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46          CURRENT BIOGRAPHY

DARRELL, R. D.--Continued

"But," he wrote, "like all artistic virtues these easily become boring or objectionable when they are carried to excess, when they concentrate excessive attention on themselves, or when they are musically out of place."

The Electronic Music Synthesizer, designed by Dr. Harry F. Olson to "coax musical sounds out of vacuum tubes," was termed by Darrell, a "fabulously complex" invention, and an "exciting harbinger of an impending deus ex machina for an ever-nearing cybernetic musical age" (Saturday Review, April 30, 1955). On the same date in his column, he advised that the Tape-of-the-Month Club, which every month provides its members with preview tape samples of recordings, offers "obvious advantages to any tape fan anxious to build up a miscellaneous pre-recorded library as cheaply and easily as possible."

In the field of discs, Darrell wrote that "all but the most insatiable of the 'hi-fi' fanatics have begun to gag over the 'demonstration' releases of high-decibel spicing and scanty musical or educative substance" (Saturday Review, April 30, 1955). "The danger, if not the sheer impossibility," he asserted is defining high fidelity in any way that excludes "esthetic values and human experimental needs."

His book, Good Listening (Knopf, 1953), was described by Virginia Kirkus (August 15, 1953), as "a valuable little handbook for the majority of today's record collectors." The Saturday Review (October 31, 1953) described it as "entertaining" and stated that "the author's own predilections . . . emerge pretty clearly and without dogmatism." Darrell has written articles for Hound and Horn, Musical Mercury, Sewanee Review, Victor Record Review and Electronics, as well as papers for the Institute of Radio Engineers, Audio Engineering Society and Music Library Association.

A John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship was awarded to him in 1939. Ennis Davis described him in Music Journal (October 1952): "Darrell talks, thinks and acts with the same zest and drive that show up in his writing and editing." He is a charter member of the Audio Engineering Society, and an associate member of the Institute of Radio Engineers and the Acoustical Society of America. His other organization memberships include the Radio Club of America and the Ulster County Historical Society. He is a Democrat.

On September 30, 1930 Darrell married Emma Cartright Bourne, an artist. They were divorced in 1936. He has hazel eyes and "ex-red" white hair. He is five feet seven inches tall and weighs 120 pounds. His recreation includes reading, "particularly history and psychology," and walking. "What bothers me most," he avers, "is the too frequent perversion of great music itself when virtuoso interpreters and engineers run wild in the quest of distinctly 'different' and 'sensational' presentations of familiar materials" in recordings (Saturday Review, December 25, 1954).

References
Mus J p14+ O '52 por

DAVIS, BENJAMIN O(LIVER), JR. Dec. 18, 1912-  United States Air Force officer

Address: b. c/o United States Air Force, The Pentagon, Washington D.C.

On October 27, 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated as the first Negro general in the history of the United States Air Force Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., a West Point graduate and World War II combat pilot. The son of the first Negro general in the U.S. Army, Davis was director of operations and training of the Far East Air Forces, stationed in Tokyo. In June 1955 he was named vice-commander of the Thirteenth Air Force, now based at Clark Field in the Philippines. He is also commander of the newly created Air Task Force based on Taipei, Formosa. During World War II, as commander of the 332nd Fighter Group, he flew sixty combat missions, and was repeatedly decorated for bravery in action.

Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr., was born in Washington, D.C., on December 18, 1912, the only son of Benjamin Oliver and Elnora (Dickerson) Davis. He has two sisters--Olive Elnora (Mrs. George W. Streator) and Elnora Dickerson (Mrs. James A McLendon). His father, who entered the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War, achieved the rank of brigadier general in October 1940. During World War II the elder Davis served successively as commanding general of the 4th Cavalry Brigade, special adviser and coordinator to the commander of the European Theater of Operations, and assistant to the inspector general. He retired from active duty in 1948.

Young Davis' mother died when he was five, and for the next two years he lived with his grandmother. He received his elementary education in the public schools of Washington, D.C. At the age of eight he was taken to Alabama, where his father had been assigned to teach military science at Tuskegee Institute. Four years later the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Davis attended Central High School and was president of his class. He was graduated in 1929, Ben Richardson wrote in Great American Negroes (1945), "with one of the highest scholastic averages of the entire student body of the city."

From 1929 until 1930 Davis attended Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Then, for the next two years, he studied at the University of Chicago, majoring in mathematics and hoping eventually to become an instructor in the subject. However, in 1932 he was recommended for an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Having little hope that he would gain admittance, or, if he achieved so much, that he would succeed at "The Point," from which no Negro had been graduated in fifty years, he failed the first time he took the entrance examinations. His initial failure, however, provided him with the incentive he had previously lacked, and after applying himself assiduously to his preparatory studies, he succeeded on his second attempt and thus became a "plebe," or first-year man.