The Public Arts with Gilbert Seldes; WNYC

I'm afraid that again I have to explain that this recording is made where I live instead of under studio conditions and is therefore subject to interruptions and possibly telephone, bell ringing, etc. This is a consequence of having by now some time ago fractured an ankle and I shall not go further into that except to say I apparently am, as they say, mending. One of the fascinations of the big series of programs that were put on toward the end of last year and beginning of this year has been a sudden eruption of jazz and television. Now you think of this at once in two ways but why hasn't it happened before and why is there so much of it suddenly?

Well the fact that the two biggest of the jazz programs came within a couple of weeks or one another would indicate that they had been a separate plan that one is not a consequence of the other. But there are indications we're going to have something approaching the proportions of a cycle in the movies. We're going to have jazz done in a variety of ways in television. The eruption of jazz is actually part of an astounding development in music. A few weeks ago, one month ago, time magazine devoted its cover to the subject of music and more or less introducing the article had this to say. The music boom sometimes seems less a cultural awakening than a mammoth assault

of indiscriminate sounds on a public that no longer has any place to hide. Amateurs psychologists say that the US is becoming afraid of silence. Music and wild perfusion voles forth from phonographs, radios, television sets, jukeboxes, piped music ushers untold thousands of Americans into the world, hospital delivery rooms, through it, garages, restaurants and hotels, and out of it, mortuary slumber rooms. Millions open their eyes to it, wrapped themselves in it as they drive to work, turn out goods and services to a brisk production boosting beat. Each overall stitches in Colorado stitched 10% faster to ain't we got fun. The rest of the time article is about the astounding increase in symphonic and operatic production in the United States. Actually, the lovers of jazz, among whom I am listed, had a feeling that

because of the nature of television, jazz might disappear from the air if radio eventually caved in. Radio shows no signs of caving in. And as I said, you have now a resurgence of jazz as an object in itself as a good subject for television. The first of the big hour shows was on the semulively arts of CBS it had some extraordinary features indeed. I'm glopping for a name and having lost it, I just won't say, won't get the name wrong. You had in that production some three or four famous bands

who played separately, who seemed to be playing as they were at a jam session. There was a notable lack of formality. The players were in shirts with the hats on, whatever seemed best to them. And what came over was jazz itself. Less than three weeks later, Steve Allen had an hour program which was a little bit more like a production. Parts of it were picked up from nightclubs and I had the impression that in some of it at least was being pushed around. It seemed hurried and at the same time a tremendous sense of vitality was coming off the screen.

I recall many years ago now, I suppose the first jazz it was ever done in television was under my own Aegis, so to speak. A member of the CBS staff suggested to me that we bring in a small combo and we had the great pleasure of presenting my recollection something like a dozen, half-hour concerts by Eddie Condon. I think he only had two or three other people. Those days it was extremely difficult to catch up with the artists. We didn't have much time for rehearsal and we only had two cameras each with one lens so that we had to wing it. We had to guess and what luck we did guess is to which of the Eddie Condon players were going to take it up at any given moment.

But after television went on its binge being large scale, when it had infinitely more apparatus deal with it, jazz seemed to go out. You got some of it, but very often it was as an accompaniment to a dance in the hit parade which shows and still does show an extraordinary ingenuity. You would have, in a sense, an illustration of jazz just as you would have an illustration of a sentimental song. Now, obviously, no one wants to put music in the position of being only an accompaniment to anything if it's good for itself. Therefore, I think this is an extremely interesting development.

One thing is certain that the radio enthusiasts continue, and I trust they continue to get adequate supply of jazz. Many of them, I do know, feeling they're not getting what they want, have become high-fi addicts, and I use the word addicts. Well, as a term of praise, I think it's, say, devil-tees, I think, is the more noble word. And get their jazz in that way. There have been more books published on jazz, I think, in the last three years than for many years before that Leonard Feather and Marshall Sterns are two of the people whose work can be consulted with a great deal of confidence. I won't mention some works which seem to me. Slightly this side of being really about jazz and more about their authors' experiences listening to jazz. As I say, this strikes me as being extraordinarily interesting phenomenon.

