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8
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s
1950 American Tour
Beecham’s intention, from 1944, to take an orchestra
to the USA. 64 day tour from New England, New York, down the East
coast to New Orleans – experience of hearing genuine trad jazz – segregation
in the South (and in the North) – up through the mid-west to Chicago
and back to New York.
In
March 1944 it was reported in London Philharmonic Post, the Journal
the LPO published from time to time, that Sir Thomas (who was then
still in America) was sending letters and cables to the management
with the news that he was making arrangements for the orchestra to
tour Canada and America as soon as this became possible. When he returned
to London in September of that year he began talking seriously to
the orchestra about his intention of taking the orchestra to America,
something he had wanted to do for many years. The last British orchestra
to visit America had been the London Symphony Orchestra in 1912. The
orchestra had been booked to travel on the ill-fated Titanic,but
fortunately, because some of the arrangements for the tour had
not been finalised by the American agents, their departure was delayed
and the orchestra travelled safely a few days later on the Baltic.
Beecham insisted that the LPO contracts
in 1945 and 1946 included a clause stipulating that we agree to go
on a tour of America if it could be arranged. In 1947, when I joined
the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and for each of the following three
years I signed a similar agreement. At last in 1950 the tour was organised.
On the 6th October we left from Waterloo on the special train arranged
for Cunard Line passengers that took us to Southampton where we boarded
the Queen Mary. The following morning at 8.15 we left Southampton
for the short journey to Cherbourg to pick up passengers
before setting sail across the Atlantic.
We had all become accustomed to war-time
rationing, to the shortage and limited choice of food and clothing,
and much else that was still rationed in 1950 Britain. As soon as
we were aboard the Queen Mary everything changed. Wonderful
menus were presented at every meal and alcoholic beverages were available
all day – and night! With five days at sea, many of the instruments
safely stored in the hold and no opportunity for practising in the
small cabins, the orchestra enjoyed a complete holiday away from work
and family life.
I see from the ship’s log that I still
have that most of the time the weather was reported as ‘moderate gale,
rough sea, heavy swell’. I did not require this information as along
with a few of my colleagues, also bad sailors, I spent a great deal
of time up on deck, away from the sight of food and the stifling heat
in the cabins.
On the 12th October we
arrived at New York in the middle of the night and missed the welcoming
sight of the Statue of Liberty. At that time entry into America still
required everyone to go through immigration on Ellis Island. Somehow,
Beecham had arranged for the members of the orchestra to avoid this
trauma. We had our passports examined rather quickly while still on
board – in the First Class Stateroom. How had he managed to arrange
this, at the same time that the celebrated conductor Victor de Sabata
with an Italian ensemble that had landed from another ship were all
held on Ellis Island for several days? In those days it was easier
to get round regulations if you had influence, or what the Americans
called ‘drag’.
We were taken to the Great Northern
Hotel where we stayed each time we returned to New York. Once settled
in our first thought was to have a look round and find something to
eat. The first place we found was something we had not seen before
and that I think never came over to Britain: the Automat. It is probably
best remembered now from the song, memorably sung by Marilyn Monroe
in the film Some like it Hot,
… A kiss on the hand may be quite
continental
but diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
A kiss may be grand but it won’t pay the rental
on your humble flat, or help you at the automat …
At the Automat there was a wall of
small, glass-fronted cubicles just large enough to hold a plateful
of food. By the side of each cubicle was a slot for the appropriate
coin that would allow you to withdraw your choice. The quality was
good and the prices very reasonable, so we made use of their service
quite often.
The shops were full of so many things
we had not seen in England for a long time and, of course, everything
was available without the necessary coupons that so restricted what
we could buy at home. In particular I remember buying a nylon shirt.
At that time they were much thicker than they are now and had the
disadvantage that they did not ‘breathe’ so that one became extremely
hot at times. Their great advantage on a tour such as we were undertaking
was that they were easily washed and they dried quickly. Ladies’ nylon
stockings, so scarce, expensive and mostly ‘under the counter’ at
home, were in all the shops. I sent a pair home to my wife everyday.
One put ‘Present’ on the form that was attached to each parcel. If
you were lucky it got through without custom duty. On average about
50% did.
Later, at about 9.00pm, my friend
Steve Trier our bass clarinettist and I decided we would take a stroll
and find somewhere for a quiet drink. After a short walk we suddenly
found ourselves in Times Square. By now it was dark so we were astonished
to find that all the shops were open, a great number of people were
shopping and that large illuminated signs were flashing on and off
all round the Square. Neither of us, still in our 20s, had ever experienced
anything like this at home where since 1939 shops had closed at 5.00pm
and there had been no illuminations. But that was not all. We could
hear the most amazing singing; strange music sung by a voice that
ranged from high soprano to deep bass. It was lovely, but quite eerie.
