This day in Expo history: Trumpeter Harry James claims to be more punctual than Clocktower

Not all of the Expo ’74 entertainment was in the Opera House or the Coliseum. Free performances were scattered all around the grounds. During Labor Day weekend, the biggest attraction was the Harry James big band on the Floating Stage.

James was a top name in swing music and he was doing three outdoor shows a night, at 8:30 p.m., 9:45 p.m. and 11 p.m.

And we mean, precisely at those times.

He walked onto the Floating Stage without introduction for his first show and declared the Clocktower clock was one minute slow.

Elsewhere on the Expo grounds, a singing group from New Brunswick called 4 By 4 performed to a full house at the Alberta Amphitheater, with songs including “King of the Road” to “Amazing Grace,” to the “Canadian Railroad Trilogy.”

Over at the Folklife Festival, it was American Music Festival Week, featuring bluegrass, work songs, western ballads, jazz and blues.

From 100 years ago: Bruce Blake, a Spokane Superior Court judge and a candidate for the State Supreme Court, received an endorsement from labor attorney G.F. Vandermeer.

Normally, Blake would welcome an organized labor endorsement – but not this one.

Vandermeer was a Wobbly attorney, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, considered a “radical” group by many.

Blake said he “deplored” the innuendoes contained in the endorsement and “particularly disagreed with its attempt to inject a class issue into this election.”

Blake wouldn’t win his race in 1924, but he did go on to win a 1932 race for the Supreme Court and remained a member until he died in 1957, according to his obituary in The Spokane Daily Chronicle. Blake was first elected to a judge in Spokane County Superior Court in 1912 when he was 32. As of the time of his death, he was the youngest person to be elected judge in that court.