Hazel's Rival?

Horrible grimaces and irrepressible feet may yet take Negro Pianist Dorothy Donegan places where her ten amazing fingers would not get her so fast. Wrote Down Beat, the blase semimonthly gospel of some 47,000 U.S. jazz fans: "She is, to us, the ideal in piano stylings. . . . We beckon to Hazel Scott to learn how the classics are swung. We invite Bob Zurke, Jess Stacy, Joe Sullivan, Billy Kyle, all of them, to see phenomenal piano work."

Dorothy Donegan is a homely, unhappy-looking young woman whose earnestly inspired pianism last week was drawing throngs to Elmer's Cocktail Lounge, an obscure nitery in the heart of Chicago's Loop. Unlike most specialists in swinging the classics, Dorothy begins by playing her classics as straight as any Town Hall pianist. When she has polished off Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-Sharp Minor, Schubert's Serenade or a batch of Chopin Nocturnes in the most acceptable highbrow fashion, Dorothy shuts her eyes. Her feet begin to pound the floor. Her face contorts as if she were in agony. What comes after that is pure Donegan. It has Elmer's customers shagging in their seats.

This spastic inspiration is not something Pianist Donegan has learned. In fact, she spent a lot of time trying to unlearn it. Dorothy was born on Chicago's dusky South Side, still lives there. Her father is a dining-car chef. When Dorothy was eight, her mother, who had always wanted to play the piano but could never get near enough to one to learn how, decided that, come what may, Dorothy must have lessons. Dorothy got them at the Chicago Conservatory of Music, where she studied classical music for four years. The Conservatory's high-brow teachers tried, but they never could break Dorothy of her habit of making horrible faces while she played. Their prim five-finger exercises never could curb her habit of cutting loose in shoulder-shaking, canebrake improvisations (Dorothy finally wore out one piano). The Conservatory was never able to keep her percussive feet still either.

Now the feature of Dorothy Donegan's swing piano playing is her footwork. Newcomers at Elmer's Cocktail Lounge sometimes swear that she has a drum concealed under the piano. She has not. That incessant triple-fortissimo thud that punctuates Dorothy's improvisations comes simply from Dorothy's ample feet, hitting the floor boards in loud, unconscious ecstasy.

By last week that thud had helped Dorothy Donegan to an offer from Duke Ellington's band, another offer from Manhattan's Cafe Society.

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