Word: harmonica
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...wars is in one small way also the gayest. Never before have the folks who entertain the boys been so numerous or so notable; never have they worked so hard, traveled so far, risked so much. In the Middle East last week were Jack Benny, Larry Adler with his harmonica, Al Jolson with a harmonium; Ray Bolger was in the South Pacific, Judith Anderson in Hawaii. A while back Martha Raye went to the foxholes of Tunisia; and in New Guinea a show went on within earshot of the Japs. From the ranks of show business have sprung heroes...
...mouth organ, or harmonica, has been a great comfort to U.S. soldiers in past wars. But priorities in metal have already put a serious crimp in the U.S. harmonica business. This war's comfort is more likely to come from two easily portable and nonmetallic instruments : the "sweet potato," or ocarina, and the tonette...
...Produced by Hollywood's fabulous cinemaestro, Sid Grauman, it offers, with crafty candor, the kind of variety show that was pulling them when Grauman left San Francisco 27 years ago. Headlined by Songstress Gertrude Niesen singing a batch of old songs, Highlights includes a trained-poodle act, harmonica players, highflying female aerialists, an impersonator, an oldtime clown, a Gay Nineties troupe, a ping-pong exhibition and two ventriloquists. Audiences, having the time of their fathers' lives, top it all off with some lusty community singing. Producer Grauman has given West Coast crowds the same kind of old time...
Most of the night he sat up trying to tease a tune from his four-year-old son's harmonica. Annoyed when he couldn't he went out next day, bought a 10? book on harmonica playing. Thus Painter Thomas Hart Benton started on his music-making hobby. He bought more manuals, tootled away for hours when it was too dark to paint...
Before long his painting students were bringing their harmonicas to his Manhattan studio. For those who couldn't read notes he worked out a special harmonica notation system. He dug up 17th Century music from libraries. On walking trips through the hills of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, he learned tunes from fiddlers and singers, copied others from old hymn books...