FASHIONS IN FOXTROTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20087, 26 October 1928, Page 9

FASHIONS IN FOXTROTS.

WAITING FOR THE " BIG HIT." Banco music is changing again. The typo of jazz tune that was hugely successful a year ago will not sell to-day. The foxtrots of have gone, never to return. A new lashion is on the way—and someone is going to make a loli of money out of it. It sounds quaint to speak of jazz fashions. But there are fashions in jazz more so than ever to-day, when the life of the average jazz tune is down to six months, and may soon have contracted to four. Try ci series of Juno foxtrots foi 1925, 1926, and 1927, and the latest for this year, on your gramophone. \ou will find they date as decidedly as a woman s ll Jit As for tho foxtrots of 1922, to hear them gives one the sensation one expeiiencos on glancing through an old photograph album. Strange that we once looked like that! Strange that wo were once ravished by —that! A new dance music fashion conies by way of a reaction of tho vast dance public against something it is tired of. It has ideas in tho ballroom, for it is the irresistible music which keeps dancing alive ami which brings now dances in, and not vice versa.

.lust now the dance music composer who calls at the music publisher's with a now tango, a now blackbottom number, or a new Charleston tune, is being shown the door. Tho demand has died. Blues numbers also have lost much of the popularity with which they started tho year. Mammy and "010 Kentucky" songs nro as dead as the Livery Stable Blues oii 12 years ago. A temple bell in ir foxtrot dates it fatally now; so does a Chinese lilt. The public has had Indian, and Chineso jazz effects and is sick of them.

Foxtrots that aro carried aloug on a full tide of gay melody are in high favour Melancholy themes of tho "whero-is-ma-baby ?" and "my-broken-heart" have had their spell of popularity. Joy songs of the "marvellousgirl" and "JuriCTlove" description are in vogue. Waltzes, too, with strong rcynantic melodies aro tho successes of the hour. Waltzes have been notably weak and sentimental for tho last three or four years—possibly because most of tho successful dance music-makers have been putting I heir best efforts into more lucrative product ion for tho foxtrot market. A gnud waltz now is a big money-maker. But the big hit, another 'Tea for Two," the jazz number that wijl alone make a musical show and captivata twenty million dancers, has not appeared in the 1928 list yet.