Summer Concerts Beginnings: Fats Domino or Swing Bands?

It’s a history that’s not quite that ancient, yet its origin is open to debate.

Robert Carroll said he started the summer concert series in Long Beach, and so does Joe Kane, although both seem to agree the concerts began about a half century ago.

Carroll recalled that, when he was assistant superintendent of the Department of Recreation in 1957, Fats Domino performed at the first concert, on a baseball field near Magnolia Boulevard and Reynolds Channel. The concerts were held there on Saturday nights and featured local bands.

But Joe Kane, whose Big Band performs at Neptune beach tonight at 8 p.m., remembers that the concerts started in the early 1960s, when he went to then City Manager Foster Vogel and pushed for performances by swing bands.

“I told him, ‘Why don’t we bring in some of the famous bands that are still around?’” said Kane, a 90-year-old drummer.  
   
So the city hired Count Basie and Woody Herman to play, as well as the Jimmy Dorsey and Glenn Miller bands (without their leaders, who were dead).

In 1972, when Carroll became the recreation superintendent, he moved the concerts to the boardwalk and expanded them to three nights a week, Tuesdays (New York), Thursdays (Neptune) and Saturdays (National).
   
Carroll also diversified the acts, recruiting ethnic groups, including Irish, Italian and Yiddish bands that are still standards today.

“I used to have the Trinidad steel drums band come from Brooklyn to play, and they drew a crowd like you couldn’t believe,” Carroll said.

The biggest draw was and still is Rick Mango, a former member of Jay Black & the Americans, who has attracted crowds of as many as 5,000.

By 1990, as the economy turned sluggish, the city considered canceling the concerts, which at the time cost about $30,000 to stage each summer. Instead, Carroll found more than 20 local sponsors, including the Chamber of Commerce and Sterrer Realty, and raised about $15,000 that the city matched.