"Like the singer and songwriter Bobby Darin, with whom she was romantically involved until her father chased him off with a gun when she was in her late teens..."

"... Ms. Francis reached out beyond her teenage audience, recording material that made her a natural in Las Vegas as well as in nightclubs like the Copacabana in New York. She was also a sought-after entertainer on television variety shows. She briefly tried performing before teenage audiences, but she found that she did not care for the experience. 'I always remember receiving much more applause from teenagers when I was introduced than at any other time during the show — especially after my closing number,' she wrote in her memoir. 'After my name was announced and the squeals of delight subsided, it was downhill all the way.'"

From "Connie Francis, Whose Ballads Dominated ’60s Pop Music, Dies at 87/Ms. Francis, who had a natural way with a wide variety of material, ruled the charts with songs like 'Who’s Sorry Now' and 'Where the Boys Are.'"

Here she is, sublimely out of style in 1969 (on "The Ed Sullivan Show"):

It's perfectly lovely to be square. She was adored on TikTok just this past year.

"It was kind of sad because she was lonesome. Judy would come out wearing her one little black cocktail dress and a pair of little earrings with pearls..."

"... and she would make shepherd’s pie because she liked it. It was comforting. We would have dinner and then we would watch 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' which was on before her show. And if she didn’t like the way someone performed, she didn’t mind telling you!"

Said Bob Mackie about Judy Garland, quoted in "Bob Mackie notoriously created Cher’s look— but he didn’t always like it: 'Don’t tell anyone'" (NY Post).

Mackie also designed for Tina Turner "She was just amazing and funny and if she hated something she told you immediately."

Is this typical of great singers, that they blurt it right out what they don't like? Judy "didn’t mind telling you" and Tina "told you immediately."

That's Garth at 1:39 (and Ed Sullivan at 0:01).

Safe travels, Garth Hudson. The last man standing from a, genuine, band of all-stars.

RIP

pic.twitter.com/ad6f6fd6tk

— 𝙱𝚘𝚋𝚋𝚢’𝚜 𝙷𝚎𝚎𝚕 (@SalvadorDafti) January 21, 2025

ADDED (prompted by Leslie Graves):

When I get off of this mountain
You know where I wanna go?
Straight down the Mississippi River
To the Gulf of America

AND: I like this description of Hudson's part in that song: "The bullfrog-like syncopations that tease and cackle as Levon Helm sings the verses are from Hudson’s clavinet. He unfurls organ lines like bunting atop the choruses, but the cackling cheerfully persists." That's Jon Pareles, writing in the NYT, in "Garth Hudson: 11 Essential Songs?The last surviving original member of the Band died on Tuesday. He was a master on keys and saxophones who could conjure a panoply of scenes and eras."

Here's that 11-song playlist:

"Like, there's two old white dudes... the latter of whom I've *never* heard of...."

I want to quote something written by Christopher Adams, "Court Jester of CrossWorld," guest-blogging this morning at Rex Parker Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, but I've got to put it after the jump because it reveals answers — who are these old white dudes? — that you won't want to know if you've not yet completed the Saturday puzzle and you care about it.

I don't know how old Adams is, but it's the usual stance over there, guest-blogger or no, to disparage the puzzle for skewing to the knowledge base of the old. Anyway, here's a (long!) sentence that focuses on the long answers in the middle of the puzzle:

Like, there's two old white dudes (LON CHANEY and DAVE CLARK, the latter of whom I've *never* heard of, and doubt most solvers my age or younger will know) anchoring those downs, along with PUNISHERS, which...eh, it's not the worst as far as roll-your-own -ER(S) forms go, and by definition *something* has to be the worst entry here, and it's perfectly serviceable in terms of holding the rest together (especially the across entries, which were much more fun comparatively speaking), but nobody's writing home about PUNISHERS.

The clue for "punishers" was "Disciplinarians, at times." The problem with that is that it's not much of a word, just one of those concocted words you can make with the power of the suffix "-er." And when you do that, you're a concocter! See how easy — and dumb — it is?

Now, let's get to the old white dude that Christopher Adams has never heard of. The clue was: "British pop star with more 'Ed Sullivan Show' appearances than the Beatles." Now, the clue tips you off that this performer is going to be at least mildly surprising. The Beatles are supremely famous, and their going on "The Ed Sullivan Show" is the most famous thing about "The Ed Sullivan Show." But Ed had his favorites, his repeat performers, and they were a lot more available than The Beatles.

