Unless you're planning to be around Boston during vacation, it might be a good idea to drop in at the Savoy Cafe tonight for a farewell glimpse of Frankie Newton's band in action. For the boys received their two weeks' notice last Sunday, and will be on the road the day after Easter. Frankie has been pleasing the regular paying guests and bringing a lot of new fans into the Savoy as well, but apparently he didn't always preserve the most amicable relations with his boss. But he nevertheless deserves a really good job where crowds of citizens will pour in to see and hear him. A situation in some favorable New York spot, perhaps, in competition with Teddy Wilson and the Chicagoans at Nick's, would really prove his mettle.

At first, the band hopes to play some one-night stands, including college dances. And I would certainly recommend them to any dance committee that had a lively, jump-loving clientele to provide for. And don't think Frankie can't play slow music well. I heard him do the blues last week, and when it was over the customers were just babbling incoherently in admiration. For them he was the cock of the roost, the salt of the earth, the cream de la cream.

On popular ditties, however, I'm afraid anything particularly polished for your dancing pleasure is not to be expected from Frankie. His is a jump band--it possesses no "choirs" of brasses and saxes. It gets along on two of each and does nicely withal. Its pop tune arrangements, of which there aren't very many right now, are played with apathetic carelessness. A colored band of that kind just can't get excited about whether I want to walk with or without you, and working for that Glenn Miller gloss on the sweet numbers seems a waste of time to them.

Last week the Savoy had high hopes of bringing in Lionel Hampton's sextet, part of his large band, without Lionel himself, who was ill. Evidently his band, which played at the Bermuda Terrace recently, was in danger of breaking up, as well. But the deal is off, and now Sabby Lewis's band will make a triumphant return to Boston. Lewis was at the Savoy in the fall, you may remember, before going into Kelly's Stable, right in the midst of the musical heat of West 52nd Street in New York. This band pays much more attention to its original arrangements than Newton, but its soloists are hardly as interesting.

So catch Frankie tonight, or you may have seen the last of him for quite a time.

Max Kaminsky, the little Chicago-style trum-peter from Dorchester, left Nick's, New York clearing house of the Chicago musicians, last week to spend a few days up here away from the frenzy of collective improvisation that goes on there nightly . . . Listen to Ruby Smith's Decca record of "Harlem Gin Blues" for a little uninhibited vocal ribaldry . . . Columbia expects to issue some records by Red Norvo's band, which was heard in Boston some weeks ago, with Mildred Bailey singing the refrains as of yore.