Variety (February 1957)

Fel^rwary 6^ 19^7 49 HERE LIES VieXOR’S 78 RPM Od Rolliqg With P^e. Biz Wave; Columbia Recoi:ds la keeping' pace with the mushrooming pop album afield by scheduling 100 packages for Release this year. It’s a 20% increase over Col’s 195fi re¬ lease schedule. According to Stan iCavan, who heads Col’s album sales division^ pop packages today make up the recording business’ “biggest area of excitement’’ and “biggest area of growth.’’ He also pointed out that the majority of albums blueprinted for release will be new produc¬ tions, since the label has virtually completed conversions of the lO-inch 1^ sets and vintage 78 rpm packages. Cbl, however, is holding .the line on its classical release schedule. Diskery expects to keep Its classi<!^ cal catalog within the boundaries of between €0 and 70 new items as it did in ’56. , Isabel also is continuing it's “Buy of the Month” prpgram to stimu¬ late interest In its packaged prod¬ uct. Campaign, which offers a pop and a classical album at $2.08, was started as a summer promotion last year but turned out so successfully that it was decided to keep it as a regular monthly feature. “BOM’s” ior March are a pop album by the Hi-Lo’s and a classical set by. Andre Kostelanetz conducting “Rigolet-: tOw” It's the Hi-Lo’s preem album for the label and marks the first time that a “BOM” has been used on new Col artists. In the label’s February release lineup in the pop field are albums by Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Morton Could,, the Chordettes. Boyd Raeburn, the Carl Smith Trio, ^mmy Kaye, and Johnnie Ray. In Its Masterworks schedule are the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by. Bruno Walter, the Philadelphia Symphony conducted by Eugene Ormandy, the New York Pro Musica Antlqua« the'St Louis Symphony, ’ Andre Kostelanetz, Stanley HoUoway %nd Noel Cow¬ ard. Yictor’sM%goo’ RCA Victor Is selling hl-ft with a laugh in a new album due i?hortly for release. Package is titled “Magoa . in Hi-Fi’’ .and features a commentary by Jim Backus in the same voice, that he uses for the cartoon character featured in the UPA shorts. Musical background for the story was written by Dennis Farnham, Victor musical director on the Coast. Rebuffed Again, Tpoters tak^ $13,000,000 ^ Vs. App^teCt » ^ los! Angeles, Feb.. 5. Musidan plaintiffs seeking more than r$18,000J>(>P: in damages in two suits attaeking the. Music Ferfomfance Trua$ Funds will .take their battle to the AppaUate Court this week following .a .second to jecti^^ii of thdr plea for Injunctions and a receiver. Superior. Jjtdge John. J. Ford/ after lengthy, .re-arguihents last week tl), .declined, to reverse himseH in. his ruling that the couti does not have . Jurisdiction. Plaintiffs wUl. ask Appellate Couit to issue a writ ^ordering the cou^ to take Jurisdiction in the Is¬ sue.' Judge Ford has * contended that Jurisdiction does not exist Bamud B. Rosenbaum. Trustee of the .Funds, is an “Indispensable party|* to the Suits and is not domi¬ ciled 'In Califofiila. ' Attorneys Harold' Fehdler aiid Daniel . Weber, representing the plaintiffs, announced' that' former Califoniia Supreme Court Justice John Preston wilt be associated with them In the appeal. miarSMXtE DOODLE FOR 1ST mit Aim Hollywood, Feb. 9. Bing Crosby . reports to RCA Victor next week for a new album, his second special package away from Decca In 20 years,’ First was the Verve album recorded with Buddy Brcgman several months ago. ^ OnTthe Victor -album, Crosby will team with Bob-Scobey for a dixie¬ land treatment of a dozen stand¬ ard tunes. . It’s Crosby’s first etching for Vic¬ tor in more than two' decades and the first album he’s ever made for the label. He did some singles for the firm before he Joined Decca. Drops Drive For Disk Coin The National Assn, of Disk Jock¬ eys for public Service will go out¬ side the music business for its orga^zational