As I pointed out before, Davy Jones, of the pre-fab four band The Monkees, was on The Ed Sullivan Show the very same night that The Beatles first appeared. You’ll find him on the video player as the Artful Dodger in “Oliver!”, followed by a bit of “Making the Monkees,” recently shown on the Smithsonian Channel. Last year I highlighted Jack Nicholson’s involvement in the making of the Monkees movie “Head.”
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Back at this link I showed the comedy duo Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall on the Ed Sullivan show, stuck with the unenviable task of being the lead-in act to The Beatles. I’ll plop it here again, for your viewing convenience.
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Earlier I said there are two connections to Star Trek in the video. One of them is Sally Kellerman, who did the voiceover for the Pillsbury cake commercial. Kellerman was in the second Trek pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, which I think is, for a sci-fi/comics fan, one of the best hours of TV ever made.
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The second Trek connection is Charlie Brill himself, who appeared as a Klingon agent in one of the most popular of all episodes, “The Trouble With Tribbles”.
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Hey, ya know what? Brill resembles John Lennon in this picture.
Fifty years since the plane crash. Buddy Holly, one of the most important innovators in Rock music, sure did pack a lot into his short life, as did Ritchie Valens.
The Beatles covered Holly’s “Words of Love.”
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/FEB/WordsofLove.mp3]Ritchie Valens was present at the birth of surf guitar, as heard in “Fast Freight.”
J.P. Richardson wrote “Running Bear,” which was recorded by Johnny Preston after The Big Bopper’s death.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/FEB/RunningBear.mp3]Two faves in one post! Stephen Colbert with Sir Paul McCartney…
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Yes, the audio is a couple of frames out-of-synch with the picture. That’s because I used my alternate video capture setup, so the cables can reach from the DVD recorder in the other room. If there’s a fix for this, I haven’t found it yet. Now you know!
I would put the Comedy Central embedded video here, in fact I just did, but they screwed up the markups.
In case you were wondering, yes, they’re still here. Click the video and see… 😉
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I missed the January 10 premiere of “Making the Monkees” on the Smithsonian Channel, but it’s being repeated this Tuesday at 8 PM ET.
