PBS Big Band Bash Footage

Big Band Bash was a three-hour tribute to the great jazz ensembles and vocalists of the 1930s and '40s which aired as a part of the Festival '78 Campaign over most PBS stations in March 1978. Taped at the Statler Hilton in New York (a Glenn Miller song was its phone number after all) along with New Jersey's Meadowbrook, performers and bands included Johnny Desmond, Dizzy Gillespie, Helen Humes, Helen Forrest, Earl Hines, Sammy Kaye, Don Cornell, the Pied Pipers, the Count Basie Orchestra, the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra, and the Woody Herman Orchestra. Approximately half of the total tribute is featured here, which also includes film footage of past stars including Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Glen Miller, and Benny Goodman.