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About The Omaha guide. (Omaha, Neb.) 1927-19?? | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 1946)
New York Show Fronts... By Don De Leighbur HIT SONGS CAN BE WRITTEN IN 16 BARS New York_They’re making it easier for songwriters, both pro and amateur. Time was when you had to write 32 bars, no more and no less, to make your tune eligible for consideration by a pub lisher, a band, or a singer. Now a days, they’ve changed things so that its a whole lot simpler. In stead of 32, you can now write ’em in 16 and 24 bars. In fact, you can take many liberties that you’d never have dreamed possi >j-w - ..o jta.a ago. j ,» M/*'- -itrfp ttuu - recent issue to the new trend in soagwriting that should enc mage amatuers and profc-isio :aij. . r. simple terms it amojn.3 it this: jou have an idea for a song end jou whistle, hum, sing, or play it on the piano, it’s very sho.t and you sence it, wne ther you read music or not. nut you also Inal you’ve told your story through this particular song and in the way it is contracted You’ve been around and you know how the leader of that swing band talked for a half hour with you that night you took your tune “Till to., n Tillie”, up to the ball room to let him go over it. He had looked at it, had his piano player run over it, and then told you: “Why you haven’t but 18 bars. We can’t play it, although I really like it, unless it can be orchestra ted for 32 bars. You don’t write songs shorter or longer than 32 bars.’ ’ Back into your files goes “Till town Tillie’ a id with it goes also, in moat probabilities, your ambi tion for songwriting. You are now haunted by a specter of 32 Bara or None at all. 1 ou are not an ac Cgpjplis.-ed musician and you are not fankkav with all this technical business about8, 16, 24, and 32 bars. AU you know is that you have a tune that you like and o.:e that your friends like and it sounds good. Whether it is 18 or 20 bars, you know you have something original and good to listen too. Now that the man has told you it is too short, you don't know what to do because inspiration doesn’t always come in 32 bars Tin Pan Alley is setti g ' c trend today, and according to Bill board, its writers are turni.-g cut an increasingly large number o short lyric3. Most of these lyrics fit time ‘'vs.t are of the 16 bar variety and all you have to do is get an idea vnac a 16 oar song is luce is to lis ten to “It's Been a Long, Lcng rime," “Chickery Chick," arc That Feeling in the Moonlight.' Billboard savs it polled the sore getting 20 plugs on the radio and no less than seven were -16 far form. Cole Porter \r.d rhe long-haired boys are great on the experiment als in popular songs such as 64 bar affairs. But J. C Johnson, whose "Tra velin” won him wide honors as an ASCAP composer, made the na tional hit parade a decade or so ago with a dity called "Believe It Beloved,’ ’which the late Fats Wal ler, his writing partner, introduced via recordings. J C Johnson's "Be' leive It Beloved’ was a 16 bar song. If the song can be told in 8 bars it stands as much of a chance of being a hit as "Black Magic’ or a 132 Dir standard such as "Ain’t She Sweet.” , ^ 'the snorter length now ooen t all g'.ves the arrangers a big break and orchestras get a kick out of playings which are of the 1C- bar variety since they give the band -. - t> r.icr chance to p'ay more I tunes on air shows and also t. the j writing angle of the arranging j business.__ Too Soon; ioo Soon New York City (CNS) In a recent issue of Metro nome Music Magazine, we ran across an item which we thought highly amusing. It was about ihelina Carpenter, the ex-Basie chirper who is making “good” with Eddie Cantor via liis weekly broad ° easts. This white Metronome leader complained to the editor: ‘L read with delighted interest your praise to Ed die Cantor for the way he had presented Thelma Carpenter. Since 1 hadn’t heard any of nis pro grams, 1 decided to listen and see if real tolerance in radio had been achieved. “1 am sorry to say that i was greatly disappoint ed. The very moment I tuned in the broadcast, Eddie Cantor referred to Thelma Carpenter’s hav ing a date with “someone from Cab Calloway^ band.” Then Miss Carpenter was forced to read some lines to the effect that they were angry when they went into the Tunnel of Love because they “couldn’t find each other.” That was enough. I shut off the program right there. MI guess they just couldn’t go on without men tioning Miss Carpenter’s color. This is radio’s 25tli anniversary but I guess it hasn’t grown up yet.” Rita Naumoff, Brooklyn, N, Y. “Show Boat" Cleans Up New York ((’NS) Promoters for the 1946 revival of “Show Boat” let loose this information that the musical grossed more than $44,000 this week pure box office. Credit is due Oscar Hammerstein II, the most envied author on Broadway. POWERFUL AND BOLD !