If you were to ask me to name a performer who was on Ed's show more than The Beatles, I'd be the exclaimer of the name of a mouse: Topo Gigio. I looked it up and see that Topo Giogio comes in second only to a comedy duo I barely remember, Wayne & Schuster. W&S were on the show 58 times. The cute little mouse puppet was on 50 times. The musical performer who was on the most was an opera singer, Roberta Peters (41 times).

But the crossword clue narrows it down to British pop stars. It wouldn't really take that much to beat the Beatles, who were very conspicuous but only did the show 9 times. The answer was tricky for me because, even though I loved the British invasion and watched Ed Sullivan every week in those days, the clue suggests a solo performer, and the act was called The Dave Clark Five. Consequently, even when I had "CLARK" filled in and 4 blanks in front, I was racking my brain trying to think of a British pop star with the last name "Clark." (Petula Clark has too many letters, and Gene Clark was not British.)

So the clue was misleading. When it comes to groups, of course, I know The Dave Clark Five. There was a time when people discussed the question whether The Dave Clark Five were better than The Beatles — kind of a warm-up to the decades-long question whether The Rolling Stones were better than The Beatles. Anyway, The Dave Clark Five were on "The Ed Sullivan Show" 18 times, and NPR informs us that this was "more than any other rock, pop or R&B artist."

I question that assertion. Was Connie Francis not a pop star? She was on 26 times. Here she is doing "You Make Me Feel So Young" (in a way that might make you feel so old).

And here are The Dave Clark Five in one of their "Ed Sullivan Show" appearances. That's Dave on the drums, the only one of The Five who didn't have to do that ridiculous wide-stance bounce for the entire song:

"Maria Perego, an Italian puppeteer and the creator of Topo Gigio, the lovable mouse who became famous to American audiences..."

"... as a frequent guest on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' in the 1960s and early ’70s and was known worldwide, died on Thursday in Milan. She was 95.... Topo Gigio was a sort of cross between a puppet and a marionette; three puppeteers, hidden in a black background, moved various body parts with rods.... Ms. Perego and two other puppeteers were on hand to impart the movements, and a fourth provided Topo Gigio’s voice — but... Mr. Sullivan had not realized that someone would also have to serve as the puppet’s straight man. Mr. Sullivan, who was famously wooden on camera, stepped into that task for the initial appearance, figuring he would arrange for a professional comic to take over for later ones if the bit caught on. 'It was evident from the very first appearance, however, that the chemistry between Sullivan and Topo Gigio worked extremely well... The exchanges between Sullivan and the mouselike puppet revealed another side of the host, a warm and humanizing element.'... The appearances often ended with the mouse saying, in a thick Italian accent, 'Eddie, kiss me good night.' 'The line became famous... and it was not unusual for passers-by to call out, "Eddie, keees-a-me goood night" as Sullivan walked the streets of New York.'"

From the NYT obituary.

"For the last 22 years, The Verve haven't made a penny from Bitter Sweet Symphony, after forfeiting the royalties to The Rolling Stones."

"The song was embroiled in a legal battle shortly after its release, after The Verve sampled an orchestral version of The Stones' song The Last Time. As a result, writer Richard Ashcroft had to sign over his rights to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards - until now. Speaking as he received a lifetime achievement prize at the Ivor Novello Awards, Ashcroft announced: 'As of last month, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards signed over all their publishing for Bitter Sweet Symphony, which was a truly kind and magnanimous thing for them to do.' Ashcroft acknowledged that it was the Rolling Stones' late manager, Allen Klein, who had been responsible for the situation, rather than the musicians themselves," BBC reports. The Verve sought permission and agreed to pay the Stones 50% of the royalties, but the agreement was to use a 5-note part of the recording, and they used more than that, voiding the agreement, and, under the management of Allen Klein — you remember Allen Klein — there was a lawsuit and The Verve lost all the royalties.

Here's "Bitter Sweet Symphony":



Here's the symphonic version of "The Last Time" (from 1965), which I don't think I'd ever noticed before:



And here are the Stones doing "The Last Time" (I'm giving you the Ed Sullivan performance, in which Keith Richards doesn't seem to play the guitar so well):

Goodbye to Fats Domino.

One of the last truly great ones of early rock and roll has died. He was 89.

