Basin Street Blues

When NBC's Blue Network was divorced from the Red, the Blue retained custody of one of radio's brighter offspring -- the Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. Like many a bright village charmer who strangely never wed, the Basin Street program (Blue, Wed. 9 p.m. EWT) has never been seriously wooed by a sponsor with honorable intentions. Last week, for example, the Blue turned down a bid for it from Sal Hepatica, which wanted it as a summer substitute for Eddie Cantor, which would merely have involved the Blue's giving the show up to NBC. But the Chamber Music Soci ty had a new entertainer, new impetus as radio's most deftly impertinent show.

Basin Street was conceived as a lampoon of the hot-potato pomposities com mon to the presentation of formal music.

It has always been dedicated to the three Bs -- Barrelhouse, Boogie-woogie and the Blues. So conceived and so dedicated, it has endured since 1940, giving twelve of NBC's staff musicians a weekly opportuni ty to cut "Maestro"' loose Paul with Laval the and joint "Dr." Henry conductors, ("Hot-lips'") Levine (trumpeter with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band).

Announcer Gene Hamilton, who specialized in burlesquing the white-tie manner of Announcer Milton J. Cross on an opera program, recently resigned. Now Milton J. Cross, who likes a little spoofing, burlesques himself. The program notes written for him are rare and irreverent non sense. ("The melody then builds into a five-part harmony with the bassoon wan dering off happily in search of a short beer.") Scripter Welbourn Kelley is now with the Navy, but continues to send in the scripts. Singer Mary Small is the latest in a notable list of "divas" who began with a vocalist named Dinah Shore.

Fortnight ago Basin Street added a comedian, Sam ("Zero") Mostel, a 27-year-old six-footer barely out of his swaddling clothes as a professional entertainer. A painter by training and profession, Mostel was only the hit of his friends' parties until February, when a press agent landed him in a Manhattan night spot, Cafe Society. Since then he has been signed for the forthcoming Victor Moore-William Gaxton show Keep 'Em Laughing and last week rode off on a 13 -week Basin Street contract.

With rant, doubletalk and repetitious exaggeration, Mostel achieves a weirdly intelligent satire. His first efforts for Basin Street pleased the studio audience more than they did radio listeners, but Mostel, new to the microphone, last week reduced his dependence on pantomime. Some of his established impersonations: an isolationist Senator ("What the hell was Hawaii doing in the Pacific?"); Charles Boyer cooing to Hedy Lamarr ; Hitler explaining his withdrawal from Russia.

Despite its changes in talent, Basin Street holds to its original idea, contrasting proper jazz with modern arrangements, needling the long-haired musicologists, giving original readings of such compositions as "Opus 33, First Door to the Left." The musicianship is sound; NBC Symphony players willingly take part, and well-known guest musicians need no fat fees as lure. The program's appeal was demonstrated when one week's script warned that Basin Street might be lost in a network budget cut and brazenly asked for letters to prove its popularity. ("If you must write two letters, be sure to sign the second one with a different name.") Six thousand replies came the first week, 20,000 in all.

Wagner's Tribute

A brilliant musical propaganda stunt was pulled off last week by Polish-born Conductor Artur Rodzinski and his Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. From the works of Hitler's favorite composer, Wagner, Dr. Rodzinski exhumed a stirring overture, Rule, Britannia (based on the tune of the famed British patriotic song of the same name), dedicated to the British by Wagner in 1837, and gave it the musical works. By way of introducing it to his audience, Dr. Rodzinski said he doubted that the Nazis remembered the existence of their idol's opus.

In order to jog their memory, the Cleveland Orchestra repeated the performance on its regular Saturday CBS broadcast (5 to 6 p.m. E.W.T.), and CBS sent it out shortwave. To help it along, BBC picked it up, rebroadcast it all over Europe so Nazis everywhere could hear.

An added barb: Wagner's own granddaughter, Friedelind, introducing Britannia, said: "Wagner wrote [it] because he loved and admired the spirit of the British people. . . . However, he did not write a Get -mania to glorify the German spirit. He wrote the Twilight o/ the Gods. ..."

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