« ITS STORY! I UNFORGETTABLE IN STS DRAMA! f "The Picture of the Month!" I —KiDBOOK 20. CENTURY-FOX a lewis Milestone Production Starring DANA ANDREWS - RICHARD CONTE ftodocxd and Directed by LEWIS MILESTONE From the Novel by HARRY BROWN I "HERMAN? YOU LET AGATHA PLUG IN HER HAIR DRYER FOR A FEW MINUTES/" Don’t overload your electric circuits. When you build or modernize provide ADEQUATE WIRING. NEBRASKA-IOWA ELECTRICAL COUNCIL DANCE HALL QUEEN—Here we have radiant Ann Dvor ak as she appears in the forthcoming United Artists screen release, “Abilene,” a story of the turbulent life in the cattle-trail towns of the Old West. No wonder, is if, that the cow-hands of that day were so anxious to get into town whenever possible and have a look at this fas cinating dance hall charmer. I . - _ By Dan Gardner | Dream Books Great Sellers Among Negroes; Pass Up More Serious Literature... One day I stopped to look in the wmaow of a sto*e in Harlem dea ling largely with books and lit erature on the Negro. As I view I ed the display, my eyes became confused with the variety of tit les and subjects stacked, piled and laid out in the window in daz zling array. Posters showing the rugged features of strong Negro men, with the undying determin ation to overcome all obstacles in a struggle to reach a goal were plentiful as were pictures of Ne gro women with the aquiline fa cia! contours of white women, looking like ads in the daily news papers of white models in fu' coats and party dresses. I thrilled and it made a w’arm feeling steal over me to see before my eyes evidence that as a race we had progressed so far in literature, j statement by some of the eld' Negro orators and race-savers that the Rand McNally > ompa which manufactures mans si' 1 prints histories, once remarked I that no woolly-haired race had | ever left a written history or rt cord of its existence in the past. If this were true, I thctught well things have changed about with a vengeance. Where a city of written material on the Negro might have been 1 - -:r as to his civilized status in Africa and other countries prior to the Portuguese and S’ nnish. here v if concrete evidence that at last the black race has l .ialh . ji.it literary im1-:;. .alitv Ever} conceivable phase cf his ■fe s’e<r'''d displayed in this win dow; factual and fanciful; histori cal and imaginary, the record was here Such titles: ‘Soul of Black Folk’ ‘Miseducation of the Negro;’ ‘Black Boy’ and ‘Native Son’; 'Along This Way,’ ‘Up From Slavery’; ‘Black Reconstruction’ and ‘Black Metropolis’; ‘New World a Comin”; ‘What The Ne gro Wants’; ‘The Dove Flies South;’ 'If He Hollers Let Him Go;’ ‘The Darker Brother;’ ‘Au tobiography of an Ex-Colored Man;’ ‘Half a Man;’ a thousand subjects, it seemed all directed toward the Negro at home and abroad, and with placards and posters announcing new titles j that could be expected ies, it Reari u feel at last v. e were being writtei: about in such fashion.. Here lr this store, as it must be in hun dreds like it throughout the coun try, were books bv Negro authors books about Negro life, Negrc thought, Negro ambition, NegTc experiences, all waiting to jump into the hands of Negroes who should be more eager readers of fact and fancy on paper rather than listeners to tales and rumors handed down with the empellish ments added by many tellers. Now I told myself, there is no excuse j for white people to have miscon ceptions of the Negro. All they have to do is start reading ana after reai^riT ti-^v come to k tow about us better and to understand us and thus, make a change in their manner of think. :ng about us. All of which, I have -ougV would make a grea-er interracial harmony and sympa thy. I became so interested that I de" j cided to go inside. The display window was but a side show to - r. at was inside. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling and were packed with eraudily covered volumes, most of them on Negro Eubiects. fliers were piles of books on the floor and the neatly kept place seemed to be over crowded with its vast stock cf lit erature concentrated on explain-: ing what the Negro is, what he wants, what he hopes to do and what he has done, to a nation that: knows actually very little of him, i and also those of his own people j who have guessed mostly at these things with nothing concrete to 1 go on until the present. The thought came to me that within my memory, the Bible and old almanac had been the princi pal literature in countless homes wan only a few in a given house hold able to read from them to the rest of the family. Now, I enthused, we have thousands who can read anything and in many -—-X, .ix.lt an French Italian. C’ermp.n, 3pan:sh, Russian, and even Jap anese and Chinese. No excuse at ad no.v, I thought, and I tur .eu , around to sae what the ha _dful of ' customers were looking at wan dering There were young and old among them, men and women, noys ang girls., Some intelligent looking with glasses, which some how, denoted to me an indication of deep literary background. They were making frequent purchases from one or two piles of books on 1 the floor and I wandered over to j investigate. Loudly displayed wag the price 1 of The pile was in the mid dle of a big collection of books on , serious aspects of Negro life; so ; ciological and psychological stu I dies. But the customers were not baying them, instead, they were picking out copies of 'Make Mon W' th vour Dreams!’ That y was surprised is putting it mildly and I went back to the owner of uie store and asked him in a low rvnisper, ‘what books do you sell the most here?’ Witnout glancing up from his desk, he said: •_ . , ->ut of business if it wasn’t for r dream book trade and for books m sex nfe and Bibles. Safely outside again, I looked back into the window and Ikon into the faces of people hu* rv ,g past me. Insteed of great masses of Negroes rurhing into such of these stores as this to pure; ese the writings of authors who had 3pent yeais in studying the Negu problem and reporting upon it, most of them, I figured, were in terested, still, in numbers and dreams and willing to pa> i... for books on such subjects- I pas sed the corner newsstand ar. l sa a wen dressed negro pure, a;.; ; jUj - j_i. x thought 'X t t the Rar.-'ng Form will cuts. i tug in th. t took store- Cc:r ;dy had better get busy and tr id educat' cur ye epic, if w v Png to acquire any intellcctua: —-—round and resy j —bu who? 