I found out later that it was a recording of Yma Sumac being played
from one of the shops. Yma Sumac was a remarkable Peruvian singer
with a range of four and a half octaves who at that time had only
recorded Indian folk music in Argentina. After 1950, when she married
and went to live in the USA she, like so many other fine folk musicians,
made many recordings of much more commercial versions of her native
folk music and other commercial music.
The crowds, lights, music and the
vast array of goods of every kind on sale came as a real shock and
a wonderful introduction to a way of life we had not experienced before.
In 1950 the difference between life in America and Britain was much
greater than it is today; quite suddenly we did really find ourselves
in a New World.
The following morning we set off for
Hartford, the state capital of Connecticut, where our lengthy and
tiring tour started; between September and December, we were to give
fifty-two concerts. We had been told that this concert in Hartford
would be our ‘blooding’. If this concert was well received by the
critics, who would travel up from New York to vet us, the concerts
we were to give in New York a couple of weeks later would be well
received. If the concert did not go well we could expect a hostile
reception.
The first rehearsal in the afternoon
in Hartford preceding the evening concert got off to a bad start.
Quite a few of the principals arrived late for the rehearsal. Unused
to American restaurants they had not yet learned that where there
were tablecloths diners were expected to be taking a leisurely lunch.
As a consequence service was exceedingly slow and lunch had taken
much longer than expected. Sir Thomas, habitually late himself, was
on this occasion ready and anxious to start on time, quickly became
angry.
When the orchestra was eventually
assembled it sounded extremely rough, out of tune, lacking in dynamics
and finesse, and with poor ensemble. Life on the luxury liner, with
its abundance of good food and alcohol and no opportunity for practise
had done little for playing standards. Added to this the orchestra
had taken on a number of extra players, some of whom were unfamiliar
with the repertoire.
It did not bode well for a successful
concert. Many of us arrived for the concert with a good deal of apprehension.
There was the usual buzz of expectancy as the audience waited for
us to take our place on the platform and for the arrival of this very
popular conductor. Sir Thomas walked on in his usual slow, stately
way and acknowledged the applause with a dignified bow. Then, with
a mighty swipe he brought the baton down to start the National Anthem.
He was famous for his rendition of the Anthem, but on this occasion
it was done with such courage and passion that he inspired and enthused
the whole orchestra. The concert went extremely well, there were excellent
notices and the tour started on a high.
Leaving Hartford we toured New England
by coach and could enjoy the scenery, especially the trees in their
wonderful rich autumn colouring. We gave concerts in Washington D.C.,
in Boston, in its splendid Symphony Hall, in Connecticut, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, before returning
to New York for two concerts in Carnegie Hall. All this was very exciting
but increasingly tiring, as we travelled by coach each day. When we
arrived in each town we had to check into a Hotel, unpack and then
and go to the Hall for a rehearsal before returning to the hotel again
to change into evening dress for the concert. To begin with the newness
of everything and the excitement of visiting interesting cities kept
us going, but after a couple of weeks, when the novelty had worn off,
it became increasingly hard.
From New York we travelled down
the East Coast giving concerts every day with the journeys often becoming
very long, anything from two to six hours. Then a major shock: we
crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. We were now in the South where segregation
was in force. Suddenly we were made aware of the black/white divide.
No black people were allowed in the hotels, restaurants or concert
halls. On buses and trams black people were only allowed to sit in
the rear seats: everywhere the races were separated. This was, in
effect, apartheid. Less overtly brutal than apartheid, as practised
in South Africa, it denied most employment opportunities to Negroes
(the term African-American had not even been thought of at that time),
except of a menial kind. Even in the North, when we were in Evanston,
near Chicago, when it was late November and extremely cold, a black
woman who collapsed in the street died from exposure in the cold because
no white doctor could be found willing to attend to her. For many
of us in the orchestra this deliberate demeaning of other people,
only because of their race and colour, was sickening. After the terrible
1939 – 45 war that had revealed the horror of the Nazi regime’s racial
policy and the deliberate slaughter of millions in the concentration
camps, to find this policy still in operation in ‘the land of the
free’ was very hard to take.
