Variety (February 1957)

82 MUSIC Vcdne^ayy Febniary 1$, 1957 Aflnmi Field a Pitcbnian’s Parafse; RCA’s Pajamas-DrinbXoanedcs Tie RCA Victor will be in the middledof a $1,000,000 four-company ad-j promotion campaign next month to ' sell albums, pajamas, cosmetics and a soft drink ip one package. Vic¬ tor, which ran a , similar promo¬ tion last month, except that it picked up the major Jtiib for the ad¬ vertising, estimates that it will spend around $35,000 during, March as its share of the cooperative sell¬ ing campaign. With the album promotion titled “Let’s Have a Pajama Party,” 16 Victor albums will be spotlighted. In ads placed in national mags by Schrank’s, the pajama manufac¬ turers; Coty, the cosmetic com¬ pany, and Canada Dry, the softdrink outfit. Campaign, of course, will have a teenage peg.. Victor is pressing 500,000 copies of a 25c EP sampler of which Schrank 4s taking 250,000 to pack with its line of sleepwear. Canada Dry is offering the sampler via coupon ads in consumer mags and in a point-of-sale Campaign in su¬ permarkets. The Victor instru¬ ment division is packing a booklet, on “How to Give a Pajama Party,” with each of its phonos v^ith an attached coupon for the sampler. Over 1,000,000 copies of the book¬ let are being distributed. Sampler di^ headlines Julius LaRosa, who introes selections from six of the Victor albums. Victor is handling the jockey promotion and kits of the products of each of the four companies are being cuffoed to the deejays for use as prizes to listeners in contests involving -the sampler. Distributors of each of the companies in each area are joining forces in March to put over the “pajama party” idea. William Alexander, RCA Victor director of advertising and pro¬ motion, engineered his company’s spot in the four-way tieup, Herschel Gilbert Coast A&R’er for RKO-Unique Herschel Gilbert will head RKOUnique Records’ artists & reper¬ toire activities on the Coast. Diskery’s overall a&r operation will continue under the supervision of firm's prexy Joe Leahy. In addition to his activities as Coast a&r chief, Gilbert, a com¬ poser-conductor-arranger, will re¬ cord for the label as well as pro¬ duce albums featuring the com¬ pany’s artists who are based in Hol¬ lywood for their film w^ork. Gilbert, who’s arranged for such pix as “Carmen Jones,’’ “The Moon Is Blue” and “The Thief,” has been away from the recording end .of the biz for more than 10 years. Cleffer.Suit Vs. Vallee In Federal Court Defay The suit in' N. Y. Federal Court against Rudy Vallee over the al¬ leged infringement of six unpub¬ lished tunes, skedded to be tried last week before Judge Edward Dimock was postponed indefi¬ nitely, The .Suit was filed by the Musicana Corp. against Vallee and Story ville Records. Inc. According to the complaint, Joseph McCarthy Jr. and Austen Croom-Johnson wrote the six tunes, “The -Man of Distinction,” The Man At The Eiid Of The Bar,” “Don’t Swat A Bar Fly,” “Me Father’s Drinking Cup,” “Bar¬ tender” and ‘“rhat Old ferass Rail,” which they assigned to LaurelMusic, but the songs were never published. The complaint charges that Vallee infringed by recording the tunes in a 1954 album, called, “Rudy Vallee’s Drinking Songs” for Storyville. Vallee had denied the allega¬ tions and his defense when trial is resumed at a future date is that Laurel had relinquished the rights by abandonment and that the songs were in the public domain. He also' says that the authors, had given their contSent. Musicana had secured copyrights on the tunes bn March 28, 1955. The trial was postponed because of the illness of Croom-Jo'hfison. o wonderful seasonal song STYNE AND CAHN'S Belafonte Begat . . What hath Belafonte wrought? Everybody is get¬ ting into the calypso act, whether fitting into the pat¬ tern or