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Show Big band legend, Woody Herman, to perform The Herd averages six performances per-formances a week, 50 weeks a year. About a third of Herman's dates are at high schools and colleges where he performs at night and gives clinics and seminars to music and band students during the day. He travels a few months each year for overseas performances and has been featured on "The Tonight Show," "The Merv Griffin Show," "The Mike Douglas Show" and six PBS specials, among them "The Big Band Bash" and a PBS 90-minute 90-minute documentary entitled "Woody." Woody Herman will bring his Thundering Herd to BYU Sept. 24 with a sound that flourished during the big band era of the 1940's and survives with a troupe that shows no indication of heading for a last round-up. As one of a handful of bands with the resilience to survive the waning of the swing era. Herman's Herd travels throughout the world year-round year-round to offer its characteristic powerhouse sound. BYU's performance will begin at 8 p.m. in the de Jong Concert Hall, Harris Fine Arts Center. Tickets are available through the music ticket office, 378-7444. Herman is a year short of celebrating 50 years with the Herd, as his music machine is commonly known. Herman acts as herdsman to a young group of skilled players barely out of their teens and applies modern adaptations to his jazz beats. Among his songs that have sold more than a million recordings are "Laura," "Blues in the Night," and his biggest hit, "Woodchopper's Ball," which sold five million copies and remains one of his most requested pieces. Herman entered show business more than 60 years ago at age eight when he appeared on a stage as a prodigy clarinet player and tap dancer. He performed in several bands at Marquette University and premiered his own "Band That Played the Blues" in 1936 at the Roseland Ballroom in Brooklyn. Herman's band soon joined the popular big bands and played such songs as "Blues on Parade," "Blue Prelude" and "Blue Flame," Herman's theme song. During this period he recorded with singing artists Bing Crosby and the Andrews An-drews Sisters. By 1945, he had one of the most popular bands of the time, dubbed by critic George T. Simon as "The Thundering Herd." |