NYT obit:

Mr. Domino had more than three dozen Top 40 pop hits through the 1950s and early ’60s, among them “Blueberry Hill,” “Ain’t It a Shame,” “I’m Walkin’,” “Blue Monday” and “Walkin’ to New Orleans.” Throughout he displayed both the buoyant spirit of New Orleans, his hometown, and a droll resilience that reached listeners worldwide.

He sold 65 million singles in those years, with 23 gold records, making him second only to Elvis Presley as a commercial force. Presley acknowledged Mr. Domino as a predecessor.

“A lot of people seem to think I started this business,” Presley told Jet magazine in 1957. “But rock ’n’ roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that music like colored people. Let’s face it: I can’t sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that.”

Read the whole obit. Excerpt:

Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. was born on Feb. 26, 1928, the youngest of eight children in a family with Creole roots....

Music filled his life from the age of 10, when his family inherited an old piano. After his brother-in-law Harrison Verrett, a traditional-jazz musician, wrote down the notes on the keys and taught him a few chords, Antoine threw himself at the instrument — so enthusiastically that his parents moved it to the garage.

He was almost entirely self-taught, picking up ideas from boogie-woogie masters like Meade Lux Lewis, Pinetop Smith and Amos Milburn. “Back then I used to play everybody’s records; everybody’s records who made records,” he told Offbeat magazine in 2004. “I used to hear ’em, listen at ’em five, six, seven, eight times and I could play it just like the record because I had a good ear for catchin’ notes and different things.”

He attended the Louis B. Macarty School but dropped out in the fourth grade to work as an iceman’s helper. “In the houses where people had a piano in their rooms, I’d stop and play,” he told USA Today in 2007. “That’s how I practiced.”...

In that racially segregated era, white performers used his hits to build their careers. In 1955, “Ain’t It a Shame” became a No. 1 hit for Pat Boone as “Ain’t That a Shame,” while Domino’s arrangement of a traditional song, “Bo Weevil,” was imitated by Teresa Brewer....

Now, "Blueberry Hill," which I — who listened to AM Top 40 radio back then — remember as his biggest hit, was a Glenn Miller tune in the 1940s, but Miller got it from Louis Armstrong. Here's Fats on Ed Sullivan in 1956:



ADDED: I'm wrong about "Blueberry Hill." Miller didn't get it from Armstrong. The Armstrong recording was 1949. Miller was 1940, but there were 6 different "Blueberry Hill" recordings in 1940:

Victor Records released the recording by the Sammy Kaye Orchestra with vocals by Tommy Ryan on May 31, 1940 (catalog #26643, with the flip side "Maybe"; matrix #51050[1]). Gene Krupa's version was issued on OKeh Records (#5672) on June 3 and singer Mary Small did a vocal version on the same label with Nat Brandwynne's orchestra, released June 20, 1940 on OKeh Records #5678. Other 1940 recordings were by: The Glenn Miller Orchestra on Bluebird Records (10768), Kay Kyser, Russ Morgan, Gene Autry (also in the 1941 film The Singing Hill), Connee Boswell, and Jimmy Dorsey. The largest 1940 hit was by The Glenn Miller Orchestra, where it reached #1.

It was a Tin Pan Alley composition, with the music by Vincent Rose (born Vincenzo Cacioppo, in Palermo, Italy) and lyrics by Larry Stock (who was born in Budapest, Hungary) and Al Lewis (born in NYC and not to be confused with the Al Lewis we knew and loved as Grandpa Munster).

Race and pop culture is an important subject, and I was wrong to assume I knew the time line of inspiration and borrowing.

"I loved [classical music], but once I heard The 4 Seasons, forget it. That sound!"

"And when The Beatles came out, you know, initially, I didn't even care. I was still reeling from having seen The 4 Seasons on 'Ed Sullivan' doing 'Big Girls Don't Cry.' There was something about that sound. The way they looked! We didn't have guys that looked like that... or sounded like that... He was high. They said 'Walk like a man/sing like a girl.' He could get up there. But the whole vocal sound they had was just amazing. You heard the sound of the city. I said Get me down there."

Said Paul Shaffer in the new episode of "WTF with Marc Maron."

