More often than not, my wife and I spend New Year’s Eve in front of the TV watching the celebration from Times Square an hour before midnight arrives here. Then we shuffle off to bed long before any self-respecting New Year’s reveler would think of retiring. So it was a treat a couple of weeks ago to find ourselves in the middle of a real New Year’s Eve party complete with a live band and people who were having a good time listening and dancing to it. The Route 55 Jazz Band, which includes several Annandale musicians, staged the shindig to raise some money for local music groups and school programs. They called it New Year’s Eve 1945 and held it in the Waverly Village Hall, which was built about that time and hasn’t changed much since. And for nearly four hours they played dozens of timeless tunes from the Big Band era. It was a frigid night, and road conditions weren’t great after some snow fell during the day. But the event attracted a respectable crowd that I would have estimated at a couple hundred people. Others suggested it was maybe half that. My wife and I are wall flowers. The music moves our souls but, sadly, not our feet. We enjoyed watching some surprisingly good dancers though. One guy looked like he’d just danced off the set of "West Side Story." Another couple, judging by their extravagant dress, must have been ballroom dancing regulars. But a third couple beat them both out for first prize in the dance contest. Many people came in 1940s costumes. A man wearing a World War II Army uniform and his partner in a wide-brimmed hat with a feather won the costume contest. Typical of Depression-era buildings, the hall is made of reinforced concrete, and you have to climb what seemed like a dozen steps to reach the entrance. Inside, there’s a movie-theater-style ticket booth, where we paid only $5 each to get in. The hall itself is cavernous with high ceilings and a hardwood floor that’s still in perfect shape. The 16-piece band set up on a large stage that fills most of one wall. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Hubert Humphrey, a former U.S. Senator, vice president and candidate for president whose home was in Waverly, gave a speech or two from that stage. The band boomed out one nostalgic hit after another, so many I can’t remember them all, and some whose titles I don’t even know. It’s Big Band sound was actually too big at times, drowning out the beautiful voice of Becky King on parts of some of her vocals. Stephen King, her husband, was a pleasant surprise, belting out "New York, New York" and other standards. A couple of my favorites the band played that night were "Moonlight Serenade" and "A Nightingale Sang in Barkley Square." I first heard Barkley Square sung by Vera Lynn on an old record – "Hits of the Blitz" – that we still have Listening to the band play those and other songs, it wasn’t hard to imagine you really were back in 1945. We’re not making any other plans for New Year’s Eve 2011 until we find out whether Route 55 will be throwing another party that night.
