Art: White Dog

Though it has been fully celebrated in song & story, swing music has been neglected in the graphic arts. But circulating among swing fans in Chicago last week were a number of scrupulous lithographs on the life of swing. They were the work of one George von Physter, an oldtime doghouse slapper (string bass player) who went to Hollywood as a designer, returned to the smalltime bands with an itch to make drawings of them. The results were so deep-scarred with authenticity that swing musicians in Chicago last week had them tacked over their beds. Included: a jam session in a cheap hotel room; a street-corner scene of jobless musicians; the interior of the Orange Blossom in Kansas City, one of the midwestern barrel houses where swing flourishes rankly. In this lithograph, The Student (see cut, p. 39), Artist von Physter showed ” a white dog named Gunk” at the saxophone learning how to go to town by sitting in with colored players.