Years earlier, as early as 1923, WBAP Fort Worth broadcast a nationally syndicated show of the stage band, which then was a twenty-two-piece orchestra, on Friday nights directed by James Willis Smith (1875–1937), professor of mathematics at North Texas from 1908 to 1927. The Stage Band (1927-mid-1930s) served as a proving ground for Ann Sheridan, Joan Blondell, and Louise Tobin. Actress Nancy Jane Gates first performed with the Stage Band in 1929, when she was three, and continued singing through graduation from Denton High School. The Moonbeams, a quartet of four female vocalists, got their start with the Saturday night stage show in 1946. Two years later, they were touring with the Vaughn Monroe Band as the Moonmaids. Charter Members from 1927 Stage Band  Other members  Note  The Aces, under the directorship of Floyd Graham, evolved out of the Saturday Night Stage Shows, which were presented weekly from 1927 to 1961. Annually, from 1962 to 1970, the Aces, together with other acts, traveled and performed for civic organizations, veterans’ hospitals, WFAA radio, and Texas military bases. The Aces of Collegeland was never offered for academic credit. Willis Conover (1920–1996), jazz host on Voice of America, broadcast six nights a week to an audience that, at the peak of the Cold War, was estimated to be 30 million regular listeners in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union — and as many as 100 million worldwide. Conover, who had heard the One O'Clock Lab Band several times, including as judge at the 1960 Notre Dame Jazz Festival (when Leonard Bernstein was on the festival's board), asked Leon Breeden, in 1967, for recordings of certain numbers. Later that year, Conover featured the One O'Clock Lab Band in an hour broadcast to an estimated audience of 40 million. Every year thereafter, the One O’Clock supplied a professional quality studio engineered album to Conover. Jazz was, as Mr. Conover liked to say, "the music of freedom;" and to those who had no freedom, it became a metaphor of hope. Conover was known as the most famous American virtually no American had ever heard of. By law, the Voice of America broadcasts — broadcasts that made him a household name in Europe, Asia and Latin America — could not be beamed to the United States, where Mr. Conover was known mainly to dedicated jazz fans.