Word: trumpeteer
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. The Rev. Dr. Wilson Carlile, 95, "Bishop of Billingsgate, Archbishop of the Gutter"; three hours after the death of his brother, Sir Hildred Carlile, 90; in Woking, England. He resigned his curacy at London's St. Mary Abbots to play trombone or trumpet at street meetings in the London slums. Thus he founded the Church Army of the Church of England in the early '80s, built it into a vast organization of aims and size comparable to the Salvation Army. (His parishioners disapproved. One objected that pocket picking had gone on at one of the street meetings...
Three years ago, Benny Goodman gave his dark-haired, blue-eyed trumpeter a friendly shove toward bandleadership. A semi-failure at first, Bandleader James began tasting success only when he laid away his ambitions as a "hot" man, and developed a simple sweet style that features the clear, cool James trumpet against a mass of soft strings (he added five strings to his band to give it the un-swing-like total of eight). Imperturbably, James alternated blues and boogie-woogie with Viennese waltzes and technical specialties out of his own trumpet. But it was his revival of Al Jolson...
James's own first choices, harking back to the days when his father taught him classic circus numbers, are probably his trumpet arrangements of music-master favorites (Flight of the Bumble Bee, Carnival of Venice, et al.) His biggest Success Secret is the astute James theory that wartime fans, tired of pure heat, now want their heartstrings twanged. Other heartthrob Success Secrets in James's band: Helen Forrest, throb-voiced torcheuse, who copes as smoothly with wacky songs as with moon-June lyrics; Johnny McAfee, vocalist, and Corky Corcoran, sax wizard...
...Detroit, cash-heavy war workers are making a big splash, but mostly in noisy, smoky, gaudy places which look like overgrown Bierstuben. At the big Bowery Club trumpet-mouthed Martha Raye draws over 1,200 customers nightly to break house records. Almost all Detroit nightclub customers are factory workers; small individual checks are bolstered by a door charge. At the uppity Club Royale executives are coming back after months when they were too busy on war work to gallivant. Burlesque strippers disrobe before ever-growing audiences. Only complaint of the operators: kitchen help and waiters are hard to find...
Bill Davison stands by the old Chicago tradition of using a cornet instead of a trumpet, but that hardly precludes comparison with James. Bill may not rake in the shekels, but he plays good music far more consistently. Those who have been attracted to the Ken by Pee Wee Russell's fame and clarineting have invariably stayed to hear Davison. On the basis of tone alone, or ideas alone, he is undoubtedly a top-ranking musician. James may play more obviously difficult pieces, but Davison occasionally gets off some amazingly technical stuff himself, and this always in good taste...