Fact #175074

The October edition of British music publication Rhythm is published, including an item in the Talk Of The Town section about the use of drugs among "coloured musicians" in the USA. It states, "They say it gives them a new type of elation - two minds - turns them into higher beings than men (while the effect lasts). Under this influence they play hotter and hotter and keep at it incessantly. This remarkable statement has solved for me one of those problems that have been worrying me for a long time. I refer to those ghastly noises under strange titles that the coloured orchestras record, and which are hailed as inspirations of genius by musical journalists who are less enlightened than our own musical staff. It also accounts, no doubt, for that gasping for breath that the blacks call singing."