Join the Friends of the Cabildo as the Louisiana State Museum’s collection of seven different 16mm film reels from the first Jazz Fest will be shown at the New Orleans Jazz Museum’s Third Floor Performance Venue Wednesday, April 24th at 5:30 p.m & 7:00 p.m. Dr. Charles Chamberlain, will moderate the event as well as the Band-In-A-Pocket Jazz Trio will be performing in sections that do not have sound.

Don Perry, one of the founders of the New Orleans Jazz Club and a former WDSU cameraman filmed the first festival in 1970 and donated the reels in 1978 to the Louisiana State Museum (LSM). The LSM digitized the films in 2012 allowing them to be preserved for generations of Jazz Fest and music fans. The seven separate films show artists such as Duke Ellington, Pete Fountain, Danny Barker and Mahalia Jackson.