Word: combos
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Listening the other night to the Stradivarius Quartet, a small string combo which is definitely good listening. Violin Wolfe Wolfinsohn is strictly gate stuff--being the only man I have ever heard who can cut Joe Venuti in his better days. He told me after the concert that he had often listened to Joe and that he enjoyed him very much. I am sorry to say that I didn't like the way the Strad boys played the Haydn. They rushed it like Toscanini playing the blues and I expected. Uncle Joe Haydn to pop through the skylight...
...best. All the way through they came in smoothly, just behind the beat (that's what I mean by relaxed). Relaxation is undoubtedly the main stuff in all good playing and very few white outfits have the trick, but I mean these boys really have. Hear this combo by all means. Give a listen too, to their neat v-shaped phrases. They got the gift and no less a guy than Jan Sibellus once agreed with...
Donahue isn't now to fronting a band by any means. For some years past, he led a very successful "society" combo that played record engagements at the Rainbow Room in New York City and all over the East. However, last year he decided to get rid of the "English drawing-room" name that his band acquired and adopt swing. What the management thought would never happen, did: "Low-down Rhythm In A Tophat" was an instanteous success at the staid Rainbow Room. Enough so that Donahue made his decision to leave the pastures of the broad A forevermore...
...dance or swing rhythm from a band that is divided against itself --either one requires a unity that make History I's ditherings about Rome seem of ninth magnitude. Shaw may gain color --that Kostclanetz has already done-- from his new combo, but that's all. Neither good swing or good dance music comes from a French horn beeping legitimately and a clarinet screaming legitimately...