Huge Profit Realised by the "Bananas" Hit Every dance season has its flood of new dance music, says a writer in the "Statesman." The music to a large extent decides the extent or otherwise of the dance season. If the average music of the season be poor, the dance restaurants, dance clubs and dance, palaces will see the result in. lessened profits.
Every season the jazz, composer bag to hit on new ideas. One year Mammy songs will be all the rage. Another year negro music will be off,' and the vogue will be for Oriental music, languorous, mysterious A third year noisy, il] be popular. Then will bring dreamy waltz-like foxtrot into favour. To-day the jazzy but quiet and drawling "Blues" is enjoying an unexampled run.
Like a novelist, a dance music composer makes his big hit usually by accident. He cannot tell, any more than an author can, just what it is that makes the big public take to one of his pieces suddenly after ignoring his productions for years.
The music publisher who pub-fishes most of my numbers is my barometer. He can tell pretty well—certainly better than I can—what piece is going to make a hit and what piece is going to ''flop."' He has his finger on the pulse of the public. One month he will tell me to put a Dixie foxtrot back in the pigeonhole. It may be useful next year, he says. But at the moment people are demanding modern sentimental stuff—music far, far away from the plantation and the old Texas moon and darkies crooning under it.
"Give j me a real good love-and-girls-and-curls type o foxtrot," declares my publisher, and I'll back it to make a hit, If a publisher thinks well of a piece, he will pay heavily in advertising it—he will "back it." If he be not: certain of its appeal, he will let it slide without undue fuss into the world, and may be it will sell just enough copies to bring publisher and composer a small profit, to make a hit the publishes hae to en a piece of mine
get back over a thousand pounds before he sees a penny profit. If he likes it well at first hearing, he will call in his office staff, the porter, the Yoman, anyone who is around, and get their opinions. If he then takes it up will send it out first to a musical show, or will get a vaudeville turn to try it out. If the latter make a hit with it, the publisher will ex-plait it all he can.
A big bit is worth thousands to the publisher. The duo who gave "Yes we have no Bananas' to the world have made probably £15,060 to £20,000 out of it.
I once offered a foxtrot to every publisher in New York. None could see its possibilities. But I felt it was a "winner," and I backed it with some borrowed money. It was an instant success, and set the vogue for that season. It sold for nine months and I made nearly £13,000 out of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.