Larry Kart: Did I once read somewhere that you worked for Down Beat?

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

A local 'down memory lane' sorta piece that ran in Monday's Wash Post. I enjoyed the tale...but never having worked for a newspaper/mag, I always (perhaps incorrectly) thought that a copy boy was basically a glorified errand runner, and as such, was wondering how an 18 yr-old in Buffalo would have been able to secure such a press pass? Also, how many of these credentials would have been issued in an average year....and did the pass basically get you inside the door of every major venue coast-to-coast?

On the Record: Dad's Love for Jazz and Words Came First

By Mitch Gerber

Special to The Washington Post

Monday, April 7, 2008; Page C08

I found a piece of my father's past, after more than 60 years, in the stacks of the Library of Congress.

It happened this way.

In the early 1940s, when he was an 18-year-old kid in Buffalo, working as a copy boy at the morning paper, he got a press pass from Down Beat, the national jazz weekly. Years later, when I was a kid in Buffalo, he told me stories about flashing the card to get into downtown nightclubs, where he'd stand at the bar to hear Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa and the other gods when they came to play.

He still had the pass in a dresser drawer, under a little box that held cuff links and tie clips. The pale green pasteboard with barely shriveled edges and art deco lettering had the managing editor's scribble at the bottom and was marked to expire in December 1943. By that time my father was in the Army.

I wondered if he ever wrote about all that good jazz.

"Not that I remember," he said. "I just went to hear the music."

I didn't quite buy that. He had loved to write. After the war, he produced good stuff in a nonfiction-writing course at the University of Pittsburgh, which he attended on the GI Bill. But by that time he was married, and I was on the way, followed by my sisters. Dad spent most of his working life managing the menswear department of a chain of Buffalo department stores. He was contented, but he didn't write anymore, except sales reports and letters to his kids at college.

When I went to work for the morning newspaper, I walked along the same hallways that he had, saw stories impaled on the same spike on the city editor's desk, walked out into the night through the same polished brass doors. It felt good -- Buffalo is a place of strong, deep roots. But the paper went out of business, and I landed in Washington.

I had a good family, a rewarding job, and the years went by. Then I came upon that pale green card again, now squirreled away in a box of ephemera, and again I wondered if my father ever had been published in Down Beat.

Fortunately, I was in the ideal place to resolve the mystery. One of the advantages of living in Washington is easy access to resources that even the Internet can't yet match. The federal government has preserved a lot of paper, and it's just a Metro ride away. At the Library of Congress, I applied for a reader identification card -- the process took less than an hour, and the ID is good for two years -- and turned a couple of corners to the Performing Arts Reading Room, on the first floor of the businesslike Madison Building.

Yes, they said, the library had every issue of Down Beat. Bound volumes were no longer available for perusal, but I could order up the microfilm. I handed in the call slip -- Volumes 9 through 12, January 1942 to December 1945 -- threaded the film into a viewing machine, and advanced to 1943.

The machine whirred in the darkened little room as I maneuvered through the weeks of that wartime year.

Feb. 1: "Tex Beneke Joins Heidt's Band."

March 1: "Niteries Face Race Problem" and " 'God Bless America' Puts American Band Leader in Jap Jail in Shanghai."

May 1: "Dooley Wilson Plays Village."

June 1: "How Columbia Bagged Sinatra."

Below that big story was a brief item, just two paragraphs:

"Blackout No Bar to Solid Buffalo Bash."

I stared at the page for a few moments, drinking it in, hearing Krupa and Wilson in my head.

Then I went home and phoned my father.

"Dad," I said, holding the copy I'd made of the Down Beat story, "I want to read you something."

BUFFALO-- A blackout halted traffic and put out lights in four western New York counties May 5, but it didn't turn out the lights of Memorial Auditorium or stem the frenzy of jive and jitterbugging that went on at the annual Musician's Union Parade of Bands.

He interrupted me: "Did I write that?"

More than 7,500 jammed the huge Madison Square Garden-like structure to dance to the music of 25 bands, headed by Mitchell Ayres, and applaud the rhythms of the Andrews Sisters.

"I wrote that! I wrote that!" Dad hardly ever raised his voice.

Continuous music was provided by local bands that alternated from stands at opposite sides of the auditorium. The music started at 7 p.m., and at 5:30 a.m., when this correspondent was leaving, reluctant but beat to his size nines, the session was still going strong.

