One O'Clock Lab Band is an ensemble of the Jazz Studies division at the University of North Texas College of Music in Denton, Texas. Since the 1970s, the band's albums have received seven Grammy Award nominations, including two for Lab 2009. Steve Wiest directed the band from 2008 to 2014. Jay Saunders became interim director in 2014. The One O'Clock Lab Band is the highest of seven lab bands at the college. Each band is named for its hour of rehearsal and each contains 20-pieces: five trumpets, five trombones, five saxophones, piano, guitar, double bass, drums, and voice. The One O'Clock band evolved from an extracurricular stage band founded in 1927 into a curricular laboratory dance band in 1947 when North Texas began its jazz degree program.

History

Beginning in 1927, faculty member Floyd Graham began directing and emceeing Saturday night stage shows at North Texas State Teachers College, planning the programs and holding auditions every Saturday afternoon for prospective entertainers. As early as 1923, WBAP in Fort Worth broadcast a nationally syndicated show of the stage band on Friday nights. These performances were directed by James Willis Smith, professor of mathematics at North Texas from 1908 to 1927. Students in the Stage Band included Ann Sheridan, Joan Blondell, Louise Tobin, actress Nancy Jane Gates, and the Moonbeams. "Lab Band" is the shortened form of "Laboratory Dance Band", a name given by founding director Gene Hall in 1946. "Laboratory" suggested experimenting in different configurations: band, choir, orchestra, chamber groups, and keyboard and guitar ensembles. During the 1960s, the word "dance" was removed to reflect an interest in different kinds of big band music, and "One O'Clock" was added by Leon Breeden. The academic degree Dance Band remained until 1978, when it was renamed Jazz Education, then Jazz Studies in 1981. When Breeden became band director in 1959, there were four lab bands, and they were called "units": One O'Clock, Two O'Clock, Three O'Clock, and Five O'Clock. The Two O'Clock was the premier band, known as Laboratory Dance Band A. The Aces band was directed by Floyd Graham. The band evolved out of the Saturday Night Stage Shows that were presented weekly from 1927 to 1961. Every year from 1962 to 1970 the Aces traveled and performed with other acts for civic organizations, veterans' hospitals, on WFAA radio, and at military bases in Texas. Willis Conover, jazz host on Voice of America, broadcast six nights a week to an audience that, at the peak of the Cold War, was estimated to be 30 million regular listeners in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union — and as many as 100 million worldwide. Conover, who had heard the One O'Clock Lab Band several times, including as judge at the 1960 Notre Dame Jazz Festival (when Leonard Bernstein was on the festival's board), asked Leon Breeden, in 1967, for recordings of certain numbers. Later that year, Conover featured the One O'Clock Lab Band in an hour broadcast to an estimated audience of 40 million. Every year thereafter, the One O'Clock supplied a professional quality studio engineered album to Conover.

Major tours, festivals, concerts

Under the direction of Gene Hall

Under the direction of Leon Breeden

Under the direction of Neil Slater

Under the direction of Steve Wiest

Directors

Notable alumni

1924-1937 – Stage Band, Dance Band, Pit Orchestra; 1937-1949 – The Aces of Collegeland 1947-1959 – Laboratory Dance Bands 1959–1969 One O'Clock Lab Band 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Student & faculty composers/arrangers for the One O'Clock (non-members)

Discography