The Trocadero Ballroom at the Elitch Gardens amusement park in Denver has always been advertised as “The Summer Home of America’s Biggest Bands.” And that it remained through the summer of 1975, its last season, although most of the big bands had long since broken up, and many of those which are still together had settled down to playing in one location. Thirty to forty years ago such famed band leaders as Blue Barron, Carmen Cavallaro, Eddy Howard, Guy Lombardo, Clyde McCoy, and Ozzie Nelson —not to mention the legendary Dorseys and Benny Goodman—brought their orchestras to the “Troc” for one-week stints. A Saturday night in the late Thirties would often bring out a capacity crowd of 1,500 dancing couples, and the other nights of the week and the matinee would find the ballroom nearly as full.
By last year, the few big bands that still traveled would play the Trocadero on Friday and Saturday nights only. The 1975 season brought in dance-band names heavy with nostalgia: the Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, and Eddy Howard orchestras, now of course led by different men; Bob Crosby, Wayne King, Ray McKinley, Myron Floren, and Les Elgart and their orchestras. Even these stars did well to draw a crowd of 500 to 600 dancers, most of them grandparents, their one-time creW cuts and pageboys replaced by thinning hair and greying locks, dancing to the familiar rollicking sounds of the Thirties and Forties.
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