money. Association’s pitch for $55,000 from record com¬ panies and music publishers sev^ eral weeks .ago sparked consider¬ able squawks within the trade. The 10 diskeries Involved decided to hold' back any cash outlay until further study. The deejay organization has now decided to go ahead with its plans “with or without” the help, of the record industry.” Feeling ’ among the key deejays in the group is that they’re “terribly hurt and dis¬ appointed” in some of the record¬ ing companies’ suspicion that the deejays might use pressure on them to force donations. According to Murray Kaufman, council’s prexy, the deejasra wlU now attempt to raise the money through, community funds and charitable organizations. Council, which plans to involve Itself in various public service programs, plana id announce -Ita first project in the near future. Kaqfman also stated that there are now 900 deejay members In the counclL R&B (Rhythm , ft Burnt) .. -Glasgow, Feb. 9w Rock *11* rqll had nothing over. Robert Burns, lOtk: Centi^ na¬ tional poet of; Scotland. Two lines from bis -poenK “Bessie at the| Spinning . Wheel,'* prove therefls i^ally nothlngnew under the show biz aufitv “O leeze me on mu apinntng wheels And leeze me on my rock and reelj” RCA Victor has begun the final interment of the 78 rpm platter, a disk speed that was standard in the industry from the end of the cylinder da3^ to the start of the slowspeed era ushered in by the 33 and 49 rpm development of eight and nine years ago. W. W. Bullock, chief of Victor’s single division, has moved to cut certain of the company’s single re¬ leases only on 45 rpm platters. Victor’s first exclusive 45 rpm re¬ lease will be 11 Harry Belafonte singles which are being issued as a special promotion. Bullock pointed out that sales of the 78 platters have slumped sharply in the past couple of years because of the entry into the mar¬ ket of new 45 turntables. At the present time, the 78s total less than 10% of the single record mar¬ ket. That 10% is concentrated mostly in the country & western and rhythm & blues, markets. Bullock stated that if there is a sufficient demand for the 78s, Vic¬ tor would produce enough to sat¬ isfy its customers. Bullock added, however, that he believed that virtually all of the. 78 rpm ma¬ chines will be replaced by modem three-speed phonos within the next year. By the end of this year, he envisages that “practically all” •the single record production will be at the 45 speed. Victor Introduced the 45 disks in 1949, a year after the . 33 rpm longplay platters^ While the latter dominate the album market, the (Continued on page 56> A&R Seen in FIik Again; 9iad N.Y. Merc Chief; RCA MnDs Coast Revamp ^ SKake in the Grast Honolulu, Feb. 5. Pierson Thai, bandleader at Royal Hawaiian Hotel, comes up with a capsule comment about one of his former girl vocalists: / < “She was very careless about her appearance — sometimes she didn’t show up for days.” HaininersteinO.O. Ofloa^Li^ A powerful new ASCAP coipmittee, headed by QsCar Hammerstein 2d, has been set up by.the Society’s board to follow up oh its ' recent move to crack down on all attempts by memb^ to falsify or otherwise “gimmick up” performance logs of radio and television stations. Strong accent that ASCAP Is put¬ ting on the xtew regulatidn ia spot¬ lighted by^ the fact that Hammer¬ stein was persuaded' by Ai^AP prexy PauL.iCunnihgliMn: over the chMrmansfdpvof this log¬ ging complaint comn^ee. ether members of ^e oommltte* are Max -Dreyfuss, Chappell kfuslp chief; Bernard* Gop'dwhi»’ &eadu of the . ParanrGunt * music mnibine: Irving Caesar; writer and publish¬ er, and defter. Jack Yellen. Bril’ in Victor Stable; Here for Hoopla British pop maestro George Melachrino, conductor of the Melachrino Strings, has been signed by RCA Victor, effectiye next Novem¬ ber, when his pact with the HMV label in England expires. RCA Victor has been releasing Melachrino in the U.S. under its .