Jack Paar - The Best of "What's His Name" (1961)

The Best of "What's His Name" by Jack Paar

Tonight! America After Dark busted, so NBC veered quickly back to the proven format Steve Allen had established during his late-night tenure, continuing what was never intended to continue after Allen's departure. In 1957, NBC chose comedian Jack Paar to save their failing time slot's ratings. Jack Paar had an extensive resume by the time he had a contract with NBC. This included time as a disc jockey, as an emcee with the USO during World War II, as a host of his own comedy radio program, as a film actor, and as a game show host. Tonight Starring Jack Paar was the next step in a restless career. Where Steve Allen's Tonight was like a well-kept secret, Jack Paar would make Tonight nightly must-watch television, moving TV sets from the living room to the bedroom.

Steve Allen ran Tonight as an "anything goes" variety show filled with singers, sketches, gimmicks and anything else that would fill the allotted time. The show ran on Allen's improvisational comic styling just as Jack Paar's iteration of the show ran on his more scripted experience in stand-up comedy. Under Paar, the monologue and the interview became the foundation stones of every late night program that came after. Some of Paar's monologues were gathered and cut into a record, The Best of "What's His Name", and released in 1961 on the obscure Ramrod Superrecords. It would be his only album.

Jack Paar was a quick wit, a curious mind, a tastemaker, and an incisive interviewer. None of that is evident on this record. In many ways, the record is a bit of a mystery and seems like a cheap—or even bootleg—release from Paar's peak with Tonight. It was put out by a nothing label with anonymous liner notes and an oversized ad for Jiffy Sew - The Miracle Liquid Mender on the back of the record. It is a collection of the more average, daily Jack Paar performance with less-than-great material. But he manages the material with a veteran's ability to win over a tough crowd and play off a flat joke or a string of them. So, it's not "the best of" Jack Paar. But when "the best of" is all that really survives these days, the not-so-best helps paint a clearer picture of a hard-working, gifted and impactful comedian.

Here is Jack Paar's discography:

I-M-4-U (I Am for You) (1955 single with Jack Haskell)

Paar for Tonight (1957 single)

Funny What You Learn from Women (1958 single)

The Best of "What's His Name"

JFK on The Jack Paar Show

The Jack Parr Program with guests Bette Davis and Jonathan Winters

The Jack Parr Program with guests Liberace and Muhammad Ali

The Jack Parr Program with guest Robert Kennedy

Pass the Headphones!!

Johnny Guarnieri Trio - Hot Piano (1945)

Hot Piano by Johnny Guarnieri Trio

Johnny Guarnieri led the last of the Tonight! America After Dark bands. Enjoying his tenure under Jazzbo Collins for the freedom he was allowed in performing on TV, Tonight! was a highlight of Guarnieri's second "career" as a staff musician. The first stage of Johnny Guarnieri's career was as a Swing pianist during the peak of the Big Band era with two of the era's most popular bandleaders: Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. Despite Goodman's proclamation that Guarnieri was one of the worst pianists he'd ever employed, he earned a reputation as a swinger and held court with a number of small combos including his own Johnny Guarnieri Trio which released its only album Hot Piano in 1945 on Savoy Records.

The trio is Johnny Guarnieri on "hot piano," Slam Stewart on bass and Sammy Weiss on drums. The album starts generically with an approachable interpretation of "I'm in the Mood for Love." That is, until Slam Stewart introduces himself fully. As he will throughout the record, Slam's plucked bass becomes a bowed bass for his solos—and every song features a Slam solo—to which he hums along. His novel, nearly novelty, elastic bass style highlights Guarnieri's original compositions best and is a playful contrast to Guarnieri's own punchy wit on the piano.

Guarnieri's clear articulation on the piano begets a strange marriage of two contrasting styles: the minimal and fractured solos of Count Basie with the full and fluid Stride of Fats Waller. Guarnieri somehow makes the oxymoronic fusion work. Sometimes a song might bring out the Basie or the Fats more from Guarnieri, but he manages to find that balance through his minimalist approach to soloing, relying on repetition and slight variations that make witty the occasionally florid.

With Slam Stewart bringing in a humanly absurdist sense of humor alongside Guarnieri's more structured, punchline oriented wit (said three times so you know I mean it,) Sammy Weiss plays the straight man of the group: keeping the act together and on time, setting the tone of each "sketch," and occasionally given to fits of high energy surrounded by the madcap of it all. The result is a wonderful album that is contagiously fun, gregarious and surprising at all turns. And occasionally you hear the future, Ahmad Jamal's own landmark trios are a decade away but theoretically might start here.

Here is the discography surrounding the Johnny Guarnieri Trio's debut album:

Basie English (1944 single with his All Star Orchestra)

Salute to Fats (1944 single with his All Star Orchestra)

Bowing Singing Slam (1944 single)

Band Aid (1944 single)

I'm in the Mood for Love (1945 single)

Firebird (1945 single)

My Blue Heaven (1945 single)

Deuces Wild (1945 single)

Hot Piano

"Basie English" by Johnny Guarnieri's All Star Orchestra

"Salute to Fats" by Johnny Guarnieri's All Star Orchestra

Pass the Headphones!!