossenfeffer. Spier Sh-Boom .... Aberbach. Little Shoemaker ' Bourne— I Love Paris ....... Chappell Higb-Mighty . Harms-Connelly Make Her Mine Wood Never Land.,. .Keith Frowse Santo Natale Spier Your Heart .. Bourne “hark back to the. 'good old days’ stage and because of this limited audience, continued in popularity over a vast period qf time . Today’s audiences are larger, and recep- tion by the potion is almost in stantaneous, which, is one reason for the Short life of a hit. Another is the disturbing factors that take away concentration on hit pop tunes. These are. the advance of the hillbilly and: rhythm & blues tunes, which could only cut; down in pop sales, other modes Of en- tertainirient that : just didn’t. ex;ist years ago. DJ .Must Be Versatile . Chamburs raps most. big city jocks as “simply business men with, the right commercial connec- tions who apparently wandered into a radio station 15. years ago when the mike Was open and. set up shop. Their shows are com- mercials , and music and more commercials, the more the illu- sion of success is implanted in the minds of the public, the enter- tainer and, the agency. This shouldn’t be,, for the average disk jockey of today is no longer just a salesman or a filler between records. He must be a showman, actor and master of ceremonies, with a split second sense of timing. He must have, a working knowl- edge of music, musicians and the current music scene. He also must know the significant happenings in other fields: theatres, flickers, politics, tv and local events. The disk jockey makes no claims to being a pundit . , He’s just a fellow who bears the brunt of chronic complaints in the. music world.” Pete Ward (WCCM, Lawrence; Mass.) describes himseif as “just a disk jockey, not a musician, or an authority on music; my ear is first guide in selecting commer- cial tunes for a record show. So I mteht replay a certain appealing but unproven tune. Then the lis- tening public approaches. It dic- tates whether X am to stop or con- tinue spinning it. My listeners are the final authority.. For I well know any authority I might try to assume_ can be removed from me by a listener’s switch of the dial. Jockeys do develop some author- ity by developing a commercial taste which coiricides with that of the listener.” A similar idea is voiced by Paul Flanagan (WTRY, Troy, N. Y.) who says, “The disk jockey is as popular as the record he spins. We, as disk jockeys, don’t sell songs—we merely suggest what’s best . . . the people spend the money and therefore establish, the hits. If Bing were to blame anyone for the lack of public acceptance of quality song material, he must blame the millions, of people who made him the great star that he is and will always be.” Weird Music Fits Weird Times Rudy Ertis (WTOL, Toledo) takes exception to the .“sweeping gener- alities” in Crosby’s article. “It seems absurd,” Ertis asserts, “to assume that dee jays as a group are sp well knit together, that they will act in the same mariner arid for the sheer joy of it go out pro- moting the ‘tuneless trend.’ “As for the Honkers and screams ers and chain rattlers on records —sure some of them have become big; It’s my belief though that in every instance they, had some quality that caught right in the public fancy . . . There’s just too many media, of entertainment around these days to expect that any record spinner, no matter how important, can foist on the people music they don’t want. Music as an art form at its best almost al- ways reflects the times, and if we’ve got a lot of weird music L you’ll have to admit, these are pretty weird times.”/ Cites Crosby and Berlin Larry Brownell (WKBW, Buffalo) states that the “disk pockeys have been asking for it,” meaning the critical jabs from Crosby. “They say,”-Brownell comments, “that we produce the hits . . and we’ve really produced some dandies in the past year or so!” “As Irving Berli pointed out receritly in Variety, repetition is necessary in order to produce a hit song. Well, which ones are to be repeated? That’s where the disk jockey should do careful soul- searching, i believe, iri fulfilling the foremost obligation he has— to his listeners. Now how he does this without being influenced and coerced by other groups within the record industry is his own problem “Let us riot for one moment de clare there is only one kind of rriusic—the kind we like—and set ourselves up as judges with, to .quote Mr. C. again-T-'all accent arid no authority’;” Ray Perkins (KIMN, Denver) says “Bing’s analysis is fair. Any announcer can read titles off the labels arid toss disks' on the air. Study arid knowledge of music,, lis- tener psychology and a constantly informed, mind make the difference between a smart deejay and an un- important title-giver.” A1 Radka (KFRE, Fresno, Calif.) is another who believes that the public, not the jockeys, makes the hit. “I dare say that if no method of communication, existed between disk, jockeys in different parts of the country, the same records would become hits in every city of every state, primarily because of the quality Of the . records, rather than by any pushing by music com- panies, record companies or other promoting agencies.” .Ken Johnston .