Dixie Slot

Moving northward from Manhattan's Times Square through the garish canyon of Seventh Avenue, the traveler finds a varied evening cacophony. Bus engines whine. Subway trains roar through sidewalk gratings. On a corner a Salvation Army band pleads Onward! Christian Soldiers. Suddenly, through an open door, comes a shattering crash and a high-pitched wail, and a competing hymn bounces through the tortured air: When the Saints Go Marching In.

Passers-by stop under a glittering Gold Coast marquee that spells out "Metropole Cafe," peer into the gloom to see where all the noise is coming from. What they see looks like an alley lined with mirrors. On one side is a 110-ft.-long bar, on the other a cluster of dime-size tables. Behind the bar, on a narrow, chest-high platform, is a line of musicians, cash registers at their toes and microphones at their shoulders. The Metropole, it turns out, is one of the sturdiest Northern outposts of an obsolescent brand of music: Dixieland jazz.

3 p.m. to 3 a.m. There are few youngsters among Dixielanders any more. Star of the Metropole is a portly, weather-beaten trumpeter named Henry ("Red") Allen, 47, a man of long experience in the New Orleans school and an uninhibited buffoon. To get things warmed up, he raps out either Shake a Hand (everybody shakes a hand) or an insistent Kiss Your Baby (if there is no one to kiss unescorted women, a waiter may do the honors). Other numbers include such oldtime favorites as I Thought I Heard Benny Bolden Say, Trees, Memphis Blues, Basin Street.

For years the Metropole featured a mid-Victorian atmosphere, with small crystal chandeliers dangling from its stucco ceiling, and a Gay Nineties revue on its narrow platform. When febrile '54 lost interest, the cafe took a flyer on jazz, tentatively signed Dixieland Trumpeter Jimmy McPartland & Co. Since then, the Metropole has parlayed its music and saloonlike atmosphere into one of Manhattan's most successful jazz slots. The clientele is as mixed as a parade crowd: servicemen, college kids, tourists, jazz fans, a few unattached girls, and some times such celebrities as Gloria Vanderbilt Stokowska and Crooner Eddie Fisher.

Nowadays, Trumpeters Allen and Charlie Shavers head two fulltime, six-man bands that include jazz-gifted oldtimers Clarinetist Buster Bailey, Pianist Claude Hopkins, Bassist Milt Hinton, and Trombonist "Big Chief" (350 Ibs.) Russell Moore. With the help of six other mu icians who gather in smaller combos, they play their way from a slow 3 p.m. start to a frenzied 3 a.m. finish.

Steamed-Up Antics. The Metropole's regular musicians like their job, partly because the work is steady and requires no traveling, partly because the Dixieland market has leveled off. The pay? "Ah," growls Red Allen happily, "the Metropole don't retard on the loot." Nor do the boys retard on the noise. Whatever the number, the decibel is mightier than the dolce. Dixieland's adolescent nights, with their soulful solos, apparently are lost in the dim past, now to be replaced mostly by steamed-up, middle-aged antics. When the two bands get together for a jam session, the four chandeliers have been known to shake and rattle while the music rolled. The bar tenders are so used to making themselves heard above the din that they shout even when talking to their wives at home, and they have developed an aptitude for lip reading to understand drink orders. As for the Metropole's manager, he sees a doctor once a week for a chronic headache. He can afford to.

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