Evening star., 1938-01-23
Manhattan Mirror
In Which Our Correspondent
Records the Weeks Events
Worthy of Mention.
By Gracs Hemdrick Enssis

NEW YORK.
~ HREE people, Manhattanites
by adoption and not by
birth, individually ran away
Il with New York last week.
Benny Goodman. unadvertised.
packed Carnegia Hall Sunday night
and sent home a frantically ap-
plauding back-thumping audience
which shufded out into the snow,
singing snatches OF hot jazz. Jack
Baragwaneth, able mining en-
gineer, husband Of Neysa McMein,
darling Of the brighter element In
cafe society, presented New York
ers with a play about themselves
and Elsa Maxwell gave a party.
y Il X
CLAP-HAPPY, Aug-nutty was
Benny Goodmans audience on
Sunday night. Debutantes, white
collar workers, familiar faces from
the Roaring 40s and the cabaret
belt, colored people were all
heterogeneously piled together into
boxes usually reserved for the
patrons of Carnegie Halls dis
ttnguished concerts. It was an
upsetting evening to these music
lovers who have not varied the
angle Of gilt chair or changed
their red-plush orchestra seats for
years. Once, when Deems Tay-
lcr was music critic on the old
New York World, he memorably
described the typical, rich, concert
ticket subscribers thus:
They are like people in a Rob-
ert Chambers novel. They come in
at 8 o'clock, fresh from their linn
cuisines and stroll down the aisles
while the music is going on and
recognize their friends in the boxes
and wave to them and step on your
feet and say 'sawwry' and talk
and talk and talk and talk through
everything with the simple unaf-
fected heartiness of trainload Of
Bavarian peasants"
We'll, this group was out OF luck
on Sunday. They were there but
they were unhappy. On every side.
as the swing music beat around
them like the tom-toms in voo-
doc dance and the great Good
man quartet with its Polish
soldier" clarinet, its "gobble
trumpet tsaXaphone), its slap
the rowboat' tbase fiddle) and its
skins (druns, poured out great
syncopation, the audience went
native. They got religion. From
the boxes. from the gallery, from
the orchestra, men and women
would Jump up and start singing
and clapping time. All around
them people would tramp with their
feet and beat out the rhythm with
their programs, some on the tempo
of the melody. some on the off-beat
Of the Soloists.
In the midst of this commotion
which broke loose in the audience
and on the stage because, in a good
swing orchestra musician may
arise and improyise at will and so
subtle is the harmonic symphony
between the players that they fol-
low his flights effortlessly, Benny
Goodman was still figure. He
stood there quiet. smiling, assured,
sympathetic, looking contentedly
around the audience. conducting
only with twitch OF his knee, q
tap Of his foot.
This wasn't the first time the
stately portals of Carnegie Hall
had been invaded by popular music,
but 1t was the most primitive and
exciting. Fourteen years ago Paul
Whiteman took his elegant band
there, accompanied by its pure
white equipment, pianos. chairs,
conductors stand and a battery of
shifting colored lights. 1t was a
plushy and rich performance, but
tressed by immense publicity. Paul
Whlteman explained, in many press
interviews, that this was an ex-
pertinent to show the development
Of jazz from the crude terms OF
1914 to the sophisticated rhythm
and dexterous Instrumentation that
he had evolved with the aid OF
George Gershwin and others. He
made his point in a way. Jazz
was accepted. The critics, most OF
the good ones, called 1t clever but
anaemic and feared that success
would ruin its possibilities. But the
dowagers approved. Popular Or
chestras were taken from Broad
way to play in marble halls and