When we arrived in New Orleans we
were surprised to find that it was very different from any of the
other towns we had been to so far. It was much more European, with
fine houses dating back to the 18th century redolent with
Creole, French, Spanish and Portuguese influences. The metal tracery
of the ironwork on the balconies of many of the old buildings was
a delight. We gave two concerts in New Orleans so we had the opportunity
to enjoy another delight. This was the time when the revival of traditional
jazz was in full flood. Black musicians, some of whom had not played
for many years, were sought out. Some had only been able to find work
as janitors or night watchmen, and a few had even been forced to return
to the country areas to find work in the fields.
After the first concert, six or seven
of us who were keen on jazz decided to see if we could find where
these chaps were playing. As we walked around we found ourselves in
streets with names made famous by their use in the title of jazz standards:
Basin Street, South Rampart, Canal and Bourbon Streets. At many of
the bars we found that there was a jazz group on a little stage behind
the bar. The traditional line up of clarinet, trumpet and trombone
with guitar or banjo, bass and drums was the norm, though sometimes
there would be a piano. We heard some terrific jazz that night, uninhibited
and genuine; in one place Bunk Johnson’s old band, in another Papa
Celestin’s in which the legendary clarinettist Alphonse Picou, remembered
especially for his famous ‘break’ in High Society, based on
the piccolo variation in the Sousa march Stars and Stripes,
was playing. He was still playing on his old and unique clarinet
with its little turned up wooden bell. It was here that my friend
Jack Brymer, our principal clarinettist, not only a great
orchestral musician and soloist, but also an experienced
jazz musician, was persuaded to join the group for a couple of numbers.
It was wonderful to see Jack, still in full evening dress, white tie
and tails, alongside the five black musicians. In the deep South this
was indeed a unique occasion. Though, since those times, mixed groups
of musicians are not at all unusual, it would be unlikely that one would
even now find one white musician with five that were black.
As the tour proceeded and we wilted,
Beecham seemed to go from strength to strength – one Southern critic
called him ‘The Great Little Metrognome!’ He was not pleased, preferring
to jest at the expense of others rather than being on the receiving
end.
Leaving New Orleans we continued to
make our way north through Tennessee and Kentucky and up through the
mid-west on towards Chicago, but never crossing the Mississippi. The
journeys had now become even longer, several of seven and eight hours.
When a journey like that was followed by a concert at 8.30pm, as happened
on a few occasions, one was quite exhausted. By now it was nearly
the end of November, we had been on the road for eight weeks and when
we arrived in Chicago it was very cold. Walking towards our hotel,
which was right by Lake Michigan, with the wind blowing straight at
one off the lake, it was like swallowing carving knives. It is not
called ‘The Windy City’ for nothing.
One of the many concerts we gave on
the way back towards New York was in Buffalo. When the concert ended
at about 11.00 p.m. the orchestra was taken by coach to Niagara Falls,
about 25 miles from Buffalo. In 1950 it was still possible for someone
with the prestige that Beecham enjoyed to make special arrangements
so that when we arrived at the Falls, even though it was near midnight
and the viewing platform was closed it was opened up and the lights
turned on especially for us. It was a quite magical experience. I
wonder if it would be possible to arrange for this today, just for
a visiting orchestra?
The following day we made the five-hour
coach journey to Syracuse, for what proved to be perhaps the hardest
part of the tour. After the concert, which ended at 10.45 p.m., we
were taken by coach to the railway station to catch the 11.55 p.m.
night train to New York. When we arrived there we had to leave the
train at 7.00 a.m.., go to our hotel to check in and then make our
way to Carnegie Hall in time for a short rehearsal at 11.00 a.m. As
it was a Sunday the concert was in the afternoon at 3.00 pm. The next
day we rehearsed in New York in preparation for an evening concert
the following day in Philadelphia at 8.30 p.m., after which we returned
to New York once again. The next day we gave our final concert in
Carnegie Hall. With only two more days to go we were given one of
our merciful free days. We had all thought that the concert in Carnegie
Hall would be the last one, before going home. But no! They managed
to squeeze in one more, in the small town of Bethlehem.
It had been a great experience and
in a way a nodal point in our lives. Just as there was for my generation
always to be ‘before and after the war’, for those on that tour there
would always be ‘before and after we went to America’. Looking through
the schedule for the tour I see that there were only three days on
which we did not do a concert, have a rehearsal or travel. In all
we did 52 concerts in 64 days. It was very tiring but never boring:
with Beecham no two concerts of the same programme were ever quite
the same. However, on this tour we had an exceptionally large repertoire,
playing 50 different compositions in all.
Chapter
9