^reciprocal distrib deal with HMV’s parent company, EMI (Electric & Musical Industries), but the latter pact is due to be concluded this April. Hence, Victor v.p. and al¬ bum chief George R. Marek was eager to tie up Melachrino directly to the Victor roster. Melachrino has been among the most consistent album sellers in the business, having accounted for over 2,000,009 Victor sets overall. He has been clicking in the “mood music” market and Victor is* cur¬ rently making a push on the con¬ ductor’s packages. .Melachrino flew’ into the U.S. from London Saturday (2) to tour the country in ednnectiqn with the sales campdgn. He’s '‘being accomped by Carl Rosier, pop album promotion head, and Herb Hellman, album publicity manager. The itinerary a dozen cities and will wind up in Kansas Cit^, Feb. 21. Decca Records Is jcxpanding its phonograph and accessory line with ^e mazketlng-of six new pho¬ no machines; tbla year. Top-priced [jnodeL a. hl-ff..imit.wlth afourTspeed changer and a three-speaker sys¬ tem, lists for i|18d. . p^a te also making avatlalAe^: three separatespeaker enclosures fbr, use as^ ex¬ terior speakers' wdtK other phonos. * • .With • the * new *<»addltlons; * Deccar now has 16 different phoiiograph models on the market ..currently. Soviet %ef ^Em Eat Biscuits ’ By IRVING R. LEVINE f NBC’s MoicoMUCorfeepondentl Moscow, Feb. 9. It’s no easy matter to find s disk of yOur choice in a Moscow phono¬ graph record store, and the reason \vhy may be explained in some sta¬ tistics just published. In a counti^bf 200,200,000 per¬ sons larger than the U.S.— only 80,000,000 disks were manufac¬ tured in the Soviet 'Union last year, considerably fewer than in the V.S.A, Statistics of any sort are hard , to come by In the Soviet Union with Its obsession with secrecy, so that an article entitled “Dreams and Sounds,” recently published in the newspaper of the Ministry of Cul¬ ture, “Soviet Culture/* Is of con¬ siderable Interest, It says that only 13,000 sides (or titles) were' Included In * the 80,000,000 disks and that only four million of< these were longplay platters. Since many Russian-man¬ ufactured gramaphonet are stilt of the spring-wound type aiid operate only at the old VS-speed, LPs are in less demand than In many west¬ ern lands; i These figures may explain why ; I’ve found it Impossible to pur¬ chase a disk-' of Tschaikowsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” and even of the Soviet national anthem, in two months of shopping for them In Moscow’s crowded record stores. The titles which , are recorded ate determined by what the govemmentroperated record shops order from the government recordingcompany. There’s been a decline in. the number of classics sought by Rus'slan customers which Is reflected in the fact that classics comprised less than 2% of the disks ordered by Soviet shops. (In Moscow, a capital of . more than 6,000,000, there are only 47 stores selling records). . The author, of the “Soviet CuL ture” piece, Valentine Lednev^ re¬ ported that ' theire was great de¬ mand for jazz disks. “Johnny” as rendered by e Russian enVhestra sold 74,000 copies last year and a mambo sold 102,000. The shortage of disks (the pro¬ duction target for 1960 Is only 100 million) has resulted in several unique practices in Russia. Rus¬ sians with ta^ recording machines make a practlce-of recording num¬ bers off the air front the “Voice of America” and* the British Broad¬ casting Corp. Russian acquaintances frequently ask me end other Americans in Moscow to borrow American disks which they carefully wrap in cop¬ ies of Pravda so as not to arouse curiosity of neighbors. These disks they copy on their tape re¬ corders. Not' long ago severer Soviet In¬ stitute students were brought to court for an illegal bit of private enterprise In phonograph disks. By some ingenious method the youngsters managed to transcribe