Word: savoyism
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Over the ages, counts, princes and marquises have flourished and multiplied in Italy like olive trees. In the Italian view, a fancy title, like oil on a lettuce leaf, lends zest and flavor to a man's name. Italy's House of Savoy doled out titular rank in the Order of the Crown of Italy to almost half a million Italians. A janitor with 30 years' service-in a government ministry was virtually assured of a knighthood, and the right to be addressed as cavaliere...
They started to make trips to the Savoy on Massachusetts Avenue to listen to trumpeter "Red" Allen and the Searsdale (New York) High School sensation, clarinetist Bob Wilbur. After a time, when they became known at the Savoy, they woud climb up on the stand and take over the nightclub...
...before they played at the Freshman Smoker, the entire group trooped down to join the musicians' union, because New Orleans clarinetist Edmond Hall was coming out from the Savoy to play with them "and the union was watching us like a hawk." Shortly afterwards they played for the Radcliffe freshmen at Agassiz Hall, where they were paid off in rye smuggled in by an admiring Cliffe girl...
Last year the band started off at the Savoy with the trumpet played by 20-year-old. Tufts graduate Paul Gibson, whom Gifford calls "the best jazz trumpeter this side of New York." Then they branched out. They went twice to Smith College (Gifford is carried away by the memory where 200 girls in sweat shirts and dungarees sat in a semicircle and shrieked for the real oldtimers like "Coal Cart Blues" (an Armstrong standby). And they found another faculty supporter in Roy Lamson, Jr. '29 clarinet-playing professor of Sociology at Williams...
They played the college circuit from a house party at Dartmouth to a performance in a baseball cage at a Spring Country Fair at Wesleyan in Middletown, Connecticut. Sandwiched in between were a number of Monday night sessions at the Savoy with bands led by Hall, trombonistsc Vic Dickenson, and pianist Joe Sullivan...