By Edna Marshall
New York, Nov. 1—In a little rear room of an upper floor of the City Home for the Aged, Joseph Tatar, once New York’s favorite violinist, is practicing eight hours daily on a $10 fiddle, preparing for a comeback.
Not so many years ago, Jo Tatar, with a mellow, almost human Stradivarius, was a part of New York’s night life, directing the orchestra of the Waldorf, then at the old Fifth Avenue Hotel, when the Madison Square Theater was at its height, and finally charming the guests of the Astor House.
New York knew him, loved him and claimed him as its own. Attempts of other cities to win his services were frustrated by entertaining New York managers, who knew they could not spare him. Remembering that he is practicing again, determining to come back but not with his Stradivarius that was stolen months ago as he slept in a lodging house. Instead he uses a cheap violin that was sent him by a man who had heard of his plight.
That kindness has impelled him to work again. He is not too old or too tired, the little white-haired man proclaims. Before he had to work so hard to save himself from starving that he had not the time to play. But now that a warm room in the city Home is assured him, he will practice again.
Forty-one years ago, Tatar came to America from Budapest. He had been directing the band of the crack Hungarian regiment. He fitted into New York, for the city then loved good music and jazz was as yet unknown. Hotel after hotel sought him and his violin. Mostly he played solos.
He was too good to drown in an orchestra. Concerts he gave by the score—and applause was never failing.
Then came jazz. There was no longer a place for Tatar. He invested what money he had, seeking to establish a life income. And when his investments failed, he speculated with his little remaining wealth. That went, too.
And Tatar, with his graceful, musical hands, had to seek plain, hard work. At nights, by the glow of candlelight, when his body was really too weary to respond to the call of his violin, he played and played. But he had not time to learn the new way of making music that was known as jazz.
Two months ago Tatar work in his little room on the lower East Side to find his violin—which had been valued at $3,000—gone. He had loved it, fondled it, talked to it, and now it was gone. So too was his remaining $18.50 in cash.
Broken by his loss, he appeared before Magistrate Corrigan of Essex Market Court and asked to be sent to the work house.
“It will be warm there,” he said, “and I will be sure of work and some one to talk to now that my fiddle is gone.”
But he was sent to this other warm house, where he could rest instead of work, and a man in Hartford heard his story and sent him a little, cheap violin. Tatar is learning to play now for with no work that must be done there is plenty of time to learn.
“In a year,” he says, “I shall know how. I shall get somehow another violine—another like my own. I shall go to the biggest hotel in New York and lead its orchestra. Wait and see.”
New York will go on and see.
From the front page of The Daily Advance, Elizabeth City, N.C., Saturday evening, November 1, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074042/1924-11-01/ed-1/seq-1/#words=NOVEMBER+1%2C+1924
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