numbers monitored on the “Voice of America” onto old, exposed X'-rsy film cut into circular phono¬ graph-record shape. . These .found, a. ready market among -Russian phonograph fans untU. the . authorities, .caught, up with the culprits whose offense was .to. .engage . in , private manufacture and sale — which art functions largerly , reserved . for . the . govern* ment in this Communist society. Think of the • collectors* items available to Soviet record fans while the X-ray transcribers were still in business. “1 Want to Dance All Night” Imprinted on a set of cracked ribs, or Frank Sinatra ren¬ dering “I Get a Kick Out of You” on a broken shin bone. After a comparatively long siesta, the .artists & repertoire picture erupted last week with the exiting of Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creators as Mercury Records* eastern a&r toppers. They’ll be replaced by Bobby Shad. Peretti Creatore, who’ve been with Merc for the past three years, are taking over the new Roulettb line, which was launched only 10 days ago with the purchase of the master • of Buddy Knox’s “Party DolL”. from the indie Triple-Dlabel. Although they’re associated in the operation of Roulette with Morris Levy and Phil Kahl, who al^. have publishing firm interests, Peretti and Creatore state that they're open to material from all publishers. Starting from the ground up, they plan to build Rou¬ lette in the pop,, jazz and kiddie fields with a stress on packaged goods. RCA Victor is mulling a reshuffle of its Coast staff with likelihood that Henri Rene, head of the Coast office, will be upped to a post in the company’s expanding interna¬ tional operation. Rene, vet musi¬ cal director for Victor^ has been heading the Coa^ artists & reper¬ toire setup for the last' few years and will probably return east to take over his new spot. Victor execs say the move is still in the exploratory stage and no re¬ placement for Rehe in Hollywood has as yet.been considered. * Shad moves over head of Merc’s eastern a&r spot after a three-year stint as head of the la(Continued on page 56) Beret & Goatee to Pby As J^ Goes to School Jazzsten: apparent^ are going to shelve the beret and goatee for:the cap and gown. In the works for a kickoff this summer Is. the School of Jazz, staffed-^ by top hipsters, at the ;Berkshir^ Music Bam. ' In Lenox, Mass; . . Enrollment Jn the school threes wee session, whioh Is slated;, to start Aug; 12« wlll.be limited to 48 musicians .and 26 auditors playing studi^>. Mustcians will be, required te pass* audttlonr or to eubmii tapes er recorjlliiga to qualify for entnmee, . * Tbe^faeulty* hail dot yet been set. Cimirman Ofrtho school’ board of trustees will; be' Philip Barber, Other trustees are/ WhUney Balliet; WUliainCosa Jfr^ Nesttfai l^te^ giih, George Avaitian, John 1 B. , (Dizzy) GiUespie, Stephanie Bar¬ ber, ^Immy G.ulffre, Nat Renfoll^ Andre Hc^elr, Leonard Feather, J. J. Johnson, Willis James, John Lewis, Horst Llppman, WRbur'.De Paris, Oscar Peterson, Max Roach, 'William Russo Jr., Chinthef Schul¬ ler, Jack Tracy/ Barxy visnov and Marshall ,W. Stearns, aSQ.^ LAHSON Dl WrrAEJUHrEZODDS A reshuffle of the slnglilg roster on the “Tour Hit Parade^” the NBC-TV longtlmer, is In the works. Gisele MacKenzle, who shares the distaff vocalist assignments with Dorothy Collins, li due to. bow out of the series as of pre-summer. Snooky Lanson, who has been with the show since Its radio days, may also exit the lineup. Singer Russell Ams, Miss Col¬ lins and her husband-bandleader Raymond Scott are due to stay^ with the show. Series is bankrolled on alternate weeks by Lucky Strike clgs and the Warner-Lambert. Copelanct Singling Allan Copeland, member of thfr Modemaires since 1948b ia leaving the combo to work as a single. Re’ll still cut for Coral Records which also has the Modemaires under pact. His first solo release Is “Feeling Happy” and “You Don’t Know,”