Mike said that FreshFan had, in his collection, an original printed program from the Kenton Road Show in the Fall of '59 that featured the Kenton Band, The Four Freshmen and June Christy. Would there be any interest in putting it on the FF website? Of course!
This from Mike McCoy:
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A pristine copy of the printed program was made available in this digital
format by Jack Jennerjahn, a Four Freshmen Society member from La Crosse,
Wisconsin. He brought it to the mid-May Freshmen show in Oshkosh, WI and
showed it to those of us at the Afterglow which followed at the Pioneer
Resort. At that time, he agreed to get it scanned for sharing with other
fans.
Jack had obtained the program the night in October or November of 1959 when the Road Show tour hit Madison, Wisconsin. Jack writes that he attended the Orpheum alone that night "and obviously enjoyed the show. I think the audience size was decent, but can't remember if it was a sellout....(I)t was the only time I ever saw the late Don Barbour perform. I guess he left the group not too long afterward. I was working for the University's public TV station, WHA-TV at the time....having gotten out of the army a few months earlier."
The large Orpheum theater then, as now, remains in use for both films and shows, and has added a restaurant in the lobby that draws a lot of business from those on State Street. State Street runs eight blocks from the State Capitol to the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, and has quite a history of its own.
It outlasted its major competition, the Capitol theater, immediately cross the street. The Capitol was taken over by the Civic Center about 25 years ago and was used mainly for stage shows, and now is part of a $205 million performing arts structure being completed called the Overture Center which opens in September. It has been promoted as rivaling the Lincoln Center in New York, and will be a place you'll definitely want to visit when in Madison. (Now the goal is to get the Freshmen booked there!)
Just about at the top of my list of "Things I Wished I Had Done in My Life" would be this entry: "Be in the audience at Purdue University that Oct. 10, 1959, night the Road Show reached that campus." And it could have happened as I was a junior at Indiana University down the road a piece, but within driving distance and on the road had communications between the campuses been a little better. Now at least I can look at the printed program images whenever I put my Road Show album on (which is often) and imagine myself being there.
Thanks, Jack, for sharing this great item from your collection.
FFS Wisconsin State Representative
Here, then, is this treasure thanks to Jack and Mike:
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