As much as I find that jazz has more capacity for growth and development than possibly any other of those entertainments I once call the Library Arts, I'm glad to see that here is a new way of getting at it. And what I hope is that the requirements particularly of commercial jazz will not spoil the thing in its essence. On the night, Steve Allen's jazz show was going on, there was beginning at precisely the same moment, another event, largely musical. It was, unfortunately, named, sorry, call it the Girl from Philadelphia's, a foolish name like that, a story of Marion Anderson's tour in the Orient, Indian, Borneo, Indonesia, and so on,

which was presented on the See It Now program introduced by Edward R. Murrow. In as much as the Anderson program had been filmed, could be seen in advance, and the music, and even the conversation, already appeared on a record, which is now available, it was possible if you did some violence to the music, to switch from one channel to another. And I must say, an extraordinary moment when I switched from Marion Anderson just stopped singing so long to channel four on NBC, and there was Sachmo blowing his heart out. You had ecstasy of one kind and ecstasy of the other, and you certainly had the feeling that nine tenths of the musical future of America is safely in the hands of the Negro people.

I suppose that's an exaggeration mathematically, but when you heard Marion Anderson sing, no hiding place down there, or he's got the whole world in his hands, which was the most effective thing that I heard or do, and then you got Sachmo blowing away. It was really quite an extraordinary phenomenon. Actually, the Marion Anderson program was a report of a political event, as Anderson went far corners of the world under the auspices of the State Department working through the American National Theatre. A great many artists have been sent.

They are really our unofficial ambassadors. And Miss Anderson can't be doubted, and there was certainly one of the most effective of them. There were interviews of some of them off the cuff and some of them official, in which such matters as Little Rock came up, and her extraordinary simple beauty and the beauty of her mind, as she answered these questions, was effective beyond words. I understand that some hundred prints of this film have been made and will be used, whether any of them will be used in this country or not. I'm not so sure, but international telephone and telegraph are sponsored. The broadcast made these films available. They really are a part of the propaganda,

and I think they should be seen in the United States, where they are needed just as much as anywhere else. One of the great things about this film is that the corporate hero of it is the people who listen. You watch all kinds of people and all ages. There's one moment I recall when a man shook his head as if he couldn't believe how wonderful this was, the pictures of awestruck children. You've got a kind of tension as people listened. And I was angered. I was felt cheated at one moment, because I was watching these people, and just as Miss Anderson came to the end of a song, the camera cut to her, and I couldn't see the expressionists,

which I knew were rapturous on the face of the people. In another concert, you did get that, and it was really extraordinary, because it's almost a sense of relief and joy came at the end of a song. Now, it's interesting that there was another tour made, and I have the data on that, and did it second hand. A recent issue of the Nation has a report by Nat Hentoff, who was co-author of the Jazzmakers, and also hear me talking to you, a high-fi enthusiast. In an article by Mr. Hentoff, on a tour made by Wilbur De Paris, I suppose that's the name, it's pronounced. I've heard his music, but I've never heard anyone who knows

in pronounce his name, so I'm not sure. It's spelled Wilbur De Paris. This is a jazzman, as you know, who went from Ghana on the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Liberia, through French equatorial Africa, Belgium, Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan. As again, was our State Department and Anter working together. It made this tour possible. The extraordinary thing, of course, was that in this, Mr. De Paris was taking jazz to the place. Well, we think it began. And some of the things that you discovered are fascinating. In Africa, the only soloist who got applause spontaneously was the drummer.