Shaffer was listening to the radio in the early 60s, at the same time I had my most intense radio experiences, and I had exactly the same reaction to The 4 Seasons and to the early Beatles. (What was the big deal in a world that already had The 4 Seasons?!). (Paul Shaffer is about a year older than I am... and exactly the same height (5'5").)

Shaffer wanted to get down there, because he was in Canada, in Thunder Bay, whence you had to drive 4 hours just to get to Duluth, the city Bob Dylan had to get down out of. Shaffer was listening to the radio at night so he could get a station in Chicago, and was blown away when "Sherry" came along.

And here's how that "Ed Sullivan" show looked:



That was a big moment for me too. I was 11. Shaffer, 12, wanted to be like Frankie Valli. Now, that is a man. I wanted to marry him.

ADDED: Frankie Valli looks so tiny there. How tall is he? He's in the 5'5" club with me and Paul.

"Man, you guys cannot stop talking about him. He is a dangerous presence and, you know, it’s just like candy by the bushel."

Said Hillary into a hot mike. She was talking to Chris Matthew, chatting between segments of an MSNBC town hall.

“We dip into him, dip out of him,” said Matthews. “We have a progressive audience, obviously. But, uh, nobody can tell what people want to watch.”

“Yeah,” she said, adding that people do “want to watch him.”

“— to laugh at him,” Matthews replied.

Then they talked about  Chris Christie: “Why did he support [Trump]?” Clinton wondered. And then Ben Carson, whom Matthews said he'd known "forever" and found "very soft spoken, never said a thing." Then Matthews said Carson reminded him of Tommy Smothers, and Clinton expressed appreciation to get to talk to someone who — unlike her young staffpeople — remembers the old TV shows. That caused Matthews to say "Sid Caesar" 3 times, and Clinton said "Ed Sullivan!"

Jim Bailey, the great female impersonator — or, as he preferred to be called, character actor — has died at the age of 77.

Here's the NYT obituary.

A discovery of sorts of Ed Sullivan, who gave him national television exposure and featured him numerous times on his variety show in the 1970s — not so surprising in the age of Caitlyn Jenner, but a risqué move at the time — he went on to appear as Streisand, Garland, Peggy Lee or Phyllis Diller (or, on occasion, himself) on numerous variety and talk shows, including “The Dean Martin Show,” “The Carol Burnett Show, ” “The Mike Douglas Show,” “The Tonight Show” and “The Merv Griffin Show.”...

“From the first minute on stage when I am Barbra Streisand, I look like her, talk like her, I have her mannerisms and sing like her,” he said in an interview on his website, jimbaileyweb.com. “I am Barbra, not an imitation, lip-syncing or a witty impression. When I made my Las Vegas debut in 1970, I opened doors for all the guys who came to town in dresses. The mental and physical process I go through begins the day I am doing the show, as soon as I get up in the morning. I make sure it is a light day. I don’t do lunch and I don’t run around. In the back of my mind, I’m subliminally thinking of Judy or Barbra. It’s a three-hour process to get into the lady I’m doing that night ... the body makeup ... and then I am psyching myself into the character."

Here's Bailey's YouTube page, with lots of performances. Here he is performing — as Judy Garland — for Princess Diana and Prince Charles. I'll embed this one, which has him as Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Phyllis Diller, Peggy Lee, and Marilyn Monroe:

"Charles Barkley Says Paying NCAA Athletes Is A Turrible Idea, And Americans Still Agree."

Can someone explain to me why the Huffington Post used that "turrible" spelling? Is it mocking Barkley's speech? It it mocking the idea?

The idea sounds right to me, by the way:

"There’s only a couple of players on the college team that actually can really play in every sport, so sometimes you have to look at the big picture... All of those kids are getting a free education. But let’s say we do it your way … we have to pay the diving team, the swimming team. That’s crazy. Less than 1 percent [of college basketball players] are going to play in the NBA... What about the other 99 percent that are getting a free education? Think about it."

I'm looking at the comments now and see that the top-rated comment is:

The spelling of terrible in the article title ("Turrible") diminishes both the point of Mr. Barley's opinion and his education. Further, given how some in his country have worked to to portray African American men, it can also be interpreted as racist.

