Ten Posters Advertising Nebraska Territory Bands, 1930s–1960s

Nebraska and Minnesota: multiple publishers, 1960. Ten posters, mainly measuring approximately 14 x 21 ½ inches, with some smaller. Many with slight damage and wear to edges, all having been stored in tubes; bright and attractive; overall very good to excellent.. Territory bands were dance bands that toured around particular regions of the US. Usually swing or big band jazz groups, they mostly covered popular songs, playing in smaller cities and towns that nationally touring groups would skip. Offered here is a collection of ten posters for territory bands from Nebraska, dating from about the 1930s or 1940s to the 1960s. Unusually for territory bands, these groups are mainly composed of white musicians, and represent genres including rock ‘n’ roll and polka, the latter of which was popular in Nebraska due to the state’s concentration of Czech and German immigrants.

Bands in the collection include International Polka Association Hall of Fame inductee Ernie Kucera, whose orchestra played from 1942 to 1995; fellow Czech polka player Adolph Urbanovsky’s Bohemian Orchestra; Don Shaw’s “Top 40” Dance Band and Entertainers, which covered top 40 tracks in the 1950s; Little Joe and the Ramrods, an early 1960s rock ‘n’ roll group; and the Lee Barron Orchestra. Information about many of the bands represented can be found in Barron’s 1987 book Odyssey of the Mid-Nite Flyer.