December 8, 1957: As part of its anthology series The Seven Lively Arts, CBS airs "The Sound of Jazz." It aired live from the Town Theater, a.k.a. CBS Studio 58, at 851 9th Avenue at 56th Street, in Midtown Manhattan. John Crosby, then the media critic for the New York Herald-Tribune, was the host.
This was an All-Star Game. It was the closest thing a national audience would ever get to getting a Justice League, or an Avengers, of jazz. The performers included pianists Count Basic and Thelonious Monk; saxophonists Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Gerry Mulligan; trumpeters Red Allen and Doc Cheatham; drummer Jo Jones, clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, and bass fiddle player Milt Hinton. And Billie Holiday sang.
Nat Hentoff, the jazz critic for The Village Voice, was a consultant for the show. He knew that Young was ill, and told him that he could skip the "Big Band" section of the show, and could sit instead of standing while performing during Holiday's section.
Although they were never a couple, Lester and Billie were as close as friends could be in show business, but hadn't performed together for a while, due to their respective illnesses and Billie's legal troubles. When she began to sing "Fine and Mellow," which she wrote and recorded in 1939, Webster played the 1st solo. Hentoff remembered:
Then, Lester got up, and he played the purest blues I have ever heard, and they were looking at each other, their eyes were sort of interlocked, and she was sort of nodding and half–smiling. It was as if they were both remembering what had been, whatever that was. And in the control room, we were all crying. When the show was over, they went their separate ways.
It was the last time they performed together. Within 2 years, both were dead from the effects of alcoholism, Lester at age 49, Billie at 44. In other words, we are damn lucky that CBS made this special when they did, and left us this recording.
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December 8, 1957 was a Sunday. It was the off-season for baseball. But there were NFL games:
* The Washington Redskins beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 42-7 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.
* The Detroit Lions beat the Cleveland Browns, 20-7 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. This was a preview of the season's NFL Championship Game, in which the Lions would blow the Browns out again. Briggs Stadium was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.
* The Chicago Bears beat their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Cardinals, 14-6 at Comiskey Park on the South Side.
* The Los Angeles Rams beat the Green Bay Packers, 42-17 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
* The San Francisco 49ers beat the Baltimore Colts, 17-13 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco.
* The New York Giants played the day before, losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers, 21-10 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.
There were 2 NBA games played that day:
* The New York Knicks beat the St. Louis Hawks, 113-110 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. Ron Sobie scored 32 points for New York. Despite this, it would not be a good season for the Knicks, and the Hawks would win what remains the only NBA Championship for the franchise, which has been in Atlanta since 1968.
* And the Cincinnati Royals beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 99-88 at the Cincinnati Gardens. Jack Twyman of the Royals led all scorers with 24 points.
And all of the NHL's "Original Six" were in action:
* The New York Rangers lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1 at the old Madison Square Garden, just 7 blocks from CBS Studio 58.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.
* And the Boston Bruins beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 3-0 at the Chicago Stadium.
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