Well-heeled Eastern youngsters last week drifted back to school and college, and a baldish band leader mopped his brow. During the holidays, Meyer Davis had flown up & down the Eastern seaboard, conducting orchestras for balls, assemblies, routs, benefits for Britain. Meyer Davis bands had played at 30 parties every night, and every night the leader had visited at least two of the parties in person. Now he could take it a little easier.
Meyer Davis, biggest businessman among U. S. band leaders, has 89 orchestras, with his name clearly printed on each, 1,100 musicians on his $3,500,000-a-year pay roll. Ever since 1913 he has played for socialites what jazzmen call "long-underwear" music, sweet and tuneful. At 18 he muscled into a Bar Harbor hotel whose dance music had been supplied by Boston Symphony men. Now Eastern dowagers would sooner serve gin and ginger ale at their parties than employ non-Davis bands: during a recent Newport season, Meyer Davis played at 59 out of 60 top-flight parties. (The eccentric 60th hostess hired Paul Whiteman.) More than half the young ladies at last month's Philadelphia Assembly—oldest annual party in the U. S.—had come out to Davis melody. Meyer Davis has played through five administrations at the White House, although he had few dates during the era of Mr. Coolidge, who preferred the U. S. Marine Band (free).
A small Davis band (without Meyer Davis) may be hired for as little as $125, but most people like them large. The Philadelphia Wideners once had 75 men, the A. Atwater Rents 90, and Ralph Beaver Strassburger in Manhattan the equivalent of a symphony orchestra: 103. Leader Davis is booked through 1943.
Meyer Davis has his bigger checks photostated, consoles himself when moody by gazing at them with a collector's eye—a fine Widener for $10,000, an early Atwater Kent for $7,940, and so on. Mr. Davis likewise takes pleasure in stories in which his publicity men (one of them is his brother Uriel) describe his Manhattan penthouse, his suave butler. Actually Meyer Davis is the first to admit that his Manhattan apartment is modest. The chief Davis establishment is in Philadelphia.
There Hilda Emery Davis, the band leader's wife, composes, collects books and manuscripts, notably Byroniana. An able pianist, she played with the Davis orchestra in the early Bar Harbor days, says she hated him, married him after three years of it. For the Du Pont-Roosevelt wedding, at which Mr. Davis played, Mrs. D. wrote a piece called You Are the Reason for My Love Song. A sister-in-law of Conductor Pierre Monteux, she had a serious composition, The Last Knight, performed by the NBC Symphony, with M. Monteux conducting.
The five Davis youngsters: Virginia Faith, who studies voice; Meyer Jr., who fiddles and may follow his father's course; Garry, a trumpeter; Emery, a composer-pianist; Marjorie, a pianist. The Davis family assembles on Sundays, if at no other time, always eats the same dinner, a good one ranging from cheese souffle to ice cream, Madeira and coffee.