Don Canney

If any of you hail from my era, I’m sure you can remember the days when the two biggest genres of TV entertainment were Westerns and Variety Shows. Some of the early westerns of the 1960’s included shows like Sugarfoot, The Lawman, Cheyenne, Wagon Train, Bonanza and the grandaddy of all westerns, Gunsmoke.

But a recent TV commercial for the grandaddy of all variety shows, The Ed Sullivan Show, set my mind in motion back to the days when we watched variety shows nearly every night on the old black and white boob tube.

Sunday nights were reserved for Ed Sullivan, a man who himself had no inherent talent, but was a master at finding and promoting it. If you made it to the Ed Sullivan Show, you made it, period. And if you crossed Mr. Sullivan, let’s just say your career in show business could be impacted. Blockbuster stars like Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, et al, saw their stars rise after appearances on the hit show. Mr. Sullivan had his rules that kept the show a family favorite, even when some of his guests had questionable lyrics in their songs, requiring a change by the censors.

A classic example was Jim Morrison’s initial agreement to slightly change the lyrics to the hit, “Light My Fire” so as not to include the word “higher” which at the time was considered drug related. Morrison thought they were joking and sang it anyway. The rest is history. The Doors never appeared on Sullivan’s show again.

The 60’s and 70’s spawned many other variety show classics. Remember The Hollywood Palace? Each week, from January 1964 to February 1970, a different star of that era would host the show. It began as a midseason replacement for The Jerry Lewis Show, back when they aired summer replacement shows. Bing Crosby hosted both the first and final Palaces, with names like Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Judy Garland, Jimmy Durante, Sid Caesar, Peter Lawford, The Temptations, Phyllis Diller, and Groucho Marx either hosting or performing. During the first season, a “Billboard Girl” (I know, very sexist, but that was 1964) placed a placard with the names of acts to appear that night on an easel, as they did in old vaudeville days. That young lady was none other than an unknown Raquel Welch.

Speaking of summer replacements, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour was a summer replacement for The Smothers Brother’s Comedy Hour, a show that was mired in censor battles and one of the earliest shows to take a political and anti-war stance during the Vietnam era.

Other variety shows of the time were The Jackie Gleaon Show (which included a revival of his old Honeymooners skits with a new Alice and Trixie), The Danny Kaye Show, The Andy Williams Show (where the Osmond Brothers got their start) and later Sonny and Cher (eventually just, Cher), The Captain and Tenille, Van Dyke and Company (yes, none other than Dick Van Dyke, sans Laura), The Carpenters, and The Jacksons. Other stars of that time would host TV variety specials of their own, namely Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, Bobby Goldsboro, and John Davidson, who now makes his home in Sandwich, NH.

Younger folks also had their specific genre covered with of course, the classic, American Bandstand, its new competition, Hullabaloo (with guest hosts like Sammy Davis Jr. and Petula Clark using the same studio that would eventually house Saturday Night Live), Shindig, (whose house band would include then unknowns like Glen Campbell, Leon Russell and Billy Preston) and Hootenanny, a show which toured the country going from college campus to college campus, taking advantage of the popularity of folk music. Guests included Flatt and Scruggs (of Beverly Hillbillies theme fame), Judy Collins and the Carter Family. An American Bandstand spin-off and another Dick Clark production, Where the Action Is, featured the popular Paul Revere and the Raiders as the house band its initial season. James Brown, The Four Seasons and Herman’s Hermits were a few of the big names that appeared.

Ahh, to paraphrase Pete Seeger’s story telling ballad of the time, “Where have all the classics gone?”