Here’s one of Albert Brooks’s best appearances on Johnny Carson. This is from 1983-ish (he apparently was about to shoot the thoroughly unnecessary remake of ‘Unfaithfully Yours’ with Dudley Moore which was released in 1984) and features one of his most Brooksian inventions–the ‘home impressions kit’. Carson laughs so much
Every move, every twitch, every eye-pop of Rodney Dangerfield’s is a brilliant piece of method acting. Add to that the non-stop jokes and you have one of the truly ‘performative’ comics; he’s a man named Jacob Cohen (his real name) who, under the pseudonym ‘Jack Roy’ (his first stage name)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3smUviG1G_s My friend Marc Myers of JazzWax sent me this terrific guest appearance by Jerry Lewis on ‘The Tonight Show’ from 1984. Unlike many of Jerry’s appearances which were often fraught with tension and humorous banter with Carson that had a curious edge of unease, this one is straight-up delightful.
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