THE joint was jumping when butcher Jimmy Heyworth swapped his slicer for a saxophone on Saturday nights at Rawtenstall's old Astoria ballroom - for back then in 1954, when this picture of him and his band was taken, they were the best in the land . . . officially.

For that year Jimmy Heyworth's Astoria Orchestra won the all-Britain final of the National Dance Band Championship, collecting the Melody Maker trophy and 100 guineas.

The 13-piece band, performing at the King's Hall at Belle Vue, Manchester, before judges including top band leaders Ted Heath and Steve Race, collected 155 points out of a possible 200 to beat the 11 other semi-professional bands which had won through regional contests to the big play-off.

The previous year, the band - resident at the Astoria throughout the 1950s until the big-band sound was swept away by Sixties beat groups - were runners-up in the Melody Maker newspaper's contest, despite winning 10 more points than in their triumph 12 months later.

Success also made them recording stars, with the extended-play disc they made in 1955 earning the praise of the Northern Daily Telegraph columnist, Jazzman, for giving "an excellent idea of what this fine swing-happy band can really do when it gets in its stride." Among its tracks the Decca-label E.P. , which is now probably a collector's item among dance-band buffs , were two numbers - April In Paris and I Get A Kick Out Of You - which the band had earlier recorded on a 78- rpm after they helped them win the Meldody Maker title. The NDT's music man gave lead altoist Eric Newton, of Ramsbottom, a large slice of credit for the band's success because he was responsible for its arrangements. But Jimmy was also an extremely experienced tenor saxophonist and clarinetist whose career as a professional musician stretched back to his joining Bertini's Band as a 16-year-old and included him playing in the famous Tito Burns' Band in the Far East after joining the Air Force.

But his band's success in 1954 was not the first time that the Rossendale Sound had swung the Melody Maker contest's judges or found it way on to wax. For in 1948, the Astoria's previous resident combo, the eight-piece band led by Bury pianist Vernon Moyers, who worked at a Haslingden foundry by day, took the same trophy.

And, according to 75-year-old Joe Lloyd, of South Street, Haslingden, who was a teenage trumpeter with the Moyers band in the early 1940s, they made a recording of Rosita , which was one of their winning numbers and which now must be an even rarer collector's piece.

Thirty-four years of music, dance and boy-meets-girl romance at the old Astoria came to an abrupt end in February, 1966, when it closed 21 months before it was demolished to make way for the new trunk road through the town centre.

The sudden "early" closure of the Astoria, two years and eight months before its replacement, the council-owned New Astoria, opened a few hundred yards away, led to angry protests and petitions by Rossendale teenagers who claimed they would have nowhere to go and that under-age drinking would increase as a result. The shutdown building was daubed with slogans reading "Save our Astoria," "Build a road through the town hall" and "We'll turn to drink." Owner and manager John Myerscough blamed the council for not having the new development ready by the time the old Astoria was needed by the Ministry of Transport for the road scheme.

When it was opened in December, 1932, by his father , John, and uncle, Noel Myerscough, who converted their former car showrooms at Holly Bank - once a school run by textile manufacturers David Whitehead and Sons for their young employees - into shops and the ballroom, the Astoria, with its 585 sq.ft. sprung maple floor capable of accommodating 800 dancers, was described as "sumptuous" by the NDT which declared it marked "a distinct advance in the social life of the Rossendale Valley."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.