That gets the response "but that's how he says the word" — which is something I wondered about, but didn't know — and the original commenter comes back with "And in how many instances have journalists used regional accents when writing on a commentary's opinion?" — which is exactly how I would have responded to the assertion that Barkley happens to pronounce "terrible" like that. I mean, he'd have to be awfully famous for that word, pronounced that way before it wouldn't seem disrespectful and a cheap way of discounting what is a damned good argument. He's not famous enough for saying "turrible" that I knew it. Are there any other cases of famous people so famous for a way they pronounce a word that the respelled word would be used like that in a headline? The only thing I can think of is a bunch of dumb old headlines about Ed Sullivan and his "really big shew."

Aretha Franklin talks — charmingly — to David Letterman.

Last Monday:



She also sang "Rolling in the Deep," a cover of the Adele song, from her new album of cover songs. I think the performance wasn't good, which is why I'm embedding the interview, which is much better, but Aretha Franklin is 72 years old, and she's earned our indulgence, including our indulgence of her dramatically low cut gown, there in the Ed Sullivan Theater, where, back when she was 17, they told her that her dress was too low cut and then that they were overbooked and she wasn't going to go on at all. And don't you just want to say: "Forget 'toned arms'!"?

Happy birthday to Professor Irwin Corey. He's 100 years old today.

Here's video of him performing in 2011, when he was 97:



And the video below comes from way back in 2007, when the President of the United States was George Bush, and Professor Irwin Corey looked much more than 5 years younger. He criticizes the President in both videos, and perhaps the years weigh very heavily as you approach 100 — I'm saying "you," but do you really think you'll have the opportunity to feel the increasing weight of the years leading up to 100? — but perhaps for a true left-winger like Professor Irwin Corey, the experience of disappointment in Obama hurts far more than getting what you knew you were going to hate from George Bush.



From Wikipedia:

The night The Beatles first lit up our black and white TVs.

It was 50 years ago today...

[CORRECTION: No, it's 50 years ago on February 9th. I'm writing too early in the morning and misreading the notation on my calendar. Today, is the 50th anniversary of The Beatles first hitting #1 in the U.S.]

.... and you're probably seeing lots of clips of the very familiar part of the show when The Beatles stamped the look of 1964 into our permanent memory, including the second-hand memory of those yet to be born, but do you remember what the evening of February 1, 1964 really looked liked?

Back then, everyone watched "The Ed Sullivan Show." And there was no fast-forwarding. You had to watch the commercials and whatever mix of performances Ed had for us that week. The TV schedule was studded with "variety shows," and Ed's was the biggest. You could see rock and roll, and your parents could have rock and roll inflicted on them, but you had to listen to opera or jazz and watch plate-spinning acrobats and whatever else Ed had decided was appropriate, including Ed himself, on stage and introducing and vouching for everyone.

Can you endure the complete Ed Sullivan shows with The Beatles? Back in the earliest days of this blog, 10 years ago, I willingly submerged myself in the first show, the one that's 50 years old today:

Goodbye to Phyllis Diller.

She was 95.

Diller was nearly 40 when she began performing, with five children and a successful career as an advertising copywriter. At the time, women were a rarity in the world of stand-up comedy.

Thanks for all the laughs! Here she is on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1969:



AND: Here she is roasting Reagan:



"If you ever get to be President, and I think you may...."

AND: Many commenters are talking about Diller's skill on the harpsichord. Here she is flaunting her talent to Liberace:

"Americal Idol" -- the results, I mean, really, the results!

It's the big night. It's gonna take two hours. But we will have an end. And it's not like you even have to bother. Because you know what the end is. Taylor Hicks won. Hasn't DialIdol showed him way ahead every single damned week? So they actually have to try to entertain us. That's the upside of all this nonsuspense.

In Phase 1 of this attempt to entertain us, they bring out rejected Idols and their idols. Paris Bennett sings with Al Jarreau. Is Al Jarreau embarrassed to stoop to this or happy to get such a gigantic audience? I don't know. But I wish him well. He's a brilliant singer. People like him used to go on "The Ed Sullivan Show" where they were juxtaposed with puppets and acrobats. Why is this different? Leave the lovely Mr. Jarreau alone. We see Chris Daughtry singing with Live, side by side with Ed Kowalczyk. Is Ed comfortable? Is Ed thinking I'm doing this for money? Is Ed thinking God bless Chris for loving me enough to imitate me or is he just exploding inside at the bizarreness of it all? Then the weirdness climaxes as Meat Loaf sings with Katharine McPhee. Noooo. I've blotted that out. What was Meat thinking? That she was horrible? That if he was as sexy as she he'd be the biggest star in the universe?

