Duke Ellington

When the Duke was king in Attleboro

By MARK FLANAGAN
THE SUN CHRONICLE
It was a history-making show, but during a few tense moments there was reason to worry if there would be a show at all  recalls Jay Sager, a longtime officer of the former Celebrity Nights of The Attleboros. To start with, the featured performer - pianist Dave Brubeck - arrived long after his expected hour.
"He explained that he turned east when he should have turned west, and when he started to see signs for New York, he decided he had better turn around," Sager recalls.
Brubeck made it to Attleboro High School in time so the crowd wouldn't be kept waiting, but Emergency 2 had croped up. The saxophone of Brubeck band-mate Paul Desmond had been broken on his flight from England. Attleboro High School music teacher Joseph Bono solved the problem: "I've got one in the music room."
Whatever difficulties might have been represented by Desmond's playing a horn meant for a marching band or by Brubeck's travel-weariness were invisible on the stage. The review in the Oct. 20, 1962 Attleboro Sun reported that the crowd spent much of the night on its feet, giving a series of standing ovatioins for the Dave Brubeck Quartet.
It was the first public performance for the Attleboro High School auditorium, then so new that weeks before the Sun wondered if the seats would be installed on time. And it made for a historical christening. The Brubeck show, along with another performance in 1967, was recently recalled in print in connection with Brubeck's Death on Dec.5.
The concert also ushered Celebrity Nights of the Attleboros into a golden age. Celebrity Nights was already a long-established institution. The organization celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1963, meaning it had started in 1914, the year the town of Attleborough became the City of Attleboro. One source traces its origin to 1907, when 202 charter members incorporated the Attleboro Women's Club.
Celebrity Nights grew out of its  practice of saging five cultural programs per year. It was purely a women's project until 1947 or so, when men were allowed onto the Celebrity Nights Board.
Shows were initially staged at the Bates Theater at North Main and Park Streets but had moved to the old Attleboro High  auditorium at County and Fifth Streets by the late 1930s.
Records are scan from he early years, but the new auditorium and a star-studded lineup made Celebrity Nights the place to be during its four shows a year. A hyoung Itzhak Perlman was one of the performers. Like Desmond, recalls Sager, who joined the board in 1961, Perlman ran into an instrument problem although the violin he left under his dining table at the South Attleboro Hoilidiay Inn was still there when he remembered he had forgotten it.
It was at the Attleboro home of Thomas and Patricia Westcott that Sager met Celebrity Nights performer Duke Ellington.
"Why are you hovering?" Elington asked the lady of the house. When she explained she wanted to make him comfortable because other guests were shy about approaching him, Ellington said that was unnecessary.
"I'm just a regular guy."
Count Basie's bad performed for Celebrity Nights. So did Peter Nero, folk singer Odetta, pianist Max "Mr.Ragtime" Morath, flamenco guitarist Carlos Montoya and Lionel Richie.
In 1939 you could take in a Celebrity Nights show for 50 cents. Much later, the admission grew to $10.
Eventually, though, changing times and changing audiences caught up with the time-honored Celebrity Nights.
"We had terrible financial problems.The audiences were dwindlling," remembers Sager, who went off to a work assignment in Holland with her husband Richard in 1989 and returned home to find Celebrity Nights had folded.
Another 20 years have passed, but when you're talking about an entertainment legend or two, don't be surprised if someone pipes in: "Yeah, I remember seeing them in Attleboro."
MARK FLANAGAN is opinion pages editor of The Sun Chronicle.