WHRV Airs Disc Jockey Kennedy Tonight

Sargent Kennedy '28, Registrar and jazz fan, will inaugurate a series of broadcasts featuring Faculty and Administration disc jockeys when he steps before a WHRV mike at 7:30 o'clock tonight.

Although he has not yet decided which of his 300 records he will use on tonight's program, last night he was considering favorably some recent repressings of pre 1930 jazz classics. One thing is certain --all of his selections will come from the twenties. Harvard traditionalism has permeated his tastes in music enough to exclude the hybrid jazz of the thirties from his collection.

Did His Bit

When he was an undergraduate, Kennedy helped to organize the original Gold Coast Band, which was a local fixture until the war. He played trumpet and cornet, and until about a year ago managed to maintain his command of both instruments. During the war he was "in condition" enough to work with an outfit that played in Boston at USO dances and other social functions.

Along with Kennedy in the original Gold Coast Orchestra was one John Green '98, who since has written such songs as "Body And Soul" and "You Came Along." In Kennedy's time, the orchestra was not so commercial as it became in later years, and played jam sessions--or "ad lib," as Kennedy puts it--as often as it worked from arrangements.

Big on Bing

At the same time that Kennedy was blowing his trumpet and cornet in Cambridge, Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke were in the national spotlight on these instruments respectively. Both are among the cornerstones of Kennedy's record collection, which also includes nearly every now priceless record Bing Crosby made before he started to groan and ceased to sing with Paul Whiteman and the Rhythm Boys.

Kennedy knows a number of fellow enthusiasts in University officialdom, but has not found any other "Jazz fiends" in University Rall, his home territory. In the Faculty, he eites particularly David Owen, professor of History, with when he frequently gets together for jazz conferences.