On May 5, 1958, jazz came to commercial television in Boston as The Jazz Scene launched on station WHDH, hosted by John McLellan.
John McLellan at the WHDH microphone
Hard as it is to believe, jazz was a regular feature on network television in the late fifties. In 1958, Garry Moore and Steve Allen each hosted the Timex All Star Jazz Show, Benny Goodman headlined a special called Swing into Spring, Billy Taylor hosted one series, The Subject Is Jazz, and Bobby Troup hosted another, Stars of Jazz.
All of these programs were hoping to duplicate the success enjoyed by The Sound of Jazz, broadcast by CBS in December 1957. Shot in black-and-white, without elaborate sets, whirling dancers, or celebrity hosts, the show simply presented the musicians, in casual dress and settings, blowing. The artistic directors, Nat Hentoff and Whitney Balliet, kept the focus on the musicians and their music. It was jazz at its spontaneous best, and none of the shows that followed could match it.
One person who adopted the Hentoff formula was Boston deejay John McLellan. Known for his jazz program The Top Shelf on WHDH-AM. McLellan had previously collaborated with Fr Norman O’Connor on televising jazz on the public station WGBH. In January 1958, McLellan used a half-hour of broadcast time on WHDH to stage a jam session with local musicians including Don Alessi, Paul Neves, and Herb Pomeroy. No one called it a pilot, but that’s what it was, and in May, McLellan commenced a regular 30-minute program on WHDH, The Jazz Scene.
On the first Monday of each month, WHDH turned the set and crew of their Dateline program over to McLellan. This was commercial, not public, television, and it was broadcast in color when black-and-white was still the norm. A low bow, all these years later, to the program director who put this show on the air! Lennie Johnson was the first guest, talking and playing through the history of the jazz trumpet.
Week two explored the music of Benny Goodman, and Berklee’s Joe Viola led a group playing in the Goodman style. Week three, Bob Freedman and Bill Berry got creative, composing and arranging a new tune on the fly. Then McLellan reached out to bigger names, with early guests including Miles Davis and Jimmy Rushing. The viewing public liked the show, and WHDH upped the program to twice per month.
McLellan liked to mix it up on his show. One week would feature Coleman Hawkins or Charles Mingus, the next would pair folk and jazz musicians in a jam session. One week Louis Armstrong and Herman Chittison recreated music they had recorded in Paris in 1934 and hadn’t played since. The real beneficiaries of the show, however, were the local musicians. There was an abundance of exposure on The Jazz Scene for Lou Magnano, Jaki Byard, Alan Dawson, Champ Jones, Charlie Mariano, Ray Santisi, Manny Wise, and others.
The Jazz Scene had a good run, but after three-and-a-half years, McLellan wanted to move on, and he ended the show in December 1961. Sadly, there is no surviving videotape from this pioneering program.