DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9710310307
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER      PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: RANDOM RAMBLES 

SOURCE: Tony Stein 

                                            LENGTH:   79 lines

S. NORFOLK MUSICIAN COMPILES BOOKLET ON LOCAL BIG-BAND ERA

It was the 1930s, a time when popular music legends were being born and a South Norfolk youngster named Calvin Green was very much a part of the local scene.

From September 1934 to February 1942, Green played trumpet with dance bands all over Tidewater. Then he went on active duty with the Navy and put his music career permanently behind him.

Though he never played again, he kept his memories. More than that, he kept notes and records and pictures and programs and tickets. Now he's put them all together in a booklet that is an encyclopedia of the Tidewater music scene from '34 to '42.

In the years that Green played, famous dance bands like Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw were making one hit record after another. Locally, small dance bands of 8 to 10 pieces kept ballrooms packed every weekend.

Green's latest booklet is an expansion of one that he completed a couple of years ago. He tells how he was still a student at South Norfolk High School when he started playing professional jobs. ``You got $5 for a three-hour job, $6.50 for four hours and $12 for New Year's Eve,'' Green recalled.

Today's high school bands are a good part show business with elaborate marching routines. Not so in Green's time. The South Norfolk band sounded off at assemblies, special programs and commencements, and music by Stephen Foster was a staple. Those were also the days, Green notes, when the five-and-dime stores (another memory) had sheet-music departments. You bought a copy of a song and the store's pianist played it for you.

Green pays tribute to an alphabet list of band leaders and musicians he worked with all those years ago. There are pictures, too. Young Calvin Green is the tall guy in the trumpet section, very spiffy in his working clothes.

That's one thing about the old pictures that underscores the visual change on the popular music front. In Green's day, working musicians wore tuxedos and were groomed like a military unit ready for inspection. Quite a contrast to today's rock groups, some of which look like they're one jump ahead of the narc squad and the rag man.

The audiences were conservative, too. Women often wore evening dresses and men would be in suits or at least jackets and ties. ``Stardust,'' played slow and dreamy, was the most popular request, but jitterbug dancing was coming in. Tunes like ``One O'clock Jump'' and ``Woodchoppers' Ball'' fueled some wonderful dance-floor acrobatics.

One section of Green's booklet concentrates on the ballrooms where the dances were held. Places like the old Peacock Ballroom at Virginia Beach. There were regular Saturday-night dances from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend. You bought tickets to dance, Green writes. Ten cents for a single dance or three for a quarter.

At the peak of the season, nationally known bands like Dorsey, Goodman and Guy Lombardo played at the Ballroom. And it was a nifty setting. Picture the huge revolving crystal mirror in the center. It made for very romantic slow dances as it revolved and reflected off colored spotlights.

Even more famous was the Cavalier Beach Club. It lured some of the best bands in the country, and there was a time in the 1930s when nationwide radio broadcasts were made from its ballroom. The Cavalier's still there, but the music is a memory.

As it became for Green when he swapped tuxedo for Navy blues in 1942. After the war, he got a degree in business administration from William and Mary. He worked variously as a railroad man, an insurance agent and with the Naval Intelligence Service. Married and had a family, too. Never time to play the trumpet though.

But time, fortunately, to compile this bonanza of music nostalgia; names, dates, pictures and descriptions of the way it was. He's 78 now and he knows there aren't many of the old bandsmen around. He hopes they and others who want to tap into a mellow memory will want to buy a copy of his booklet.

When I talked to him the other day, I brought my cornet, which is like a small, fat trumpet. He tooted a couple of tentative scales, not bad for a guy who hasn't visited a mouthpiece in 55 years. He said he might pick up a trumpet somewhere and start playing again. I hope so. Young folks (young at heart, anyway) interested in music ought to be encouraged.

I had one last question for him: What does he think of today's music?

``I call it noise,'' he said. MEMO: For a copy of Calvin Green's latest music booklet, call 495-0647.

The cost is $10.

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