At Wivex

Some time around 1950, Eva (later, my mum) got onto the bus outside her house in Fridhemsgatan to travel the short distance into central Sundsvall.  On the bus, to her astonishment, was a black man, the first she had ever seen. He was tall and well-dressed. He was a musician, he was carrying a trumpet in its case.

They were heading for the same place, of course; Wivex, the dance hall (danspalats) in Sundsvall town centre. Eva was starstruck. Later, while he was playing, she stood right next to the stage. I would have married him instantly, she reminisced last week. No doubt there were plenty of other Sundsvall girls who were thinking the same.

(A little later, my mum became a big fan of Sammy Davis, Jr.)

In Wivex, Sundsvall. Photo from 1951.

[Image source: https://digitaltmuseum.se/021015971387/ungdomstraff-pa-wivex-med-dans-och-umgange . The photo is in Sundsvall Museum.]

In Wivex, Sundsvall. Photo from 1954

[Image source: https://digitaltmuseum.se/011015443785/reportagebilder-fran-danspalatset-wivex-i-sundsvall . The photo is in Sundsvall Museum.]

Danspalatset Wivex opened in 1941 and ran until 1979. The illuminated sign at 16 Torggatan still lives on. (It's currently a hair salon, Salong Wivex.)

The dance hall was a place for singles to meet. Eva once spotted the husband of a distant relative among the Wivex crowd. That was not OK. She considered him a shady customer after that.

Outside Wivex, Sundsvall. Photo from 1959.

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Jonny Campbell (1917 - 2010)

[Image source: https://jazzkjeld.typepad.com/neworleansdelight/2010/11/johnny-campbell-er-d%C3%B8d.html .]

I cherish the belief, though I can never prove it, that the musician Eva saw that evening was Jonny Campbell. In which case the instrument was a saxophone, not a trumpet -- and she saw a true legend. 

Jonny and his brother Jimmy were the multi-talented sons of Afro-American tap-dancer William Campbell and his Danish wife Oda. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark the brothers were in the Harlem Kiddies, one of Copenhagen's most popular dance groups (it had three black musicians and a Jewish singer!). Later, for instance as the Jonny Campbell Sextet, they toured Scandinavia extensively. Jonny played the saxophone and clarinet, Jimmy the guitar. You can hear them both in action here:

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Springtime for two fingers


Amazing number of violins
that lay hidden under the snow!
Now the black cases are open.
The lemon butterfly fine-tunes
its wings. The swallow
up-dives from the lake.

The long silver strings
stretched between the mountain and the valley
start to vibrate.
Everything imitates everything.
The eaves of the roof imitate
the tree sparrow's chip chip.
What does Plato say about the frog?
That she imitates the purling stream!

I enrol in the school of nature.
Turn my score to face its master:
the origin of all music.


My translation of Våretyd för två fingrar by Werner Aspenström, from his 1956 collection Dikter under träden (Poems under the trees). Werner Aspenström (1918 - 1997) was born in Norrbärke in Dalarna.

Two more poems by Werner Aspenström: https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2020/05/werner-aspenstrom.html .]

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This poem was made into a song by the Gävle composer Bo Linde (1933 - 1970), appropriately with a two-finger piano accompaniment. (Fjorton sånger om våren, för sopran och piano, op. 40.)