I paused before pronouncing the last line:

-- Saul Gerber

Edited April 9, 2008 by Son-of-a-Weizen

[Larry Kart]

Yes, I was assistant editor at Down Beat (that meant there were two of us on the editorial side, plus a saintly/brilliant production manager Gloria Baldwin) under Dan Morgenstern in 1969-70. I did some writing, a lot of editing and corralling of contributors and their work, plus we laid out the magazine. In many ways it was a dream -- working with Dan was an education in itself, plus he's one of the best, kindest people I know (we've stayed in touch), except that I was making maybe $5,200 a year and after year one the so-called old man, John T. Maher, who had promised me a raise if I didn't screw up, died and was succeeded by his son, Jack, who told me that he knew nothing about his father's promise, and if I didn't like it I could go f--- myself. I replied in kind, and that was that. My predecessor was Bill Quinn; I was followed by Jim Szantor, who later became a friend when we both worked at the Chicago Tribune. Jim was a genius copy editor and a very smart, funny, soulful guy. He also was the world's Number One fan of Sal Nistico. Bill Quinn I didn't know that well except that he moved on to Playboy, where he no doubt was much better paid. His main legacy to me was that a young woman who worked at DB that summer in some quasi-secretarial role was a big pal of his (may in fact have sotto voce been in love with him -- Quinn definitely was a handsome, very well-dressed, cool dude) and as a result so it seemed decided that I, Quinn's replacement, was inherently despicible. (Perhaps Quinn left in part because of friction with the old man about pay or something as well as because he could hook up with Playboy -- I don't know -- and she knew about this and thought that I was a figurative dagger in Quinn's back; or maybe she just despised me on the spot, without any trimmings or back story.) In any case, this young woman (who was fairly attractive) stared daggers of hate at me all summer, which was unnerving, in part because our desks were placed so that every time I looked up she was looking right at me, like the mask of Medusa. Eventually the rather wounding aspects of this were mitigated by my dawning awareness that she was pretty close to nuts; not only did she look like a much prettier version of Louise Lasser, she was maybe five times as neurotic, which is saying something.

[Christiern]

I covered many concerts and club dates for Down Beat, but they never gave me a pass--just a ticket or name-at-the-door and $15.

[AllenLowe]

Larry, you shoulda said to her "please stop undressing me with your eyes."

Edited April 9, 2008 by AllenLowe

[Guest Bill Barton]

I covered many concerts and club dates for Down Beat, but they never gave me a pass--just a ticket or name-at-the-door and $15.

Now that's the big time.

And a great story, Larry, thanks for sharing that one. She sounds - ahem - a bit like an ex-girlfriend of mine.

Edited April 9, 2008 by Bill Barton

[Christiern]

Aah, the good old days--thanks for the story, Larry. Down Beat was nice to work for, because--as you point out--Dan was and still is such great guy. The young lady who worked for him when he was running the New York office (in the Fisk Building, I believe) was also nice, but a piece of work. She knew all the musicians, sometimes more intimately than the job required, and she plunged herself full-body into the protest against TV's neglect of jazz--I bet she can be found on a few feet of Cavett footage. As I recall, Dan previously worked for Metronome.

The sometimes hectic pace of New York never affected DB. I recall covering a concert and seeing the album of the concert appear in stores before my review was published!

[papsrus]

Wonderful story. Thanks ...

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

I covered many concerts and club dates for Down Beat, but they never gave me a pass--just a ticket or name-at-the-door and $15.

In those days, $15 bought a guy a decent quantity of hooch, eh? Don't tell me you wasted it on food!!!

[medjuck]

Press passes are pretty easy to obtain. I helped publish a small film magazine in the '60s and we printed very official looking press passes. Since we didn't pay very much we felt obliged to offer them to pretty well any of our writers who wanted one and had the chutzpah to use it. I used mine to get in to the Rock&Roll revival show that turned into Live Peace in Toronto when John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Eric Clapton flew in in from London. I wasn't planning to go to the show till I heard they were on an airplane and planing to perform. I wandered down, flashed my card at the gate and got in just in time to see Alice Cooper.

As I remember it, one of the people using our press pass was Jonathan Demme who was our London correspondent. Can't remember if he ever wrote anything or what he was doing for a living a the time but I think he claimed he got into movies free with it.

[papsrus]

Press passes are pretty easy to obtain. ...

Depends on the event. ... security at bigger events is a lot tighter these days.