From 1956 to 1958 a weekly TV show called Stars of Jazz brought the sounds and sights of the art form into viewers’  living rooms in an innovative and compelling presentation hosted by “Route 66” songwriter Bobby Troup and featuring many of the era’s top jazz artists. On this edition of Night Lights we’ll hear performances by some of those artists such as saxophonist Art Pepper and singer Billie Holiday, as well as some clips from the show’s segments that sought to illuminate the history and evolution of jazz.

THE HOT AND THE COOL

In 1956 the status of jazz in American popular culture was at a strange crossroads that would only become apparent many years later. The music’s dominance in the swing era had given way to novelty pop and the sudden emergence of rock ‘n roll from the rich soil of jump blues and R & B. A few faint shoots of what would eventually become the jazz education movement were just beginning to show, while the cultural influence of the 1940s bebop revolution had lingered long enough for Marlon Brando’s motorcycle gang to invoke bop as a talisman of rebellion in the 1954 film The Wild One. Yet only three years later modern jazz was presented in the young rock ‘n roll star Elvis Presley’s film Jailhouse Rock as stuffy and musically academic, with one parlor sophisticate declaring that “Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond have taken dissonance as far as I care to go!” (Brubeck was actually a great exemplar of jazz’s changing status, operating as the music’s triple threat in the 1950s, helping to jump-start jazz concerts on America’s college campuses, joining the international jazz tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department, and making commercial headway into the newborn post-World War II suburbs.)

So it’s no surprise that jazz, still enjoying such cultural relevancy, had been showing up on television ever since the medium had begun its surge into American households at the dawn of the 1950s, though programming structured *around* jazz had been scant. Most notably, TV host Steve Allen had given jazz a high profile on NBC’s The Tonight Show, championing the music and showcasing artists such as Miles Davis, Art Tatum, Mary Lou Williams and others who are now seen as important and influential figures in the history of jazz.

But the show that stands out most in this era is one that began locally in Los Angeles, expanded to a nationwide broadcast, and left a legacy, only partially preserved, of innovative arts and cultural programming that brought together the hot and the cool of the television medium and the music of jazz. Stars Of Jazz was an Emmy-winning weekly late-1950s jazz TV program initially broadcast on KABC-Los Angeles, featuring performances by numerous top jazz artists of the time and segments devoted to the history and current state of jazz.

Jazz historian James A. Harrod’s book Stars Of Jazz: A Complete History of the Innovative Television Series 1956-1958 makes a persuasive case for the show’s place in jazz history and beyond. Harrod notes that “Stars Of Jazz introduced many visual innovations to television, films by Charles and Ray Eames, artists creating works on camera as inspired by the jazz being performed, onscreen views of oscilloscope waveforms of the jazz being performed, and a host of other visual effects that demonstrated the rhythmic nature of jazz.”

The show’s first director and one of its most important early advocates was Norman Abbott, nephew of Bud Abbott of Abbott and Costello fame, and cited by jazz historian James Harrod as the creator of Stars of Jazz’s low-key lighting and noir-ish opening—a visual design choice brought about in part because of the program’s austere budget. The May 19, 1958 program, viewable on YouTube, offers a great example, beginning with a close-up of Stan Levey’s drums, the camera then pulling back and up to reveal the playing musicians, first in shadow and then in light, and finally circling around to host Bobby Troup, billed as “the Narrator,” sitting atop a stool and digging the sounds with a midcentury modern savoir faire of authority:

Troup was an accomplished songwriter and performer, most famous for the hep post-war finger-popper “Route 66,” and his casually suave manner and genuine love of jazz made him an engaging narrator for the program. We’ll hear Bobby Troup now introducing singer Billie Holiday on an early 1956 episode of Stars of Jazz, at a time when Holiday was promoting her newly-published memoir Lady Sings The Blues. Troup gave his biographical intro against a backdrop of brick rowhouses representing Holiday’s Baltimore childhood origins:

You can see a clip of that performance on YouTube,as well as a couple of other full-length episodes of Stars Of Jazz, but many of the show’s original 130 episodes, recorded on kinescope, an early preservation technology for film that preceded the development of videotape, were discarded by Stars of Jazz’s home station KABC-Los Angeles. The show’ s producer, Jimmy Baker, was able to save 45 episodes in all and donated them to the UCLA Film and Television Archive, which had restored 16 of the programs by 2020, when James A. Harrod’s definitive book about Stars of Jazz appeared. 

There were very nearly no Stars of Jazz episodes to be saved at all after the first few episodes had aired in the summer of 1956. The show had launched at the behest of several passionate jazz fans such as Baker and director Norman Abbott, but KABC provided almost no resources for production and had also told them that the program would end after four episodes if they didn’t find a sponsor. Baker was able to finangle copies of a new book about jazz from a publishing friend and had Troup offer them for free on Stars of Jazz’s fourth episode to viewers if they sent a request by mail. The show received more than 7000 letters in response, and Baker then took the mailbags to an advertising agency that handled beer accounts as proof that Stars of Jazz had already established an audience. And that’s how Budweiser came to sponsor the program, with cartoon interludes featuring an older, rather foppish gent named Pettigrew who inevitably worked a list of Budweiser’s ingredients into the sketch.

