For most of his life, Vince Giordano has been on a musical mission.

“It’s really sad to say, but America has been a culture of, ‘If it’s old, it’s no good anymore.’ And I think that’s unfortunate. A lot of stuff just gets swept aside,” he said on a recent afternoon in a Midtown recording studio. “For many, many years, I was kind of the lone wolf out there, just plugging with this music. It’s a shame. Classic things don’t get outdated or old; they’re still great.”

Always impeccably dressed, Mr. Giordano looks as stylish as ever even in blue jeans and a black shirt, his hair slicked back. Onstage at Charley O’s Times Square Grill, he and his band wear tuxedoes.

Every Monday and Tuesday night, Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks lead a packed house down memory lane, playing three sets of the best of the 1920s and 1930s. From a huge songbook containing some 2,000 numbered arrangements, Mr. Giordano selects familiar favorites and little-known gems; he also takes requests.

One recent show featured Duke Ellington’s “Black Beauty,” Fats Waller’s “I’m Crazy ‘Bout My Baby,” and Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh’s “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love” as well as “Happy Feet,” “My Gal Sal,” and “When Your Lover Has Gone.”

In addition to attracting a diverse crowd of old and young, tourists and city aficionados, Mr. Giordano’s audience has included such big names as Liza Minnelli, Eartha Kitt, Wayne Brady, and Elvis Costello and Diana Krall, some of whom have been known to join the group for a song or two.

The ever-changing 11-man Nighthawks lineup consists of piano, banjo, 3 saxophones, 2 trumpets, trombone, drums, violin, and even a phono fiddle; Mr. Giordano himself switches from aluminum stand-up bass to bass saxophone to his primary instrument, the tuba.

He is also regularly called upon to participate in films to ensure their period authenticity; in the early 1980s, after seeing him perform, Dick Hyman, who has composed and arranged the music for many of Woody Allen’s pictures, introduced Mr. Giordano to Francis Ford Coppola. Among the movies Mr. Giordano has appeared in are Mr. Coppola’s “The Cotton Club,” Mr. Allen’s “Sweet and Lowdown,” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator.” The Nighthawks play on eight songs on the “Aviator” soundtrack.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Happauge, Long Island, Mr. Giordano fell in love with the big-band sound when he was just a kid.

“Every big holiday, we used to go into the city, into Brooklyn, to my grandmother’s,” Mr. Giordano, 53, recalled. “They had many, many parties. In the old days, everyone brought phonograph records. And over the years, these recordings were left there because at the end of the party, you’re either too tired or too drunk or you forgot. And the collection, from all the different folks, had amounted to an unbelievable stash of music. There was everything there.

“So I got this whole introduction to this with my grandmother’s wind-up Victrola,” he continued fondly. “Now, I’m 5 years old, and I’m going, ‘Oh my God, wait a minute – what’s this stuff coming out of this old machine?’ It would make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. This became my music.”

In the seventh grade, Mr. Giordano asked the school bandleader if he could play the trumpet, the trombone, or the clarinet, but it just so happened that the tuba player was graduating shortly.

“So [the bandleader] opens the door to this room and there’s this collection of broken-down Sousaphones and tubas. He cleans out a mouthpiece and says, ‘Here, make a sound.’ ‘Brrrrrt.’ ‘You’re great!’ He’d say anything. I was this big, fat kid, and he gave me a tuba to take on the bus home that day. So I was Tubby the Tuba, which of course even made me crazier.”

As a teenager, he studied with famed arranger Bill Challis, “who had firsthand accounts of legendary guys like Bix Beiderbecke and the Dorsey brothers and Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, and that’s just to name a few,” Mr. Giordano explained. “We would have a two-hour lesson, and then three hours or so of just talking about this and that, and he’d bring recordings in … I was this kid, I guess probably 16, 17 years old, hanging out with a man in his 70s, and just the wealth of experience and knowledge – you just couldn’t get that anywhere else.”

Mr. Giordano formed the Nighthawks in 1976. For three decades, they’ve played all over the city, from extended stints at the Cajun, the Carlyle, and the Red Blazer Too to special performances at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Algonquin, and the Rainbow Room.

“He’s very dedicated to the kind of music he plays, and he’s the only one doing it,” said jazz historian and Times Square Grill regular Frank Driggs, who has been following the group throughout their career. “And this band by far is the best he’s ever had.”

“They’re fantastic,” added talk show host and nostalgia king Joe Franklin.

A former archivist for RCA/BMG, Mr. Giordano owns 30,000 orchestrations, 27,000 pieces of sheet music, and 10,000 silent-movie cues. He is so immersed in music, he even brings boxes of arrangements with him to the beach when his girlfriend of seven years, graphic designer Carol Hughes, forces him to go.

For all his dedication to the old days, Mr. Giordano does look to the future.

“My fantasies were always in the past. If I could get in a time machine and be at the Cotton Club, or the Palais Royal, watching Gershwin rehearse with the Whiteman band, or Bix Beiderbecke…” His voice trailed off dreamily. “I know it’s 2005 and times have rolled on, but to me, this is classic music. There’s not too much fantasy in today’s world. You have to make your own fun.”

At the Times Square Grill, the band plays in front of a large window looking out onto 49th Street. Mr. Giordano often turns around and beckons to the people on the street to come inside. He’s on a mission to get this music heard by as many people as possible; after watching the success of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new Columbus Circle home, spearheaded by his good friend Wynton Marsalis, he has a dream of his own.

“Look, there’s a wonderful bunch of music out there that needs to be rediscovered, that needs to be promoted,” Mr. Giordano said determinedly. “I still have a fantasy of a not-for-profit nightclub where I’d like to bring young people in. I think the kids of today really don’t have any opportunity to see other forms of music, and they’re missing so much. The young people have to know about this.”

Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks appear Monday and Tuesday nights from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. at Charley O’s Times Square Grill, 1611 Broadway, 212-246-1960. Admission is free; there is a one-drink minimum at the bar.