With a new Tonight show host, came a new Tonight show announcer: so with Jack Paar, came Hugh Downs. Hugh Downs was not Tonight's first announcer, but he was the first announcer who released an LP: An Evening with Hugh Downs in 1959 on Epic Records.
Hugh Downs, every six months on Tonight, broke out his guitar to show off his hidden talent as a folksinger. Actual folksinger Burl Ives witnessed one of these performances and was impressed enough to quip that Downs "deserved to wear a beard" like a proper folkie. Hugh Downs wouldn't go that far for folk music, but such praise meant that he could not not cut a record as a result.
But it's one thing to play a song or two every six months and another to string twelve into a sequence. Downs, thus, expands his catalogue of genres from folk to add a spiritual, hymn, cowboy ballad, work and war songs and a sea shanty (a favorite: the short and funny "The Delaware Light.") Due to Downs's limited range and serious style, the tracks all would have sounded like one meandering 30 minute song without the arrangements of Mundell Lowe. Lowe's touches are spare, almost medieval, and focuses Hugh's singing (Hugh Sings!) and the guitar (though I doubt he's the one playing on the record as he is on the cover.) The record is a pleasant surprise: the kind of surprise a hobbyist enjoys enticing when they play for friends at a party or...on a television show to fill time. Surprising, that is, but not memorable enough for the audience to give it much thought in the sixth months between performances.
Note: This is another album that hasn't been digitized but for a couple songs crate diggers have put on the internet.
Here is the discography surrounding Hugh Downs's debut album:
An Evening with Hugh Downs
"The Ride Back from Boot Hill" by Hugh Downs
Jack Paar Walks Off Tonight
Pass the Headphones!!
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