(WE AT, Lake Worth, Fla.) says “I wouldn’t worry about the business getting a short haul from the jocks. In proportion, the number pf singers giving the business ^ short haul is probably greater and that’s no slain at to- day’s singers.” John Michaels (WOKY, Milwau- kee) defends the jockey clan from attack. He says: “Most.deejays are pretty decent fellows in spite of all rumors to the contrary. Actu- ally, they only get difficult when some would-be wheel, cokes into town like hurricane Edna arid tries to bowl everybody over with his big dealing. After being used and mistreated for a while, the deejay begins to get cautious and cynical. From Mobile, Ala., Chuck Thompson (WALA) states that “ex- perience spinning records. ’ the air is the only thing that can make a real disk jockey. Most true jocks I know have been spinning wax for years. I don’t believe they would risk losing listeners and fans to promote a disk that they were not sold on personally.” Don’t Have to Gimmick It “Bing Crosby is absolutely right,” says Larry Wilson (WTIX, New Orleans). “Too many jockeys are setting themselves up as experts, seers, prognosticators and guard- ians of public morals. . . . Bing is also correct in Saying that the sing- ers are good today but that the songs are riOt up to par.. Bing is correct to some extent. There, are lots of good songs around. The problem seems to be that the a&r men ’feel they have to gimmick-up everything before it can be suc- cessful.” . Tom Wallace Jr. (KTKT, Tucson) takes exception with Crosby, de- claring, “It has Often been our ex- perience that we would have to play, records that we don’t like, be- cause our listeners insisted On hearing them , this is a small market and the telephone at our station reaches the announcer just* about as fast as any place in the country. If we persist in playing a record that they don’t like, the reaction is just as fast and a lot more vehement,” Howie Leonard (WBOR,. Port- land, Me.) sees the solution in the jockey’s programming problem in the reduction in the number of record releases. “Stop offering new contracts to anyone and everyone and give us a chance to listen to each release a few times before airing it . . .10 or 15 versions of the same tune . . . ouch!” Dick Whittinghill (KMPC, Los Angeles) salutes Crosby , for hitting the rnark. “Wheri a disk jockey starts to feel that he is more im- portant than the talent on the rec- ords he plays, watch out! It would be an ideal situation, naturally, for all disk jockey^ to have-a musical background before airing their i views but the business is such that this musical ‘utopia’ Is not pos- sible.” : -- . Ira Cook'fKMPC, Los Angeles) also believes vCrosby’s estimation of the current music biz is sound and blames fhe “turkeys” on the “get-rich-quick”- jockeys who “don’t know the first thing about putting a record show together” and who “will play anything, especially if there’s an extra buck connected to it.” Cook also fingers the excessive number of disk releases as an . in- dustry evil. “Each week,” he says, “I receive about 40 new releases-— almost half of them are pretty bad; the songs don’t make too much sense, the singers are offkey and maybe the lyrics are a little sug- gestive. But I don’t dare toss any of them out. because I don’t know which of these ’dogs’ will turn Out to be tomorrow’s hit.” Dick Gilbert (KTYL,* Phoenix),, on the other hand,, asserts that Crosby is /“falling for a fallacy” tyhen he states that jockeys ar predominantly responsible for pro- ducing the hits. Gilbert says it “takes hundreds of persons and dozens of fortuitious circumstances to produce a hit, , , There are many methods of exposing a song to the public of which the disk jockey is orie. . . , It is not neces- sary for any new singer to woo any .jockey; anywhere at any time and the disk jockeys do riot run the ; music business. The disk jpekeys Wield a potent force, col- lectively, because we are the peo-. pie. Our tastes, experiences; judg- ments and preferences are as var- ied as . the listeners’.” Nick Nicksori (WBBF, Rochester) comments: “We must not fail to realize that the World of music, as with the world in general, things are changing, Bing came along at a time when the nation, needed comfort and solace from the trou- bles it was , going through. The romantic ballad was the. ideal form of popular, music to help settle things down. Today, after a couple of rough, wars, the nation is pretty much up in the air and only lately attempting to settle down into a state of normalcy. A political as well as economic situation, I feel, is always reflected in the music of the land. . . . This does not mean that great songs aire riot coming along; they certainly are. However; it does "seem that in looking back Songs always seeni better.” Jerry Kay (WTIX, New Orleans) is all for Crosby because “some-, one outside finally: has come out with the hard-to-take truth. . Frankly, to me nothing sounds as bad as a deejay trying to force his opinion on his listening audience . ... Let’^ stop trying to educate and stop trying to make the deejay the final word- on which record is the best." Clark Reid (WJR, Detroit) Opiries that “any disk'jockey who is worth his Hooper knows that his income is direptly proportional to the num- ber of people .who dial in his show.' The sairie as a clothing merchant doesn't buy a selection of clothes to- satisfy his artistic or esthetip tastes, neither is a disk jockey in- terested in the furtherance of cul- ture so much as in making a living. • A disk jockey who. doesn’t follow the trends and keep .up with the, styles, finds himself out of lis- teners, then out of sponsors, then put of a job.” Hollywood, Nov. 16. In the legal profession, they say that “the lawyer who defends him- self has a fool for a client.” Which may explain why record promotion man Bob Stern Has hired record promotion man Jerry Johnson to tub-thdmp a new plat- ter on. famous races which Stern lias helped: produce, under the ban- ner of Odyssey Records.; Album, tagged “Greatest Races of 1954,” was produced by Stev Bailey, Larry Berrill, Dave Max- well and Dick Tufeld. First of what is hoped to be: a regular series, it carries running feeries of eight, top races of 1954 at tracks all over the country., New ASCAP Detroit Mgr. David -Leavitt, field rep in Bos- ton for the, American Society of Authors, Composers & Publishers for the. past: seven years, has been promoted to district manager of ASCAP’s office in Detroit. Grosner & Burak, Who have rep- resented the Society for many years, will remain as counsel in the Michigan area..