This video will probably only interest a tiny number of people: if you’ve ever paid your dues out on the road, riding the bus, wearing the band uniform, reckoning with the baritone sax book of a moderately swinging dance band, probably playing the same charts night after night after night, this post is for you. Here’s 82 seconds of Serge Chaloff doing exactly that with Jimmy Dorsey at the 400 Club in New York City, February of 1946. The source of this clip is some raw footage apparently shot for a newsreel and now posted on criticalpast.com. The music is “Outer Drive,” credited to Jimmy Dorsey.

At this point in his career Serge was splitting his time between the bands led by Jimmy Dorsey and Georgie Auld, travelling up and down the East Coast and occasionally across the country. In September of 1946 (6 months after this clip) Serge was in Hollywood with the Dorsey band to make the film “The Fabulous Dorseys” when he recorded a few sides for Dial records with the “Sonny Berman/Bill Harris Big 8.” One of those recordings was a solo feature for Serge based on the chords of the song Cherokee, released under the title “Blue Serge.”