The New Thrill

The music in the air at a cushiony East Side Manhattan nightclub last week was jazz all right--but subtle and discreet jazz. It was partly the instruments; there just isn't much blare in a guitar, bass fiddle and vibraphone. But it was mostly the sandy-haired man behind the "vibes." Oldtimer Red Norvo undoubtedly was, as Metronome said, "the new thrill."

Other oldtimers around town couldn't keep away. Benny Goodman, Eddie Condon ("What kind of a sophisticated place is this? I can't even send drinks to the bandstand") and even Red's exwife, Mildred (Rockin' Chair) Bailey, kept dropping in. To remind others where they first heard his name, Red Norvo kept salting his half-hour stands with such tunes as Strike Up the Band, Night and Day, Sweet Georgia Brown--songs he used to rap out on his "woodpile" (xylophone) with Paul Whiteman's band 20 years ago.

If the songs were not all new, the style was. Said Red, as quiet and genial as ever: "One of us will just do something, and the others will dig it and remember. We've had only two rehearsals, and on the second one we did nothing but sit around and talk." With a feather-fingered young guitarist named Tal Farlow, who after two years plays as if he is reading Red's mind, and a bass player (Clyde Lombardy) who is always there with the beat, everything they touched sounded like softly accented conversation on a bench in the park.

Since his Whiteman days, Red (real name: Kenneth Norville) has done time on the woodpile, vibes and marimba in bands ranging from 20-piece earsplitters down to sextets. Trio work is something fairly new, and Red finds it "all headwork--the bass has to cover for a drummer, the guitar for clarinet or trumpet, the vibes for piano." Headwork or handwork, old Red was the uptown cafe set's new pet.

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