Television
In a career at NBC spanning 1951 to 1966, he succeeded Arturo Toscanini as music director for NBC Television and was the original conductor of the orchestras for The Tonight Show and The Today Show.
Henderson served as the original bandleader for The Tonight Show with founding host Steve Allen (as well as for Allen's Sunday-night variety show), then came back to Tonight after the departure of host Jack Paar and his orchestra director José Melis. Henderson left Tonight again in 1966, during Johnny Carson's early years as host, and was replaced first by Milton DeLugg and then trumpeter Doc Severinsen, who headed the NBC orchestra until Carson's 1992 retirement.
Read more about this topic: Skitch Henderson
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)
“So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)