Evening Star Newspaper, August 3, 1930, Page 93

Horace Heidt George Olsen THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, AUGUST 3, 1930 The Chief Advantage of Higher Education Today Seems to Be That It Helps Bright Young Men Become Big Successes—in Jazz Orchestras. WORDS BY GILBERT SWAN. NCE upon a time collegt boys waited on table. Now the tables wait on them. They used to work their way through school. Now they play their way out of it. At the present rate of exchange, almost every university in the land will have te issue a new degree—M. J. (master of jazz). Incomes have been rolled up such as young- men-out-of-school could never have hoped to achieve in one of the professions. Bands are building up international reputa- tions for schools that all-star football teams might well envy. Orchestras made up of American undergraduates today make Summer tours, Janding up at Biarritz, Monte Carlo, Niceé, Paris, the Riviera, and the play places of Europe. A Broadway expert in such matters estimated for me the other day that 3,000 students or more will jazz their way through Europe. Last Winter the number of jazz banditti from the colleges ran into the thousands. Broadway sees & turnover of an endless parade. Some arrive out of nowhere to conquer the amusement fans of the hard-boiled highway; some come seeking jobs and turn back empty- handed; some come on college junkets to re- main and make their fortunes. ANHATTAN has a hundred-and-one ro- mantic stories of their varied successes. Just to glance down a very incomplete list of those who have dotted the Gay White Way and its environs in recent months—there’s Horace Heidt and his Californians, Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, Ben Bernie and Eddie Elkins, Rudy Vallee, Hal Kemp's South Carolinians, Bmlth Ballew’s young men from Texas, Jack Denny, the DePauw lad, Jack Albin; Tommy Christian, “Sleepy” Hall, George Olsen and Frank Cornwall. A baker’s dozen of them just by combing the surface! Some of the newer and more prosperous groups are operating like conservative big busi- ness organizations. Take, for instance, Horace Heidt, one of the most interestingly operated college organiza- tions in the land. From the income standpoint, this band is co-operative. Not only are the earnings equally divided among the members of the band, but an investment organization Jlooks after the savings. It was taken for granted that a body of col- lege youths, traveling over the globe, would get into a spending mood if success perched upon their shoulders. And so, before they set out from California a general trust fund was cre- ated. A percentage of the wages goes weekly into the coffers of this fund and is invested. Several of the lads who started out upon a shoestring can today claim up to $25,000, thanks to this business arrangement. Heidt and his Californians hit Manhattan over a year ago. They were unknown, but whisperings had preceded them that resulted in an engagement at the Palace Theater. Instead of the original single week for which they were booked, they remained a month and then were headed for a season at Monte Carlo, the playground of Europe on the Mediter- ranean. Heidt, a husky typical collegian of foot ball build and youthfully buoyant personality, was among the important members of the Univer- sity of California eleven not so many seasons ago. During a particularly tough game he was carried off the field, apparently seriously in- jured. He was told he must never play again. “And so,” he relates, “with nothing to do but lie in bed for quite a while, I took to think- ing about the future. I knew & bunch of the boys who had been out with the glee club and Tommy Christian 15 o B ——— | Fortunes for the College Boy Bands who were pretty tricky with musical instros ments. 3 “Out there music can become quite an ime portant parts of your educational bill of f There are young men in my band who play a dozen instruments. A few can play up to 20 or more. I can do better than that myself. Most of them were good enough athe letes to do a routine of tricks, and they could sing real glee club choral numbers and double in the band. So we got together and I organe ized the outfit for vacation engagements. We majored in peppy stunts that would be different and tried to keep a university flavor to our stuff.” b What he didn't say, I already knew. Heidt’s- injuries brought a fat assortment of hospital and doctor bills. When he came out he took a job in an oil station after school hours $o pay up. IT looked for a time as thcugh he would re= main an invalid for many a month, for his foot ball injury nad somehow wrenched hig backbone. Eight serious operations had beem necessary to straighten him up. : When the band was first organized 3t was agreed that every question that arose would be put to popular vote. Each player had & definite say. Those who fell off in their work were to be penalized, like college athletes whe break training. - They began with a nine-piece orchestra, Spe pearing in an Oakland hotel and getting varks ous engagements in and about Berkeley and up in the Sacramento Valley. Slowly the numw ber was increased and theatrical opportunitivhf " opened to them. . Or, if you'd care for another college 'tale, there's Smith Ballew, a six-foot Southwesternes from the University of Texas, who rode cattld on his uncle’s ranch and knows his Oklahoms and Texas by heart. ¥ Smith just finished a Winter's engagemend at the very swanky Club Richman, where the cover charge is almost as high as the adjoin= ing skyscrapers. He turned out phonographi records by the ream and is fast breaking in om the Vallee-Osborne crooning trust. r Which means that he's traveled a long way since he first hit Broadway with a college band which curled up its toes and went brokey Smith decided to stay and fight it out, after be found himself stranded in the big city. A¥ first he worked for othér orchestras, but gradw ually he began to put hHis own organization tom Continued on Sixteenth Page Fred Waring.