Word: curleyism
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...five first got together in a North Hollywood High School dance band. When it began to look more like a rut than a groove, 17-year-old Piano Player Johnny ("Curley") Williams (named after his drummer father) broke away and formed his own quintet. He took with him Mel Sidney, a bullfiddle slapper like his dad, Al Pollen. Other recruits were 16-year-old Perry ("Bunny") Bodtkin, the trombone-playing son of Bing Crosby's guitar accompanist, and Gene Estes and Don Ingle. "Boy," says Curley, "we yanked the nucleus right out of that Hollywood High band...
...Curley, the boss of the juvenile jazzbos, puts it, "We were pretty rough at first-everybody fighting for their own salad." Now, when they play together, they like to "get casual." Don Ingle does some of the arranging. Sample: their Show Me the Way to Go Home consists of 17 bars of written music, followed by the words "sing chorus" scrawled across the middle of the score sheet; at the end it demands a "jam out." They don't worry about programing. Says Ingle: "We play half what the audience wants, which is Dixieland, and the other half what...
...sent to the Federal Penitentiary at Danbury, Conn. for using the mails to defraud. When in Washington as Congressman from the 11th District (Cambridge and Somerville). Curley had been the nominal president of the Engineer's Group, Inc., a company dedicated to the purpose of getting government contracts for small businesses. The Truman Committee, investigating the Group, caught up with the promoter James G. Fuller, a notorious confidence man. In the proceedings, it was found that Curley had accepted a $3500 check for services along the way. Therefore, in a trial in the District of Columbia, Justice James K. Prector...
Meanwhile, he had been elected mayor of Boston again and had to leave City Hall to serve his term. It was then, that Curley's strongest opponent in the present, mayoralty race, John' B. Hynes, became acting mayor. The city's charter provides that the chairman of the city council be mayor in case the elected mayor's indisposition, but in such a confused state was the city of Boston, that the city council chairman was also being held on under indictment by a grand jury, charged with graft. Thus, Hynes, the City Clerk, became mayor and was given...
...story wouldn't be complete without a purely Harvard angle. One day a reporter found that Curley for some reason or other, carried a revolver in his desk. When the newsman investivated he discovered that Curley felt in some danger for his life because a few days earlier, he had received a package that ticked. When he opened it, the major found an alarm clock surrounded by preprint candy that a couple of "prankish Harvard youths" had sent...