Variety (November 1956)

44.‘ MUSV€ Wnigday, November 21, 1956 Swiss’ Un-Neutral R V R Stand Homegrown Concert (?) in Zurich Works Its Way Down to a Riot 4 - 2 -*-;- By GEORGE MEZOEFJ Zurich, Nov, 13. Now the Swiss have had it, too.. This country’s first fling at rock »n’ roll at the local Rex Theatre, 1,100-seat picture house, test week (8) ended in the by now familiar way—only with a twist. Poor qual¬ ity of the presentation caused the youngsters to boo the orch, but the riot was there all the same. So the motives may have been different, but the result equalled-experiences reported from other countries. The occasion was a “midnight jazz concert” arranged by Zurich concert agent Ludwig Harburger, starting at 11 p. m. and skedded to end at 1 a. m. but actually finish¬ ing at 2:15. Featured were Swiss amateur orchs Raymond Droz & His Dixieland Group of Lausanne, and the Nameless Octet (also Dixieland), both prizewinners at local jazz festivals and well re¬ ceived by the sellout house. Tickets were scaled to a $2 top (considered high here), but advance sellout brought about black marketing at a considerably higher tag. Main attraction of the concert, however, was a locally formed combo, obviously a quickie, which pompously called itself “The Orig¬ inal Rock and Roll Prophets,” fea¬ turing “singers Epi Stone and Tulsa Green.” This was of such miser¬ able quality that' the audience, mostly teenagers, started booing, trampling, shoutingly demanding their money back and finally get¬ ting completely out of control. By now, typical r&r reactions had been taking over. Youngsters climbed up on the stage, threw cigaret butts on the carpets (there is no smoking in Zurich picture houses) and even made attempts at wrecking the fur¬ niture. Management of the the- i atre tried vainly to calm down the yelling mob, which refused to leave the house. Presence of 30 policemen probably prevented the worst, even though they preferred not to intervene actively in order to avoid a “battle.” Calm was finally restored at about 2 a. m. with the manager ordering two remaining members of the Ray¬ mond Droz orch to improvise some music and declaring its intention to remit the evening’s profits to the Swiss Red Cross for its aid to Hungary. The local press emphatically con¬ demned rock & roll in general, the evening’s happenings in particular, and laid the blame, partly orf the playing up in European illustrated papers of r&r incidents in other countries which helped in “giving ideas” to the teeners. A planned repeat of the concert naturally was immediately can¬ celled under the circumstances. So was the Rex’s next film, which, was to. be Columbia’s “Rock Around the Clock.” It Was replaced by the Swiss preem of “Meet Me in Las Vegas” CM-G). Ironic footnote: One of the mu¬ sical numbers by Cara Williams in “Vegas” is called “I Refuse to Rock and Roll!” King of Kings’ on Wax Sheldon Music has acquired the rights to “King of Kings,” a musi¬ cal story of Jesus by country & western cleffer R. J. Hall. The package contains 12 original, songs. Goldie Goldmark, Sheldon’s gen¬ eral professional manager, is now huddling with several recording company artists & repertoire men to peddle “Kings” as a special al¬ bum project. SIG BART TO EUROPE ON HUNT FOR URANIA Sig Bart, Urania Records prexy, left for Europe last week to set up a recording schedule for the com¬ ing year. He’ll hit Paris, Vienna, London, Belgium and Holland for huddles with local orch conductors and artists. Urania’s stepped up recording schedule for 1957 is in line with the expansion plans Of American Sound Corp., which recently ac¬ quired the label. SINATRA, DORIS DAY, 4 ACES ACES IN BRIT. London, Nov. 20. For the second year running, Frank Sinatra has been voted the outstanding pop singer in the world and the top American male vocalist in the annual poll con¬ ducted by the New Musical Ex¬ press. Doris. Day has again won the section devoted to top Ameri¬ can feminine singer, and a new classification—world’s outstanding musical personality—has been won by Bill Haley, The Four Aces were chosen as the world’s outstanding vocal group, and in the British sections the winners were Ted Heath (large band); The Kir chi ns (small band); Jack Jackson (disk jockey); Alma Cogan (feminine singer), and Dickie Valentine (male vocalist and British Musical Personality of the Year). Massey Back to Massey Murray Massey has ankled his professional managers’ slot at E. H. Morris’ Melrose firm to reactivate his own ASCAP pubbery, Massey Music, The Massey Music firm at one time was the combined operation of Murray Massey and his father, Irving Massey, who died a couple of weeks ago. The ‘Non-Exclusive’ Set Merman featuring Haymes. The disk names don’t want a re¬ occurrence of the “Madam” situa¬ tion, so they’re now demanding the freedom of disk company shuttling, lit Edith Adams’ recent pact with the RKO-Unique label, for exam¬ ple, such a clause was inserted to allow her to make the original cast album of the*tuner, “Li’l Abner,” in which she’s starring, for Colum¬ bia. Another example is Jane Powell, who was recently signed to Nor¬ man Granz’s Verve label. The pic thrush also got the contractual okay to go elsewhere for sound- trackers. Her first set away from Verve will be in the soundtrack package of RKO’s “The Girl Most Likely,” which will be released by RKO-Unique. In other instances, several vet disk names have been working out non-exclusive deals with their longtime diskery affiliations to give them wider recording oppor¬ tunities. This has been especially noticeable at Decca where Bing Crosby recently worked out a deal so that he could be released on the soundtrack set of Metro’s “High Society” "under the Capitol banner s Continued from page 43 and Dick and cut new singles and album* for Verve. Louis Armstrong, another vet Decca paCtee, is also on a non-ex- elusive basis and has been cutting albums and singles fbr Columbia as well as RCA Victor. Latest out of the Decca stable is Connie Bos¬ well, who’s set to appear with the Original Memphis Five in a Victor package. Guy Lombardo’s ‘Later’ Return to Roosevelt Guy Lombardo is returning to his regular bailiwick at the Hotel Roosevelt, N.Y., Grill Monday night (26) after doing *a series of one-niter, cafe and location dates across the country. The series of out-of-town dates, in fact, has caused Lombardo to open* at tho Roosevelt much later than usual. This marks Lombardo’s 27th con¬ secutive year at the Roosevelt. He returns with his brothers, Carmen, Lebert and Victor; vocalists Kenny Gardner, Bill Flannigan and Cliff Grass; and the twin pianos of Fred Kreitzer and Buddy Brennan. NEW DISTRIB PUTS RCA ON SWISS CLIMB u* . Zurich, Nov. 13. In line with the new global disk pattern set early this year by RCA, first results of the change in dis- trib policy are now felt on the local disk scene as well. Listless handling of RCA releases by the former Swiss distrib has now un¬ dergone a complete switch since distribution of the diskery’s cata¬ log was taken over a few months ago by Musicvertrieb, owned by Maurice Rosengarten. A top firm of long standing in the Swiss mu¬ sic biz, it has embarked upon an energetic sales campaign that looks to establish RCA, for the first time, as a top-selling diskery in this country. A large portion of RCA’s classi¬ cal as well as pop releases have . been made available to local buy¬ ers, resulting in a steady climbing of sales figures in a relatively short time. Incidentally, reports by Mu- sikvertrieb indicate that sales of the old 78 disks are slowing down in favor of 45. Latter are steadily gaining ground here, being already on a 60 to 40 basis ^gainst 78s. RETAIL DISK AND ALBUM REST SELLERS 25 “Allegheny Moon’^. 9 8 * 10 SONGS FOR SWINGING LOVERS Frank Sinatra Capitol W 653 EAP 653