The Washington times., 1927-02-26
ATTIC KEEPS
TUNERS HOME

Deafening crashes OF static
and crystal clarity Of tone and
volume In distant stations made
LAST night one of the most mad.
dening for tuners radio recep-
ton has provided. There have
been very few evenings for
months when such q lombard.
ment has taken place In the
atmosphere. There have like.
wise been few evenings when all
sections Of the continent regis
tered SO clearly with their pro.
grams or programs were SO easy
to tune. The condition thus ere.
ated was the most tantaIizing and
unsatisfactory Of the year.
With the Jupiter Pluvius of the
wave lengths casting his thunder
bolts hither and yon over the dial
ing distances with the most careless
abandon and continuity, 1t Is easy
to say that the WRC program last
night was the best on the air, be-
cause nobody heard enough of any
other program to set up an opposite
opinion. But, despite the crashing
and banging. wen assert that no
better singing was heard than that
provided by Gretchen Hood from the
Burlington in the early evening and
no better orchestral music was on
the air than that provided by the
Lord Calvert ensemble and Louis
Katzman's Anglo-Persians from
WEAF.
In the three songs she sang to
celebrate her return to the air after
a long vacation, Miss Hood displayed
three very different musical moods.
Her voice proved itself to be quite
as fine and true and velvety as it
has always been--a voice that can
take any amount of singing and
should have considerably more than
| It has had. judging from the charac-
ter of some of the tones that were
heard last night.
Hers is one of the rare soprano
voices that registers perfectly in
the microphone-which is as much
due to the expert way in which It
Is used as to its natural mellow
ness and purity. OF her three
numbers it seemed to me that she
gave more to the first. Rose of
My Heart" than she did TO either
the Bizet "Habanero" or 81 Heard
a Brown Bird Singing" But the
group was the high vocal note of
the evening-and about as high and
fine a performance as one obtains
in an evening of dialling.
CALVERT ENSEMBLE
JUSTHTES PROMISES
The Lord Calvert ensemble tusti.
fled all the promise that has been
made for it with its concert last
night and Fred Stark should be
very proud of his men. / heard
what heard OF it in the studio,
but reports from the air showed
that the same highlights / got in e.
closeup came over the wave lengths
Most of the time 1t was playing
the better part of US were trying to
locate Marian Talley and the Victor
program somewhere where they
could be heard without battle of
the Marine accompaniment, so the
chances are that most people
missed 1t.
The same might be said of
Louis Katzman's performance with
the Anglo Persians-most of us
being so enraged at the atmos-
phere and engaged in trying 1t
out to satisfy ourselves il was
not our radio sets that caused
the trouble, that we did not really
enjoy 1t.
The Victor hour was a total
loss SO far as most of us was
concerned. Marian Talleys voice
seemed to be bit hard-when it
could be heard. Lawrence lib
belts, the baritone, appeared TO
be the real star of the aggrega.
tion-but the atmospheric uproar
made it impossible to get enough
of anything from either Talley,
Tibbetts or Richard Crooks, the
tenor, to found sound Judgment.
Aside from this the outside wave
lengths We're not particularly pro-
ductive-or at least after 4 plunge
or two into the din most tuners
shivered back to WRC and let
the dials remain there.