Throughout nearly the entirety of its existence the Arena booked many famous musicians for its night club, which featured its own in-house orchestra.
Spanning generations, it hosted many famous musicians across several genres, including jazz, blues, big band, country, soul, and rock & roll with such names as- Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Wee Bonnie Baker, The Dorsey Brothers, The Ink Spots, Lionel Hampton, Roy Rogers, The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Sarah Vaughan, The Temptations, Shep Fields, and Jack Teagarden.

The venue was known both as a regular stop for big band musicians, and an arduous gig among acts in the 1950s.
In a 1986 interview, Woody Herman alumni Jack E. DuLong, a saxophonist, described it as "that infamous job that all bands hated, that all-day thing at the Holyoke Arena...It was Sunday, and you'd get in early in the morning, and rehearse perhaps a dozen acts and play three shows; one in the afternoon and two in the evening.
You would start rehearsing in the morning without even an hour's sleep.
It was a theater-in-the-round type thing, an 'institution' for big bands.
After there we went into Brooklyn, New York, for a theater engagement."
Throughout nearly the entirety of its existence the Arena booked many famous musicians for its night club, which featured its own in-house orchestra. Spanning generations, it hosted many famous musicians across several genres, including jazz, blues, big band, country, soul, and rock & roll with such names as- Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Wee Bonnie Baker, The Dorsey Brothers, The Ink Spots, Lionel Hampton, Roy Rogers, The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Sarah Vaughan, The Temptations, Shep Fields, and Jack Teagarden.
The venue was known both as a regular stop for big band musicians, and an arduous gig among acts in the 1950s. In a 1986 interview, Woody Herman alumni Jack E. DuLong, a saxophonist, described it as "that infamous job that all bands hated, that all-day thing at the Holyoke Arena...It was Sunday, and you'd get in early in the morning, and rehearse perhaps a dozen acts and play three shows; one in the afternoon and two in the evening. You would start rehearsing in the morning without even an hour's sleep. It was a theater-in-the-round type thing, an 'institution' for big bands. After there we went into Brooklyn, New York, for a theater engagement."
Valley Arena Gardens