With the Budweiser sponsorship in hand, Stars of Jazz proceeded to expand its mission of producing a high-quality and informative jazz TV show. As jazz historian James A. Harrod notes, “Bob Arbogast’s scripts avoided a scholarly tone and infused humor as a mechanism to deliver significant background information and history relating to the featured jazz artists appearing on each episode. Selected photos were displayed on the back projection screen as aural examples were played on the sound system to illustrate noteworthy events in the jazz artist’s past.” And the range of jazz represented on the show was diverse. We’ll hear Bobby Troup now on a 1956 episode discussing the evolution of what was then often called “Chicago jazz,” along with performances by the Rampart Street Paraders and Jack Teagarden:

While Stars Of Jazz showcased all kinds of jazz, including Chicago or Dixieland and hard bop, its production base of Los Angeles gave the show a natural inclination to often feature West Coast jazz, a still relatively-young branch of the jazz tree that even in its infancy was sometimes described in reductive terms. This February 10, 1958 broadcast features a rare documented live performance of Bill Holman's extended "Quartet" composition by drummer Shelly Manne's group that exemplifies the ambitious spirit found in some of the West Coast work from this period, much of it by composers, players and arrangers who had come of age in the swing-to-bop years of the mid-1940s. This episode also includes an appearance by the young Mark Murphy, who would go on to become one of the most renowned male jazz singers of the late 20th century. 

I’m featuring music from a late-1950s TV show called Stars of Jazz on this edition of Night Lights. Stars of Jazz, hosted by pianist, vocalist and songwriter Bobby Troup, debuted on KABC-Los Angeles in 1956 and quickly gained a following for its thoughtful and innovative approach to presenting jazz on television. It met with critical approval as well and won an Emmy in 1957 for best local entertainment program, going on to enjoy a national run on ABC for much of 1958. Only 45 of its 130 half-hour episodes have been saved, but jazz scholar James A. Harrod’s extensively researched account of the program in his book Stars Of Jazz reconstructs all of its broadcasts, as well as offering extensive photos shot on the show’s set, a discography of the 36 LPs drawn from show performances that were released in the 1970s, and a detailed history of the show’s production.

Stars of Jazz employed new-to-the-time techniques such as a rear projection screen that showed photographic and other visual renderings of the artists and themes that Troup was discussing. Its low-key lighting and spare sets, inspired in part by fiscal austerity, became an aesthetic trademark of the show. As Harrod notes, “the creative team at Stars of Jazz was always looking for innovative ways to interpret jazz visually, to find form and pattern and movement to accompany the sounds of jazz.” One such innovation was the oscilloscope waveform, which the show’s producers sometimes imposed over the musicians’ instruments as they played, so that viewers would see undulating vibrations apparently issuing forth from the horn of a saxophone, or flowing along the neck of a guitar.

For all of its visual appeal, however, Stars Of Jazz was also a strong musical program, and it lived up to its name with many of the performers it featured, such as pianist Oscar Peterson and the Count Basie big band in the first flush of its 1950s renaissance. In April of 1958 the program gained a national platform when it was picked up by ABC, a seemingly great development for the show, which continued to garner good notices for its compelling musical and visual representation of a diversity of jazz styles from jazz and media critics in the markets where it was seen. The following month Bobby Troup gave an enthusiastic introduction to singer Julie London on a May 17 broadcast, with a wry less-than-full disclosure of their relationship. Troup and London would marry the following year and go on to co-star in the 1970s television drama Emergency! From the same Stars of Jazz episode we’ll also hear perennial show favorites The Lighthouse All-Stars. The All-Stars were practically a neighborhood band, playing regularly at the Lighthouse Café in nearby Hermosa Beach with a changing cast of West Coast stalwarts such as Bud Shank and Shorty Rogers. 

While Stars Of Jazz frequently featured West Coast jazz artists like the Lighthouse All-Stars and others, it also welcomed hardbop groups like Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and drummer Max Roach’s quintet. The appearance of the Roach quintet offers a rare video shot of the young and very talented trumpeter Booker Little, who would die just three years later at the age of 23 in 1961:

The Max Roach Quintet doing “Minor Mode Blues” featuring Booker Little on trumpet and George Coleman on tenor sax, from a program that aired on October 6, 1958.

That same month ABC cancelled Stars of Jazz, which returned to local-only broadcast for a final nine episodes as the year wound down. The elevation from local to national network broadcast became problematic when ABC bounced the show around on its schedule and failed to secure a sponsor. DownBeat’s obit for the show bemoaned the loss of what it described as a “lusty, pioneering program,” and other media sources lamented its passing as well. Jazz programming continued to emerge on television in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and technology eventually evolved far beyond what the creators of Stars Of Jazz had at their fingertips, but they made jazz magic out of the little they had to represent the richness of the music they loved.

Though many of the 130 episodes were disposed of, the legacy of Stars Of Jazz seems to shine brighter these days, thanks in large part to the documentation that does exist. The Calliope label ultimately released 36 albums of musical performances from Stars of Jazz in the 1970s, and in 1997 photographer Ray Avery published a book containing some of the many photos he took on the set of the show. Forty-five of the original programs have been retained by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. And in 2020 James A. Harrod published Stars Of Jazz, a definitive account of the program, including many photos taken on set by noted jazz photographer Ray Avery, and making a strong case for the show’s place in media history.

Through its innovative visual techniques and its thoughtful presentation, Stars of Jazz helped point the way for jazz’s growing acceptance as an enduring and culturally significant artform, while showing how the still-young medium of television could put both entertainment and educational content across in engaging and imaginative ways.

*Thanks to James A. Harrod, whose book and comprehensive history Stars Of Jazz: A Complete History of the Innovative Television Series 1956-1958 is available from various online booksellers. Special thanks to Dan Stewart, to whom this program is dedicated along with all of the artists and production and technical staff who made Stars of Jazz possible. (With an additional huzzah for the preservationists)

PREVIOUSLY ON NIGHT LIGHTS

Jazz Tonight With Steve Allen

Heard It On The TV: Jazz Takes On Television Themes