Music: Happiest Band in the Land

The nine-man band made sweet music that sounded like two marshmallows meeting headon. Its shuffling, danceable rhythm treacled out of a fair piano, a soggy sax, a toneless trumpet, a cooing clarinet and a bass. The feature acts, a good old square dance and the numbers the boys in the band clowned up in trick hats and phony mustaches, were strictly corny. But last week, while many another U.S. nightclub with tonier entertainment was as empty as the inside of a kettledrum, Chicago’s old standby, the Blackhawk Restaurant, couldn’t find room for all the customers who wanted it straight off the cob.

The trim little maestro who serves up this musical corn felt that its popularity was natural and deserved. Said Bandleader-Songwriter Al Trace: “We always knew this music was in for keeps. Other stuff comes & goes, but this is the people . . . We play down to them, play requests and mention their names. We give them a good time and we play stuff they can dance to. How can you miss?”

No. 1 Hit. Cocksure little Al Trace was packing a spot where anyone had to be both good and loud to blow away the memories of more memorable bands—the famed Coon-Sanders orchestra; or Ben Pollack’s band, which featured a young trombonist named Glenn Miller and a clarinetist named Benny Goodman. Kay Kyser had started his College of Musical Knowledge there.

But Al wasn’t worrying about the great past. He had already made a fortune collaborating on tunes like Little Sweetheart of the Ozarks, and songs for children (he has none himself) like The Sly Little Fox

(“I just go into a dime store and get a kid’s story, twist it a bit and turn it into music”). His You Call Everybody Darling is the nation’s No. 1 song hit. (His recording of it with his “Happiest Band in the Land” is also the No. 4 bestselling popular record.) And last week, “so people will be sure to identify it with me,” Blackhawk customers were getting liberal doses of his latest number, Brush Those Tears from Your Eyes.

Under .300. Trace, born in Chicago 44 years ago, once thought that baseball would be his career. But he gave up ball-playing when he concluded that he could never hit .300. He knew how to bat the drums and sing a little—”I was what you call a dramatic tenor, singing The Road to Mandalay and stuff like that.” After writing songs and “running material” fof WLS’ National Barn Dance, he formed his own band. His first job: playing for Fan Dancer Sally Rand at Chicago’s 1933 World’s Fair.

Since then, Al has dropped his drumsticks for a baton and seldom musses his neat double-breasted suits even when he gets into the act on songs like The Mortgage Man. Most of the time, he circulates around the green-walled, silver-pillared Blackhawk to make the customers feel at home. They seem to.