[citation needed] He produced one of the first American network television shows specifically about jazz, the one-hour "The Sound of Jazz", a December 8, 1957 edition of the CBS television series The Seven Lively Arts.
[2] "The Sound of Jazz" was essentially a broadcast jam session including many luminaries of jazz, such as Miles Davis, Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk, Milt Hinton, and Billie Holiday.
Herridge produced and hosted The Robert Herridge Theater, a half-hour dramatic anthology that ran in syndication circa 1959-1960[3] or in 1961[4] (sources vary), primarily on educational television stations.
[4] One edition, "The Sound of Miles Davis", which Herridge referred to onscreen as "a story told in the language of music", consisted of an April 2, 1959, jazz concert by Davis, John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, and the Gil Evans Orchestra at CBS TV's Studio 61.
It showcased performances by several leading American musicians and orchestral ensembles including: Alfredo Antonini, John Browning, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Symphony of the Air.