travsd

Skitch Henderson: The Tonight Show’s First Bandleader

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Today is the birthday of Lyle “Skitch” Henderson (1918-2005).

Piano wizard Henderson is perhaps best remembered today as the first bandleader for both The Tonight Show (under Steve Allen and the early days of Johnny Carson) as well as The Steve Allen Show (during Jack Paar’s Tonight Show tenure). He was also the musical director of NBC from 1951 to 1966.

Prior to this Henderson worked on radio for Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. His big break (which finally got him out of the grind of playing piano in roadhouses) was when he was booked by MGM as an accompanist to Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in 1937 for a promotional tour. He also made hundreds of recordings during his career, and founded the New York Pops orchestra in 1983.

To find out more about the variety arts past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. And don’t miss Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, to be released by Bear Manor Media in 2013.

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Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.

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