https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWdcPdYjGFE For those of you too young to remember K-Tel record commercials, they were ubiquitous and played so often that I can still recite some of the over-the-top sales pitches from memory. Above is a very nice video compilation of some of the best K-Tel commercials. Below is an excerpt
To close out this week’s obsessive pursuit of the movie and event known as ‘Riot On Sunset Strip’ here’s the excellent opening credit sequence featuring The Standells singing the theme. Given that it’s the mid-60s, they sound admirably ahead of their time, performing with a kind of proto-punk vibe. See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UkP6a2-IXM The Earl Carroll Theater, named after and operated by the eponymous Broadway showman of the twenties and thirties, opened on Sunset Blvd. between Vine and Gower in 1938. In 1954 it became the Moulin Rouge and in 1965 it became the Hullaballo, a club exclusively geared toward the burgeoning
In yesterdays post I discussed Buddy Rich’s musical analphabeta (i.e. he couldn’t read music). Today, thanks to some algorithm that I don’t really want to know about, the above video was waiting for me cheerfully in my Youtube queue. It’s a very funny five or so minutes from a 1974
Here’s a ‘drum-off’ between the legendary Buddy Rich and Ed Shaughnessy, the drummer for the Tonight Show band for two decades. The big band arrangement that kicks things off belongs to a genre of music I always think of as ‘heart-attack jazz’, a very specific over-wrought big band mayhem sound
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SOpqyg5fpUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkOpHJ_PgDk In yesterday’s post I mentioned how the members of the ‘Tonight Show’ band (aka ‘Doc Severinsen and the NBC Orchestra’) lent their own comedic talents to the show. One of the strangest examples is that of trombone player Ernie Tack. The show would occasionally do a ‘Stump The Band’
To those of us who remember the Johnny Carson incarnation of ‘The Tonight Show’, the band (or the ‘NBC Orchestra’ as they were formally known) looms as an important piece of the magical synthesis of talents that produced the greatest talk show in TV history. (If you haven’t delved into
R.I.P. the great Burt Bacharach. Here’s a commercial front the late 70s featuring Burt and then-wife Angie Dickenson shilling for Martini &Rossi Vermouth. The dashing Burt (he always makes me think of cologne, elaborate shaving gear, highly polished Italian mens boots etc.) once provoked a famous Sammy Cahn crack: ‘Songwriters
Here is a way-too-adorable-for-words clip of Groucho Marx and his youngest child Melinda performing a Gilbert and Sullivan duet on ‘You Bet Your Life’ from 1954. The song is ‘There Is Beauty In The Belly Of The Beast’ from ‘The Mikado’. I’ve never cared for G&S until watching this clip
Groucho Marx had three children, a boy and girl from his first marriage (the boy, author Arthur Marx, wrote two books and two plays about Groucho) and one girl, Melinda, from his second marriage to Kay Gorcey, ex-wife of ‘Bowery Boy’ Leo Gorcey. (Now there’s an odd case of indirect