Blogspot #15

Good morning, friends! This week's show is a tribute to one of comedy's most versatile performers. He was born Melvin Kaminsky, but you know him best as Mel Brooks. In honor of his birthday, we'll hear some of his funniest TV appearances as the 2000 Year Old Man.

Despite what Wikipedia says here, the 2000 Year Old Man was was created in 1950 when Carl Reiner brought a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder to the offices of "Your Show Of Shows". Carl had just seen an interview on "We, The People" with a woman who claimed to have overheard the evil dictator Joseph Stalin planning to bomb America while in the toilet. The interview inspired him to interview Mel as an eyewitness to the crucifixion of Jesus 2000 years ago. Read more about the creation of the character at TalkingComedy.com.

The 2000 Year Old Man first appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" with Carl on February 12, 1961. The entire sketch was released on CD back in 1990, but it's no longer available. You can watch a clip from that appearance on YouTube. Carl and Mel appeared on a prime-time special with Johnny Carson back in 1962, and that appearance is included in the Time-Life DVD collection "The Golden Age Of Comedy" along with a 1965 appearance on "The Andy Williams Show". You can find used copies at Amazon.com. There's also a complete 30 minute interview with Mel Brooks on Dick Cavett's DVD box set "Comic Legends", and Amazon.com carries that as well.

Most of the appearances featured on my Mel Brooks birthday tribute are available on CD or DVD, but one of them is only available on LP. The appearance with Steve Allen comes from a 1963 LP titled "Funny Fone Calls", and a copy is available on Ebay if you're desperate to add it to your collection. Next week's show is a special hour-long montage of 150 historic soundbites from America's history in honor of our nation's birthday. A detailed listing will be posted, so don't forget to check in here next week for all the information you need.

Blogpost #14

Welcome Back, Beatle fans! I hope you enjoyed last week's full-length interview with Paul McCartney. This week's show celebrates the anniversary of the Beatles' first professional recording session. It happened nearly half a century ago, if you can believe that. The session actually resulted in a hit single in Germany, and it started a chain of events that changed the world in a million ways.

It all started in Hamburg, Germany in June 1961 at a nightclub called The Top Ten. One of their star attractions was a 20-year old rock singer named Tony Sheridan, who often performed live with the Beatles. He was signed to a contract with Polydor Records and the Beatles were hired as his backing group, and they received a one-time payment with no royalties.

Their first session was scheduled for a Thursday night, June 22, 1961, but it stretched into the following Friday morning. Tony and the boys only had time to tape five numbers, so they had to return the following Saturday morning to tape two more. In addition to these seven songs, there was an eighth number taped nearly a year later during their return to Hamburg. Tony Sheridan was not available, so he added his vocal at a later session. Reports of a ninth track (allegedly the Beatles performing "Swanee River" with added piano and sax) have been greatly exaggerated.

The first release from the Beatles/Sheridan sessions was "My Bonnie", an uptempo version of the old folk lullaby "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean". It came out on a German single in late 1961 with a slow introduction sung by Sheridan in German. It was backed with "The Saints", based on "When The Saints Go Marching In". The group was credited as Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers on the single, which sold about 20,000 copies and peaked at 32 on the Deutsche Hit Parade in January 1962. That same month, Polydor reissued the single in Great Britain with a slow introduction in English instead of German. This version was credited to Tony Sheridan and The Beatles. In June 1962, both songs were released on a German LP titled "My Bonnie" with the Beatles being credited on the back cover.

Since the initial release of these tracks in 1961, Polydor has reissued them in every country in every imaginable audio format: singles, EPs, LPs, 8-Tracks, cassettes, and CDs. There's even a documentary on DVD featuring new interviews with Tony Sheridan, and it's available from Amazon.com.

Next week's show will be a birthday tribute to Mel Brooks. You'll hear rare TV appearances with Carl Reiner, Andy Williams, Ed Sullivan and Dick Cavett.

Blogpost #13

Hello, Beatle people! You say it's your birthday? Well, it's Paul's birthday too, yeah! He was born June 18, 1942 (as every Beatle fan knows) and in celebration of Sir Paul's 67th, this week's show is a complete broadcast of his hard-to-find 1980 interview with Vic Garbarini for Musician Player & Listener magazine. It marked the first time Paul had agreed to discuss the Beatles since the 1970 breakup. Vic would later interview Ringo for the February 1982 issue.

The interview was taped in Paul's London office in May 1980 on a portable stereo cassette machine. It was published in Musician's August 1980 issue along with articles from noted music critics Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs. It was edited down to about an hour and issued to radio stations as a double LP with a copy of the magazine. Deejays were given permission to use the material freely to promote his McCartney II LP, so it got a lot of airplay. Some deejays failed to notice that there was an obscene word on Side 2, and they were reprimanded for letting it get out on the air.

After positive response from deejays and listeners, Columbia Records pressed 10,000 copies of the LP and released it as a limited edition on December 4, 1980. John Lennon's tragic death came only a few days later, and the LP quickly sold out. Another 47,000 copies were pressed, and it sold enough to reach # 158 on the Billboard album charts. It was later nominated for a Grammy award as Best Spoken Word Recording of 1981. It lost out to an hour-long 1944 radio sci-fi drama starring Orson Welles titled "Donovan's Brain". (Obviously, the recording academy hadn't heard Orson's LP when they voted for it, or else they would've known it wasn't a recent recording.)

The LP is currently unavailable on CD, if you don't include unauthorized pirated versions. Copies are available from used record dealers all over the world. My copy is the rare white label deejay version with a letter from Columbia along with the August 1980 magazine. For a list of topics discussed in the interview, here's a track listing from a Paul McCartney fan site.

Next week: another show for Beatles fans! I'll be celebrating the anniversary of the their first studio session in June 1961. Beatles expert Geoffrey Giuliano hosts a documentary on their early Hamburg days titled "The Savage Young Beatles".

Blogpost #12

Good morning, class! Did everybody do their homework? Very good!

This week's show is an hour-long documentary about censorship during the Golden Age Of Radio. I don't consider myself an expert on the subject, despite the fact that I have collected hundreds of hours of vintage radio shows over the decades, so I've invited a well-known broadcast historian to take over.

Anthony Tollin co-authored The Shadow Scrapbook (Harcourt, 1979) with Walter Gibson. He is the author of Radio Spirits' Smithsonian Historical Archives books and narrated the GAA documentaries Voices from the Shadows and Too Hot for Radio. Tollin has produced and directed many radio recreations and seminars during the past 15 years. He's also reunited the casts of radio's greatest dramas, including The Shadow, The Thin Man, Big Town, Mercury Theater, The Mysterious Traveler and Suspense. As an authority on broadcasting history, Anthony Tollin has been interviewed by CBS, NBC, CNN, Mutual, the Associated Press and Entertainment Tonight. He also contributes to the Shadow Sanctum website.

This week's program featured numerous rare recordings of an adult nature, and I have invited all my listeners to comment on the material as well as the very notion of radio censorship. It can be argued that the comments heard from today's shock jocks can make these outtakes seem tame and even quaint, but I wonder if that's a step forward or a step backward. Please e-mail me at the address above with your thoughts.

Too Hot For Radio was originally issued on CD in 1997 and has long been out of print, but a few copies are still available from Laugh.com. It's part of a five-disc box set of CDs.

Next week: an hour-long interview with Sir Paul McCartney to celebrate his upcoming 67th birthday. Thanks for listening.