And stuck in there is a cute and genuinely funny comedy routine with Wolfgang Puck and Kellie Pickler. He's trying to teach her about food, and she's hiding the escargot in the napkin. Give that adorable girl a TV show, please.

In Phase 2, they purport to give out awards. This is just an excuse to go way back into the bad auditions file. We hear four bad women and four bad men, one of whom cavorts on stage for us.

After the longest commercial break in the history of television, we get another dose of Puck and Pickler. (She goes all Annie Hall about lobsters.) Then Phase 3 begins. Ryan introduces: GUYS! "Takin' Care of Business." It's Ace 'n Kevin 'n Bucky 'n Chris 'n Elliott. Now Taylor comes out, harmonica-ing. "Tobacco Road." (I was just hearing this song on XM Radio today, the Ten Years After version.) Now it's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow." Suddenly, it't the 1992 Democratic Convention. Yesterday's gone!

Uhh...ohh... we seem to be back in Phase 2, with "Proudest Moment" awards. Elliott's mom wins, and, really, she's about the coolest Idol family member ever. Claudette! She's adorably jolie laide, and she looks just like Elliott. Now, Elliott Yamin sings. And introduces Mary J. Blige! All the stars are getting in on this action tonight. And what a tribute to Elliott: Blige shows up. "American Idol" rules... if Blige shows up.

Carrie Underwood sings. She's in a country place. I haven't been following this. "Don't forget to remember me." I kinda have.

"The Randy Jackson Award for Public Speaking." To Ronetta, for bleepable crap. This is the low point of tonight's show. I don't like this disrespect to Randy. Ronetta plays the role of Ronetta, accepting the award. Let's ignore this.

Cut to Taylor. He starts "In the Ghetto," then introduces Miss Toni Braxton! Disturbingly, she can hardly sing. This is a weird moment, and it's clipped short. What just happened?

Time for the big "GIRLS" medley. "I'm a woman. W-O-M-A-N." Lotsa Paris here. We feel that if only she'd had a chance to prepare -- lord, she's only 17 -- she'd have held up the female end of the competition. "I'm Every Woman." Nice to see Mandisa back. But then... it's also too strained, too desperate. (Bring back the guys.)

Back to the awards. The next one's for imitation. And the guy who wins is the Clay Aiken imitator. He accepts his award and agrees to sing. "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me." Midway through the song, the real Clay -- the guy! -- comes out and is singing along. Fake Clay freaks out but does the duet anyway. Omigod! It's Clay! In person! It's Clayyyyyy!!!!

Phase 4. Burt Bacharach is introduced and he staggers over to the grand piano, but I'm not going to make fun, because he starts to play a beautiful, beautiful song. "What the World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love." Taylor Hicks begins the sublime lyric. Hey, dammit, the show is really entertaining tonight. It's two hours, but they've got material. "The Look of Love." Ace and Melissa (I think it's Melissa). "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" -- Kellie. Aw, now it's Bucky singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head." Aw. Mandisa sings a little prayer for us. Lisa Tucker sings "Alfie." What's it all about?... Are we meant to take all that we give?...

"A chair is not a chair..." It's that absurd lyric Tamyra once sang, and now it's Elliott. Dear, sweet Elliott. "What's New Pussycat?" Kevin Covais. Ick! But kinda awesome. "Caught Between the Moon and New York City." "Close to You."

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Dionne Warwick. Well, it's established: "American Idol" is the new "Ed Sullivan Show." Dionne Warwick is here, singing "Walk on By" and "That's What Friends Are For." Taylor and Katharine wander out and then all those other characters. Taylor holds Dionne's hand and popdom is complete.

There's a "male bonding" interlude here... I've got nothing to say about it. Aaahhhh... come on! We're so close to the end. Let's get to it!

Finally, the results....

And... I'm speechless... it's Prince....

Aw... that's sublime....

Commercials....

Now, Taylor's singing "The Time of My Life" and Katharine bops out over to him. They can both relax and enjoy the moment. They totally know what the answer is on this suspenseless but awesome night. I think the lack of suspense pushed them to make it a good show, and they did.

Ryan tells us it was 63.4 million votes, more than any President has ever received.

"Here we go. The winner of 'American Idol,' Season 5, is: Taylor Hicks!"

Taylor: "Soul Patrooooooollllll!"

