Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 311, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1919 — CARYL PICKS ON OUR JIMMY IN HER DAILY SKETCH. [ARTICLE]

CARYL PICKS ON OUR JIMMY IN HER DAILY SKETCH.

Caryl Frink, the little girl reporter of the Herald-Examiner, who writes feature articles daily, in her article today deals with Jimmy Hanley, song -writer and Rensselaer’'hoy, a nephew of C. W. Hanley. See what Caryl has to say about our Jimmy: 2 \‘fYadum, de dumdum, yadum de dumdum. It'll never be dry in Havana, no matter what happens round here, yadum de dumdum—” “It's our new son,” said Mr. Billy Stoneham, manager of a loop music publishing company, as the strains of the best seller interrupted our conversation. “Great number, hey?” “It sounds—well, timely, anyhow,” I said. “Timely? Say, listen ” “One drink will make a rabbit chase a bulldog up the street. Oh, it will never be dry in Havana-an-ah, no matter what happens round here.” “How do they think ’em up?” I asked, wonderingly. “Think ’em up? Say, song writin’ comes to those fellows like breathin’ water comes to a fish. Take young Jimmy Hanley, now. He’s playing the piano in a cabaret, see? He sits down .to the piano one day and spiels off ‘The Hooligans Are Hooli, Hooli Mad.’ Doepn’t mean anything, see? But he fits it up with a snappy tune, and it goes over. He’s made a song hit. “Well, he writes another one? Snappier than the first. He follows with ‘Mammy Mine’ and a few like that. Now look at him! Writin’ music for plays, and official state songs, and stuff like that. He’s in there now,” indicating a glass door with his gold pencil, “probably writing a great hit Wanta watch him?” I said that I did, so Billy Stoneham led me into a boxlike room where the boy wonder was breathing popular melody between puffs of a cigaret. Jimmie let his fingers rest on the keys of the piano while he greeted us, and then went on with the next bar. Beside him on the piano bench a long-haired man was interpreting Jimmie’s flight in notes which he penciled on lined paper. “That’s Mr. Burrel Van Buren,” Billy told me. “He’s the arranger. When Jimmie gets an idea, he calls Burrel in to take it down in notes.” “And is that all Mr. Van Buren does?” I asked, wondering about his long hair. ' “Oh, no, Burrel’s a composer himself, aren’t you Burrel?” “I’ll say I am,” spoke up the arranger, modestly. “I’ve written four tunes already this morning, and—” he added carelessly—“l didn’t get up till noon.” “All right,” broke in the demon song writer, letting go a crash of chords. “Chorus.” The chorus went much quicker than the verse and in fourteen minutes by my Christmas wrist watch the song was finish'ed. Jimmie lit a new cigaret and sighed. “Now it might be three hours before I think of another one,” he said, pushing back his glossy pompadour with the palm of his hand. “They don’t always come so easy.” “Don’t you ever lose any of ’em before you can get hold of Burrel?” I asked Jimmie.

“Sure,” said the song writer. “I’ve lost many a tune. But I always figure that if they get away from me they aren’t much good anyhow. But it isn’t the ones I lose that worry me. It’s the spngs I’ve got put away in my bean till the market’s ready for ’em.” “I didn’t know there was a music market,” I said. “Ho, I’ll say there is, eh, Van?” Jimmie ran his fingers from the far east to the far west of the keyboard. “Lis’n to this,” he said. He played and sang a very convincing little song about “Why should he long for Dixie, when the sweetest girl from Dixie lived next door.” / “Now, you see?” he said, wheeling around from the piano when he had finished. “If I took that to a publisher, you. know what they’d say?” . "No, what?” I asked. “Why, they’d tell me to change it to. ‘Nobody knows how to shimmy like the little girl, from Dixie next” door.’ You see? It’s shimmy songs now. A while ago it was ‘Oui, oui’ songs about the ‘Mam’sejles,’ -and before that there was a style in butterfly songs. If your song isn’t in style, you’ve just got to file it away and watch the market. Isn’t that so, Billy?” “Sure it is,” agreed Billy. “Right now what we want is what you might call alcoholic songs. Take our pew song hit for instance. How you goin’ to beat this one, huh?” Billy Stoneham edged Billy off the piano bench, let his hands fall with deadly aim to the piano keyboard, threw back his head, cast his eyes to the ceiling and ren-' dered, with paternal pride in, his voice: “Yadum de dum, \yadum de dumdum, it’ll never be dry in Ha-van-an-ah, no matter what happens here—yadum de dum, yadum de, dumdum- ”