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Dark horse was John Waldo Green, a square-faced, square-shouldered young Harvard-man (class of 1928) who earlier in the evening had come on stage grinning and bowing, sat down at one of the three pianos which had 'been pushed in front of the orchestra, and proceeded to solo in a suite called Night Club. Johnny Green's music was as blatantly programatic as Grofé's. It described tables being set in a speakeasy still reeking with smoke from the night before. Revelers drifted in. Two lovers sat in a corner oblivious to the noise around them. Hot, reeling couples packed the dance floor "not much bigger than a dime." Corks popped in a drunken finale. But Night Club had verve, spontaneity, fresh harmonic and rhythmic effects missing from the run of ambitious jazz, which nowadays seems all dressed up with no place to go. Two parts at least—the melody given to the lovers and the strident "Dance on a Dime"—should make song hits as rich as Johnny Green's "Body & Soul," which Torchsinger Libby Holman made famous.
"Body & Soul" dates back almost to Johnny Green's Harvard days when he founded the Gold Coast Dance Orchestra, played the saxophone for the Harvard Band, became a protege of Gertrude Lawrence who, when he was a freshman, sang one of his songs in Chariot's Revue.
For six months after he left Cambridge, Johnny Green tried dutifully to be a stock broker's clerk. Then he took a $60-a-week job with Paramount Publix, which led to ghosting at the piano, orchestrating Maurice Chevalier's Big Pond, synchronizing shorts. Five years have obliterated his Harvard stamp. He chews gum, wears tan spats, pin-checked suits, hires a trainer to pummel him every morning so that he will appear dapper when he gets chances to conduct in cinemansions. Johnny Green's bathroom is his pride. It is papered with the covers of the 15 songs he has had published. Some of them: "Hello, My Lover, Goodbye," "I'm Yours," "Living in Dreams," "Rain, Rain, Go Away."