not. Among the new calypso en¬ tries this week are “Morning Tiight,” with Louis Jordan on Mercury and Jordan’s “Time Marches On” and “Run Joe” oii Decca; The Gaylords* “Open The Letter” on the same label; “Big Man” by Billy Strange oh Era "Records; Josephine Fremice with “Hol¬ lywood Calypso” and “Siesta” from her GNP Records album; Wee Bonnie Baker’s “The Water In The Well” on the Kahili' label; Bob Carroll’s “Look What You’ve Done To Me” for Bally Records; and The Fabulous MacClevertys* “Don’t Blame It On Elvis” and “Tickle, Tickle” for Verve. CHI FOOD CHAIN’S 1ST IP RACK-UP Chicago, Feb, 12. National Tea Co. supermarkets in the "Chicago area put LP records on its racks last week. Masterseal Records, an affiliate of Remington Records, N.Y. diskery, is contract¬ ed to release two albums a week for 15 weeks through the National chain. Most are in the light classi¬ cal vein an<'. all are priced at $1.49, Previously only 45 rpm singles have been available in food and drugstores here. The food store chain launched an extensive adver¬ tising campaign foi the operation and Lanny Ross, whose “My Fair. Lady” album will bj the first rer lease, was in town for personal appearances. VICTOR’S LOHGTERMER WITH MAESTRO RENE Henri Rene, RCA Victor’s Coast ipahager of artists' & repertoire, is exiting that post next month. Rene, however, will continue as a record¬ ing artists with the company and has signed a new longterm Victor pact as an orch maestro last week. Rene, who returned'^ to Hollywood over the weekend after huddles with Victor execs in N. Y., wiU re¬ main on the Coa.st. where he has a home. He has been on Victor’s a&r staff since 1945 and went to the Coast around six years ago. Meantime, Joe Carlton, Victor’s pop a&r chief, and musical direc¬ tor Hugo Winterhalter are .heading to the Coast 'this week. Carlton will 0.0. the situation regarding a replacement for Rene, although Dennis Farnon, Rene’s assistant, is reported to have the inside track 'on the job. Carlton and Winter¬ halter will also confer with Eddie Fisher, Kay Starr and the DeCas^ tro Sisters on new releases. Kornheiser Puts in His 2c Worth Vs. Hotpoint Hotpoint is burfiing up Sidney Kornheiser, E. H. Morris Music’s general professional manager. He’s steaming over the “decadent” Copyright Act (1909) which re¬ quires Hotpoint to shell out only a 2c royalty rate for the use of “Tenderly” in its new electric range. The range goes into a chorus of the Walter Gross melody after the meat has been cooked to specifica¬ tions. Kornheiser’s beef is that the regular mechanical royalty remains in effect even for an item that re¬ tails from between $600 and $700. It’s all legal, however, since Hot¬ point acquired a mechanical li¬ cense for the tune from Morris about six months ago. . Ted Lewis opens at Louis Brecker’S Roseland Dance City, N. Y., Feb. 19. Music Wifh A Sense Of Humor HARRY RANCH And His ORCHESTRA Currently until Mar. 13 (fourth return) GOLDEN NUGGET. Las Vegas Mar. IS thru May 5— HACIENDA, Fresno; May 8 thru June 4— WAGON WHEEL, Lake Tahoe; June 5 thru July.2-GOLDEN HOTEL, Reno; July 4 thru Sept. 25-GOLDEN NUGGET, Las Vegas (Fifth Return); Sept. 27 thru Oct. 24-GOLDEN HOTEL, Reno (Return Again), ASSOCIATED BOOKING CORPORATION JOE GLASER, Pres. New York I Chicago I Hollywood 745 Sfh Avp. PL. 9-4600 | 203 No. Wabash | 8619 Sunset Blvd, Cleffer Johnson Sues Joy, Gallop-Livingston on ’Wake’ Songwriter James Johnson slapped a $100,000 infringement suit in N. Y. Federal Court last week against Joy Music and writ¬ ers Sammy Gallop and Jerry Liv¬ ingston. Johnson claims that the defendants infringed his tune, “Looking Into Space,” which he wrote prior to 1949, with a tune called “Wake the Town and Tell the People.” .. Johnson, who published his own tune, charges that he