The Daily Alaska empire., 1942-10-21
1T |5 NOW BYE.BYE TO
 JITTERBUG5
Men in Musical Know how Claim People Want
 Ballads
By RAY PEACOCK

NEW YORK = That weird nois you just heard was the banshe' vail of hep-cats being put back 1T their cages. Which is to say tha after all these years the jumping jivers have been discovered to be { minority-noisy, but still a minority
 Who says? Bunch of fellows named Irving Berlin, Kay Kyser Guy Lombardo and John Doe Berlin, Kyser and Lombardo may bt prejudiced, but not good old John He's dry behind the ears and knows what he wants. And it ain't hey hey.
 I tried to make this composite picture by interviewing also l9- year -old gator who shall remain nameless, but we couldn't talk the same language. It seemed that wasn't hep.
 So let us examine first the tes- timony of the learned Professor Kyser, who has eschewed Ca word I've always meant to look up) the killer-diller stuff ever since his or chestra burst out of the Carolina canebrakeS.
 The bulk of the people, he deposed, still love melody because they understand it. It's been fig ured out that only eight per cent of the entire audience for popular music wanted swing, and say that less than e-fourth of the one per cent of that eight per cent knew what swing was. All the proof you need is that nobody could define it.
 The era of hot music is over. Nobody wants to hear eight hot tunes in a row, but they'll listen to a medley of eight sweet tunes in a row, and want more.
 Berlin. called out from a re- hearsal of his new wartime musical, 'This Is The Army" was accepted as an expert witness after admit ting he has written about 25 hit ballads, of which ten sold more than a million copies.
 Sympathetic Note
 Anything fundamental is always right" he testified. And that goes for the ballad The public will ac- cept any song that has a sympathet- ic note"
 The witness Lombardo gave his testimony in the form of an ex- perience which happened in 1929 in Chicago.
 We were playing the Palace, " he submitted, and I thought it would be pretty hot stuff if we did novelty number called Peoria, in which we wore very funny hats. After the show the manager came up and said, Look, I can get a hundred bands that will put on hats for a lot less money than we're pay ing you. Stick to the simple stuff. That's what they come here for "
 Called back for rebuttal, Prof, Kyser allowed that he was sick and tired of having sweet music called corny"
 "The word 'corny isn't used right, either in music or writing" he as- serted rather violently. If you write effectively and simply they call it corny, but really, simple story written mushily-that's corn.
 Swing Craze Out
 Nine out of the first ten songs on the Hit Parade, all during the swing craze, were ballads. We all love to hum a song because that's all most of us know about music. Music is only reflection of thought. Sixteen months ago, we recorded We'll Meet Again but it didn't click because people weren't thinking of parting Now it's hit ballad because thousands of boys are gone"
 The hep-cats probably will re- fuse to accept the verdict. They'll say that I, too, am prejudiced. All right, so I am. I probably ought to dance on one leg and wiggle my forefingers like they do, the while shouting hot -cha-cha" and "vo-de- o-do." But I'll be darned if I will. I work all day and get tired.