Hey, don't complain. He deserved it. He made America love him. What did he have? A bit of a voice. A love for soul music. A willingness to throw himself into the spirit of it all. We laughed. We responded. Who else ever made that happen? He's just a guy in the middle of music who made us feel something. Shut up!

More Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The last of the four Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan shows is a year and a half after the first three, which occurred on three consecutive weeks. (First show described here.) You'd think the fourth show would look quite different, that the culture would have radically changed, in this year and a half. In fact, The Beatles music was very different. The first three shows featured "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You," and this September 1965 show had "I Feel Fine," "I'm Down," "Act Naturally," "Ticket to Ride," "Yesterday," and "Help," clearly a later Beatle period.

My favorite Beatle moment: After Paul sings "Yesterday," John says, "Ah, thank you Paul. That was just like him."

Perhaps the other performers have advanced a bit, but not much. There's no vaudeville throwback like Tessie O'Shea now, but there's Cilla Black in a gigantic wig, singing "Out of My Head," to a tame big band arrangement. Here's Soupy Sales singing "Hey! Do the Mouse! Do it all through the house." He leaps into the audience doing his new mouse dance: make mouse ears with open hands and stick out your upper teeth and gnaw. He gets all up in people's faces, and mostly they pull back and make an effort to conceal their horror. Barely one in a hundred responds with the appropriate mouse gestures. There's another magician: Fantasio, a serene man in a tuxedo, pulls doves out of scarves while mellow music plays. There's another lame comedy duo (Allen & Rossi).

Ed's still the same. After The Beatles' first set he shushes the audience and says "Now be quiet. Now whom do you listen to when you're buying a carpet?" He introduces Steve Rossi saying "I've asked Steve to sing a very charming song: 'Try to Remember.'" He says to The Beatles, "I'd just like to congratulate the four of you on the way you've handled yourselves."

I must say the commercials have picked up since the earlier Beatles shows. Now we have lots of actors enjoying the products, and even a comic attempt (new All detergent introduced like a movie Coming Attraction). We see the ridiculous George Fenneman (who reminds me of Ryan Seacrest!) riding a strange water-land vehicle to rescue folks at a picnic who are simply unwilling to eat hamburgers in the absence of iced tea. And here's that great classic headache commercial. A woman is happily cooking dinner, when her husband, a man in a suit, comes in the door. She says to him, "Hi, darling, hurry and get ready for dinner. PTA meeting tonight." He completely snaps into a scary, mean guy: "Ellen, please. Don't rush me. I just got home!" The voiceover intones: "Control yourself. Sure you have a headache. You're tense, irritable. But don't take it out on her." Anacin solves the whole problem; apparently, it's a powerfully psychoactive drug. The voiceover assures us: "You're in control again." (Older readers will remember another ad of this type, where the woman cooking is the one who snaps; she says "Mother, please, I'd rather do it myself!")

In the end, Ed tells us about next week: it will be the first color show, with Milton Berle, Eddie Fisher, and Polly Bergen. "And for you youngsters, we'll have the youthful singing trio of Dino, Desi, and Billy." How well I remember when those three ruled the teen magazines (16 and Tiger Beat). Poor Dino--Dean Martin's adorable son--died flying a jet for the National Guard in 1987. One always reads that Dean Martin never recovered. Desi, of course, was the offspring of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Billy was just the other guy. The performance by Dino, Desi, and Billy on that first color Ed Sullivan Show is available on this great DVD.

So I watched the first of the Ed Sullivan Shows with the Beatles, intriguingly intact, including commercials. How strangely sedate the commercials of that time were! Each one emphasized closeups of the product with a voice earnestly, quietly making assurances about how well it would perform. A "shoe wax" would make your shoes look like they had been coated with a new layer of leather, shaving cream would stay moist for the entire duration of a shave, pancakes would rise quickly after flipping. A headache was represented by a closeup of a man's face with one white dot after another appearing on it as the voiceover intoned "pain, pain, pain." The headache remedy ad came on immediately after The Beatles had opened the show with three peppy songs, and surely gave many parents around the country the chance to make wisecracks about rock and roll causing headaches. At the end of the commercial, his headache gone, the man tightens up his tie and combs his thinning hair--as if he had never heard of The Beatles! But he was happy, in a pleasantly serene way, because he didn't have a headache, and he didn't know that he looked all outmoded after the three songs that had preceded him that night.