You couldn't blow to make them applaud. They didn't apparently know that a trumpet solo was a solo, according to Mr. De Paris. Again, you had an extraordinary success, and again, you had a Negro who had answered all questions about us and managed to do it. He was asked incidentally, how do you like Africa and which you like to live here? Mr. De Paris said, under certain conditions, by which I could make my way in my chosen profession, but that's not possible in Africa. That parallels closely to what Marion Anderson said when she was asked why she didn't make speeches, and she said she had to act in her profession. She could not talk as well as other people she could think. Now, it is perfectly clear that

these unofficial ambassadors of ours do a great work, and you would think that the State Department would be happy to use more of them. Now, obviously, you have to ask a person on whom you're going to put the status of an unofficial ambassador, what do you think, and what are you going to say when you're asked certain questions? Now, neither Miss Anderson nor Mr. De Paris, blinked the fact that there were difficulties in race relations, particularly the white and negro relations in the United States, and neither of them, however, was a propagandist, pure and simple. They both said that changes are occurring,

things are getting better, this great deal more is still to be done. Now, the fact that the State Department is willing to send out people who are as sensible and as realistic as that is a good sign. I think you'll remember that some time ago, an exhibition of paintings which we planned to send abroad had to be dismantled and virtually thrown away because one or two of the painters had been accused of having had been, some 20 years earlier affiliated with some organizations which later on had been declared subversive. I think at this moment, I'd better stop for just a moment while the fire engines go by because I hear them. Well, wherever the fire was, it was not in this building and so we can proceed. A few days ago, Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. was giving a talk before the American Historical Association. And in the course of it,

making what is certainly a justifiable plea for the encouragement of the individual scholar and in particular the historian, he took a slap at research foundations and the way they habitually give their grants to institutions and for their bias in favor of the behavioral sciences. This is a phrase that I don't myself use, but I assume it means all of those things we group as sociology. We have said, Mr. Schlesinger, bureaucratized everything else, so we should not have expected research to escape. The bureaucracization of scholarship is deductive because it's a means of spreading both risks and responsibilities. Now, I know something about foundations and their work

and I can see the difficulties under which they operate. I also share, Mr. Schlesinger's feeling is hope that the foundations would come to regard the individual scholar and think her not as an irritating nuisance but as a primary responsibility. Mr. Schlesinger is one of the great and good men fighting for the life of the individual. I quoted him once several months ago when he said, if the passion for conformity continues, it will reach the top levels and then we will have the spectacle of the bland leading the bland. In this more recent speech, he said, if we are to survive and that is a phrase I think that you could keep permanently in print incidentally because everyone uses it now.

If we are to survive such Schlesinger, we need ideas, we need vision, we need courage. None of these things is ever produced by a committee. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself. I am not up on the intramural disputes among scholars and so I haven't been aware really that there is a long struggle going on between historians and the people that are called behavioral scientists. Mr. Schlesinger has an agile mind and he not only can see his own interest but that of the opposition because directly after saying that there should be more support given to the individual scholar and to the historian, he asked, are we really good enough to justify the fuss we are making about our alleged ill treatment and neglect?

This kind of thinking is not going to make Mr. Schlesinger a good propagandist. He is a good propagandist incidentally. He was one of the people working with Adelaide Stevenson and my recollections in both campaigns helping him in preparing his speeches. But when he is being scholarly, he is a good scholar. As his first book, The Age of Jackson and his most recent book, which is the beginning of a study of the Age of Franklin was well proved. In this connection of the dispute between the two kinds of scholars, he says that the foundation officials often seem unendurably complacent and historians act if their good old, safe and say methods can't do the guarantee that whatever we produce will be remembered long after

the insubstantial fantasies of the behavioral scientists have been forgotten. And then he says, alas, what they have in idiocy, we more than match indoleness and inconsequence. It's perfectly clear that in Arthur Schlesinger, we have an historian who cannot be dull and is never inconsequent. It's a pleasure to come up against a mind like his. I'm particularly impressed by it because the other night I saw him on the program called Nightbeat, in which he attacked. And another friend of mine was the use of the settlement defended the course of Mr. John Foster Dollas. It was indeed pleasant to see two minds and grips. They didn't agree on any one particular thing. And you had precisely the sort of thing you want most in any public communication. A clash of minds, both of them of quality,

both of them I would say probably representing prejudices and certainly entertaining to the listening mind.