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WGN/Swingtime Videos/Meet The Band Leaders - In Color?!?!?!?!


JSngry

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I've seen the B&W videos of these fine shows for decades now, but it looks like it was broadcast in color, maybe?

Harry James is the only color one I've seen, but is it possible that Duke/Basie/Hampton/etc still exist somewhere, in color?

And finally, can we get an authoritative account of just what this show was, and why the commercial reissues have been so spotty?

 

What I have of these I have on old VHS bought out of the Blockbuster cutout bin way back in the day. This stuff is priceless, imo.

These things:

s-l225.jpg

I guess Charly has had their hands on the too,,,who knew, and again, just VHS?

51lW6BvBucL._SX466_.jpg

 

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I think at least some of the series has also been released on DVD. (I am fairly certain I have a bunch of them on DVD at home, but I'll have to double check to make sure. Many of these releases have awfully similar names, so I might be confusing them with others.) A quick Amazon search just confuses matter, as it finds a DVD, but with a cover that doesn't match the title--sigh. https://www.amazon.com/Swingtime-Video-Presents-Leaders-Ellington/dp/B004C4JH90  

At least some of them are from a jazz show on WGN-TV in Chicago in the mid-sixties. (See here, for example: http://www.geocities.jp/count_basie_fan_site/discography/swingtime_video1.html). Whether they were broadcast in colour or B&W I do not know. The transition to colour happened in the mid-sixties in the US, but it was spread out over several years, with some networks doing it earlier than others. Small local stations were likely the last to go colour.

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WGN was never a small local station, so that leads me to think that these James things in color are from a more original source than the B&W things that have been released. That and the audio sounds a little more "immediate".

As best I can tell, the DVDs are Japanese in origin. The VHS were all over the place in the early days of Blockbuster/Etvcc. But AFAIK have not been seen domestically since. LOik I said, I got my copies out of their cutout bin, a pivotal time when home video rental was finally driven my mass demand rather that a broader spectrum of availability.

Here's another one in color.  I gotta wonder what the source is that this guy has color and no commercial - or booted -  issue does not.

These WGN shows...details are sketchy these days as far as I can tell. The music is anything but!

 

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  • 1 year later...

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