Jazz Bands Please 3,000 At SPAC

by Marilyn Nason, The Post-Star, June 15, 1970

It was a short, delightful course in American jazz last night at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center and the 3,000 attending showed their appreciation with sustained applause and truly attentive devotion to the performers.

Preservation Hall Jazz band, boasting not a member “under 60,” opened the program for the first half with some of the nostalgic tunes that formulated the world of jazz decades ago.

It was toe-tapping music, as the six fine, old gentlemen, all professional musicians of the highest calibre, played their favorite style in a relaxed manner, moving from tune to tune, from solo to solo with the nonchalance of years of practice.

For those who have actually experienced jazz at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, the mammoth, sterile SPAC stage is a far cry from the dingy, windowless, decaying structure in the French Quarter, where these men gallantly preserve this unique American form of music.

Appearing last night with Preservation Hall Jazz Band were
Percy Humphrey, James “Sing” Miller, Josiah “Cie” Frazier, “Big Jim” Robinson, Willie Humphrey and Narvin Kimball.

Completely different, yet strangely similar in their professionalism and their theme of the jazz/blues beat, was the World’s Greatest Jazz Band, which played up a storm of familiar hits for the second half.

Starring were Yank Lawson, Bob Haggart, Billy Butterfield, Bud Freeman, Eddie Hubbell, Vic Dickinson, Bob Wilber, Ralph Sutton, Gus Johnson Jr.

Tunes ranged from “Tin Roof Blues” and “Limehouse Blues” to Bob Haggart’s great hit, “Big Noise Blew in from Winnetka,” and his equally fine, “What’s New?”, this done in superb fashion by Billy Butterfield, one of the world’s greatest trumpet players.

Yank Lawson introduced the tunes and each man had ample opportunity in solo, duet and ensemble to display his talents. It was a great night of the very finest of American music. The sound system was obviously fixed from Saturday night’s opening performance problems and, in fact, has never been better.

SPAC is closed until Saturday and Sunday, when Liberace comes to the amphitheatre for two performances.