I suppose Harvard was the only college in the country about which a blues could have been written and exploited with a good chance of titillating the public fancy. Anyway, it's now been done. The perpetrator is George Frazier '33, record reviewer for "Mademoiselle," who has just begun a daily column in the Boston Herald, and finds time also to proclaim his disapprobation of popular idols in the swing world once a month in "Downbeat" and "Music and Rhythm." With all this, and an occasional short story, not to forget a casual stab at the great American novel, his creative urge has not been satisfied, and George has once more bloomed forth, this time with the lyrics to "Harvard Blues."

As might be expected, the Frazier verses, given a sympathetic reading by Jimmy Rushing, with Count Basie's band offering staunch instrumental support, were not written to glorify the academic stature, or even the gridiron triumphs, of his alma mater. They discuss rather the Harvard Hollywood and the rest of the country know and don't love. "Oh, I wear Brooks clothes and white shoes all the time" and "Oh, I don't keep dogs or women in my room" are a couple of choice excerpts from the Frazier rhymes, and there are others.

Perhaps Rushing doesn't impart the poignant feeling of a Bessie Smith to his rendition, but he performs his usual entertaining, ultra-nasal job. As for the Count, he apparently is a Harvard rooter, after doing a turn over the Crimson Network last spring, for he gives the number an extra special treatment. There is some excellent saxophone moaning on the first two choruses, and Dicky Wells, or someone just as good, plays a few pleasant bars of trombone during the vocal. And just to make sure that "Harvard Blues" has a congenial mate, the reverse, one of those riff numbers which could have been named anything at all, has been entitled "Coming Out Party."

Certainly the jazzmen did better by Harvard than Maxie Rosenbloom and the Pennsylvania football team. After all, it's not every college that can have a blues written about it. Not even Jimmy Rushing would want to traffic with the art of Bessie Smith and W. C. Handy trying some such lines as, "Baby, I got them lowdown Massachusetts Institute of Technology blues . . ."

Passing to other matters, I find a new volume, the "Jazz Record Book," on the market, and have duly and avidly snapped it up. The authors, all learned authorities on jazz lore, analyze over a thousand representative records, most of them available today, and include to boot a short history of Jazz, which seems to have been compressed from "Jazzmen," which appeared a couple of years ago. Obviously an ambitions book like this cries out for more attention than this little squib can give, and it will get it next week. . . . Mike Levin, who started this column three scaut years ago, is busy as ever around New York, what with a new feature in "Orchestra World" and a labor of love helping Red Norvo under way with his new band. . . . Harry James and his band did not impress me too favorably at the Metropolitan last week. Helen Forrest sang nicely, without fancy gestures, either, but the band itself didn't ride on its various killer-dillers. There were plenty of brassy blasts, of course, but they failed to fascinate.