After the ads, Ed tells the kids in the audience to be good and pay attention to the other acts, because The Beatles would be back in the end of the show. Then out comes a comic magician in white tie who does a long card trick that depends heavily on the continued reappearance of a black card in a group of red cards. But it's black and white TV! And The Beatles were just on! Then he does a long trick involving pouring salt from a salt shaker!

The next act is the cast of Oliver! No, I'm not excited. The exclamation point is part of the title, Oliver! The first person to sing is Davy Jones, future Monkee, who played the Artful Dodger in the musical. How sweet that little Davy is the first person to sing on TV after The Beatles. He does just fine.

Next is Frank Gorshin who does about ten impressions in his few minutes, turning into one celebrity after another in a routine based on the wacky notion, what if movie stars held political office? He starts with Broderick Crawford, in an impression that I've also seen Jim Carrey do. Jim Carrey clearly copied Gorshin's Broderick Crawford, though Carrey, when I saw him do it, made it seem as though it was a special Carrey sort of madness that he would make a weird choice like Broderick Crawford to impersonate--especially interesting since Carey played a role Gorshin had made famous, The Riddler. Anyway, Gorshin was just brilliant, doing Brando, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, and more.

The true horror of the evening is Tessie O'Shea, a very large woman who belted songs and played the banjo in a way that must have made sense when people still remembered vaudeville. The strange time overlap represented by this show reaches its height as Tessie tosses her white fur boa about and sings about her "curves" while stroking her huge abdomen.

Then there's a comedy routine, a lesser Stiller & Meara called McCall & Brill, and finally The Beatles come back for two more songs, ending with "I Want to Hold Your Hand." But there's still more time on the clock, so out comes a comic acrobat, a woman encased in a costume that makes her torso appear to be a face. Somehow she's able to make the eyes look back and forth as she does a little dance and ends by taking off the costume hat, which had been covering her head. Great! Then The Four Fays come out and do comic acrobatics for a few minutes, ending with their finale: one woman lies down on a table, gripping its edges, and two other women each grab one of her feet and run around the table several times in opposite directions. The audience loves it!

That's the big show!

UPDATE: I revisit this post on the 50th anniversary of this episode of the show in 2014 and provide some links to YouTube and more.

"So kick back on your sofa, push play and float downstream." So says the copy on the DVD box for The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows. Surely, someone had originally written "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream." Then, I'm thinking, someone else said:

"No, don't say 'turn off,' that's negative. It should be more like turn on. Hey! 'Turn on your DVD player!' But that's not punchy enough. 'Push play!' So, then 'Push play, relax and float downstream.' Or 'Relax, push play, and float downstream,' because naturally you'd relax after making the effort of pushing something. No, wait, I've got it, not 'relax,' 'kick back'! That makes relaxing seem more cool and kicking is more like pushing. So, kick, push, float! All good verbs! That's good copy. No, wait, that floating downstream business is confusing. Where is this floating taking place? Better make it 'kick back on your sofa, push play and float downstream."

Did you know that Jack Paar came up with the idea of the sofa and desk furniture arrangement for a TV talk show? Here are a few more things about Jack, who seems to have had a talk show that was much more about great talk than today’s talk shows, from the NYT obituary:

• [U]nknowns who [got] national exposure on his show[:] ... Bill Cosby, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Carol Burnett, Woody Allen, the Smothers Brothers and Godfrey Cambridge.

• "Everyone thinks Ed Sullivan discovered the Beatles," [Paar] once complained. "That's not true. I had them on before he did. I did it because I thought they were funny, not because I liked the music. I'm a Muzak kind of guy — my home's like living in an elevator."

• There always seemed to be a neurotic edge to Mr. Paar and his pals. [NYT critic John J.] O'Connor once said people watched to see if anyone would have a nervous breakdown on camera. Mr. Downs once explained affectionately, "Jack's not mentally ill; he's a carrier of mental illness." [Regular guest Oscar] Levant, asked what he did for exercise, mumbled, "I stumble and then I fall into a coma."

• "I hate my emotion," Mr. Paar said of all his tearful controversies. "Knock it off, I tell myself, but I just can't help it."

He had a catchphrase, “I kid you not.” I can remember my parents saying that and understanding that it was amusing in a way I couldn’t understand because I was too young to stay up and watch late night TV.