informed the defendants of the alleged infringe¬ ment but that from October, 1954, to August, 1956, they published and recorded “Wake the Town.” Action also seeks an accounting of all monies derived by the de¬ fendants. Epic Drops Price On Cieve. Symph to $2.98 In a move to spark sales interest in its classical catalog and to pro¬ mote the Cleveland Symphony, Epic Records has dropped the price on the symph’s sets to $2.98. Reg¬ ular retail price of the albums has been $3.98. The sales pitch, which will run through February, goes into effect only with the purchase of two al¬ bums for $5.96. There are sTx Cleveland albums offered in the promotion, including two new re¬ leases, “Slavonic Dances” and “Highlights from Wagner’s ‘Ring’ Cycle.” Epic will spotlight the lowprice Cleveland campaign with a con¬ sumer ad barrage. The symph is under the direction of George Szell. Col Gets Petty Trio Columbia Records has beaten ABC-Paramount to the punch in nabbing the Norman Petty Trio. Although ABC-Par last week bought up the master of Petty’s “Almost Paradise” from the indie Nor-Va-Jak label for national dis¬ tribution, Col slipped in and wrapped him up to a longterm waxing deal. ABC-Par is releasing “Almost Paradise” under its own banner early this week. Petty began to' stir up music biz interest after the side took off in the Detroit area. Inside Stidl-Miisic Hazard of letting in an audience at a recording session to get a “live” quality to the performance was spotlighted at RCA Victor's 24th St. studio in“New York last week when 14 teenagers from the Bethpage. L.I., High School were invited as guests. Session was to feature organ¬ ist Dayton Selby’s rhythm combo, but during one of the rock ’n’ roll numbers, the students took over the studio with haildclapping and shouts of “Go, Man, Go.’J Ed Heller,, niusical directdr of the pop album department, couldn’t make himself . heard over the mike to restore order. The session was finally recoriied. with the kids dancing in the background. In conjunction with the current Jerry Lewis stand at the Palace Theatre on Broadway, Decca bas stepped up a dealer promotion in 4he N.Y, metropolitan area in behalf'^of the performer’s bestselling pack¬ age, “Jerry Lewis Just Sings.” Special streamers and window display cards are being distributed to disk stores and a 10-foot-high blowup of Lewis is being, displayed at Dacca’s Woodside, Queens, blranch. Plugs for the Lewis album are also being spotted in the Palace lobby during his run. ’ Ella Fitzgerald’.s reprise of “Manhattan,” from “Garrick Gaieties,” witnesses a third lyric revamp of the original Rodgers, Hart line which j^an “ ’Abie's Irish Rose’ is a' great show they say, we both may live to see it close one day.” When; Tony Martin and Dinah Shore did an RCA Victor revival some Seasons^ back it' was switched to “South Pacific” and now Miss Fitzgerald’s Verve albumizing of the “Rodgers & Hart. Songbook” has “Mj^Fair Lady” as the substituted legit title. There was a slight goof , at the recent Broadcast Music Inc. awai*d luncheon for the top rhythm & blues tunes of 1956., Unaccountably, among the missing was “Hound Dog,” written by Jerry Lleber and Mike Stoller and published by Lion Music. It was one of the year's big hits Via the Elvis Presley rendition for RCA Victor. An -idea of prolific, diskery output was aired by a statistical KMPC (Bevhills) deejay las of Feb. 3) that “this is the 457th disk release since the first of the year, not counting 77 albums so far received.!’ — = ■ Sidemen Steal the Show As Eddie CondoQ Orch Racks SRO in London London, iFeb. 5. Eddie Condon .and his orch wound their exchange tour of Britain with a midnight concert at Royal Festival Hall last night (Tues.)'. This was^the second Lopdon appearance of a bSnd visiting this country for the, first time. Condon, who means a lot to older British jazz enthusiasts but is vir¬ tually a newcomer to the younger generation, has now established his name here.. On the other side of the ex¬ change is the Ronnie Scott orch. which opens its U.S. tour in Pitts¬ burgh, Feb. 15. At the Stoll Thea¬ tre, where the Condon qutfit made its London bow Sunday (27), the concert was a sellout. .But a firstrate group of individual musicians doesn’t have to mean that as a band they’re outstanding. This was so with the Condon combo. Play¬ ing second half of the two-hour show with Britain’s top traditional band, led by Humphrey Lyttleton as the first-half warmers, the Yank outfit from Greenwich Village gave out with little more^than can be heard from any one of the top Brit¬ ish outfits. Individually, they were superb. Drummer George Wettling leads the field at his sort of playing by a big margin, and at the Stoll concert held the band to a steady tempo without cramping its style. The Lyttelton band, comprising trumpet, alto clarinet, trombone, piano, bass and drums, held the hudience in the first half with a more normal type of off&ring. Their combined sound was on the whole, better than Condon’s. Both aggregations combined for a free-for-all finale jam session, which provided the most exciting music of the evening. But the to¬ tal impression of the audience was one of disappointment. Somehow things never really got moving. Barn. Joy Music-FD&H Deal Hits ‘Control’ Hurdle London, Feb. 12; The deal between Eddie Joy and the Francis, Day & Hunter-Feldman-Robbins group in London for the setting up of Joy Music here, is in danger of going cold over a question of control. Joy, who arrived In London last week to accompany Guy Mitchell on a short concert tour, said that if the difficulties weren’t ironed out, he’d seek a deal elsewhere. He returned to London today (Tues.) from Bristol to resume discussions. CBS' National Symph Series Washington, Feb. 12. CBS is concluding negotiations to put Washington’s National Sym¬ phony Orch on the air for 13 weeks, commencing in the late spring. The series follows that' of the Philadelphia Orchestra on the radio web. ASGAP y Continued from pape 79 animously that Don George’s con¬ tribution to the “Yellow Rose of Texas” .was “indeed scant” and hence did not rate the 30% award. It was brought^ out at the hear¬ ing that ASCAP makes close com¬ parisons of new songs based on p.d. material to determine the rat¬ ing credit. In some cases, musi¬ cologists are brought jn to compare the old and new worksand evaluate the extent of the new contribution. It was conceded, however, that since even musicologists are “not infallible,” the Society is in a continual process of reevaluating claims about songs based on p.d. material. , . Among the songs that figured in the panel’s decision were such p.d. originations ag “La Cucaracha,” “The Saints Rock ’n’ Roll,” /‘When The Saints Go Marching In,” “The Lonesome Road,” “Bell Bottom Trousers,” “The Night Before Christmas,” “Sweet Violets,” “Love Somebody,” “The Hatfields and The Coys,” “^he -Martins and Tlie Coys,” “Yes, My Darling Daugh¬ ter,” “Lavender Blue," “Put Your Little Foot Right Out” and “Coun¬ try Gardens.” It was conceded, moreover, that ASCAP does not always pay the 20% credit where warranted. This, it was explained, is'“partially due to a practice of some -members to erroneously credit themselves as authors and/or composers of compositions derived from the pub¬ lic domain.” The OF THE WEEK TONY OARROIL IT WAS $0 THRILLING and I WANTCHA TO KNOW MGM 12425 K 12425 CLEARANCE SALE Tony Martin Tux (11 oz.) . $25.00 Full Dress (11 oz.). . $30.00 White Dinner Jack^s . $ 7.50 (AU Like New) HERMAN'S 101 W. 47th Street. New York 36, N. Y. JUdson 6-^814