Johnny Carson - Johnny Carson's Introduction to New York and the World's Fair (1964)

After six months finishing out his contract with ABC as host of the daytime game show Who Do You Trust?, Johnny Carson started his historic tenure as the host of The Tonight Show on October 1, 1962. Like the hosts before him, Carson built his career through variety shows and hosting gigs on radio and early television. Despite being a prestige television job, not many comedians wanted the workload The Tonight Show required, even Carson (but he "relented.") Already a rising star, Carson ascended even higher to become one of television's and New York's most familiar faces. As a major star in New York, Carson was a natural choice to help promote the 1964 New York World's Fair. Thus, his debut album was Johnny Carson's Introduction to New York and the World's Fair which released in 1964 on Columbia Records.

Part curio and entirely promotional, Johnny Carson weaves together travel tips, comedy bits and an aural tour of popular exhibits for the upcoming World's Fair in New York. The album sounds like a piece of reportage where Carson escorts the listener through New York and then through the Fair making wisecracks during encounters with denizens and funny scenarios one might run into as a tourist. On television, Carson has a knack for making the most scripted and rote material seem off-the-cuff and fresh. He has less success without an audience or a camera to perform to. Carson still maintains his conversational charisma but is too scripted to allow for one of his greatest strengths: making a bad joke go down a little easier. Unfortunately, the album is full of the expected bad jokes that Carson can't do much about or with (about cabbies and panhandlers, parking and traffic, restaurants and tipping) and that's before the minefield of standard racist and misogynistic jokes that comes with a 60's tour of the "world." It's a fascinating album all the same as a capsule of an event and a transformed New York even if the jokes are so common that they would have sounded just as tired promoting the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Note: This album has not yet made its way online.

Here is the discography surrounding Johnny Carson's debut album:

Johnny Carson's Introduction to New York and the World's Fair

The Johnny Carson Show (Sep. 1, 1955)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (Jan. 14, 1964)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (Dec. 31, 1965)

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Merv Griffin - Songs by Merv Griffin (1946)

"Lullaby of the Leaves" by Merv Griffin

By his own account, Jack Paar left Tonight too soon, but the workload of a nightly 105 minutes of screen time was a strain to fill. Even after rerunning "Best-of" material and employing guest hosts to lighten the stress, Paar would make March 30, 1962 his last episode as the host of Tonight. In his five years as host, Paar had made the late night show an institution and set its format for all the hosts who would come after him. When Paar left, NBC had no thought, like there was with Steve Allen's departure, to try something different. Their only thought was to find somebody who could fill Jack Paar's shoes and maintain the show as "must watch" television. In fact, NBC already had the next host signed, but an inflexible ABC wouldn't let him out of his previous contract. So, a series of guest hosts filled the months on the freshly christened The Tonight Show until the new host could be introduced. Famous and familiar faces took turns behind the desk but none was as natural in the chair as Merv Griffin.

NBC executives were so impressed that they gave Merv Griffin his own hour block show to preempt The Tonight Show and keep him around in case Tonight's new host didn't make the grade. Going back in time, Merv Griffin had already been a familiar face with NBC as a game show host, starred in films for Warner Bros., played nightclubs, and started his career as a radio singer at the age of 19. While at KFRC in San Francisco, Merv Griffin saved his money to record a couple singles and the compiling debut album Songs of Merv Griffin released in 1946 on his own, one-off Panda Records.

Despite being a personally funded effort, the "album"—really, it's just four songs—has a professional veneer thanks to his connections at KFRC. Station band leader Lyle Bardo provides his full orchestral support to Merv Griffin's croon. Together, the songs have a cinema quality and a cinematic quality. It's a dreamy sound popular in Hollywood musicals of the 30s and 40s, and Bardo's arrangements paint the scenes of the art songs: a windy day with scattered leaves, waves on the beach. Rather than an artistic statement though, the album is more a calling card for Griffin. He's young, ambitious, an entrepreneur and a professional...who also sings quite well.

Here is the discography surrounding Merv Griffin's debut album:

Lullaby of the Leaves (1946 single)

Sand (1946 single)

Songs by Merv Griffin

"Falling in Love with Love" by Merv Griffin

"Sand" by Merv Griffin

Pass the Headphones!!

Regis Philbin - It's Time for Regis! (1968)

"Pennies from Heaven" by Regis Philbin

Concerning these many tour stops covering The Tonight Show (if you hadn't caught on yet,) Regis Philbin is the first to have no background in radio. His first job was in television—circa 1955—as a page for...Tonight and NBC. Regis went on to work as a local news anchor in San Diego for KOGO-TV, where in 1961 he got his first opportunity to host a talk show that was a nationally syndicated, short-lived and poorly reviewed replacement to The Steve Allen Show. After that was when Regis returned to Tonight to fill in as announcer for Hugh Downs. (Much later, he would take over for Hugh Downs again: this time in the Guinness Book of World Records for most time spent on air on network television.) Regis finally broke out becoming a household name in 1967 as the sidekick to Joey Bishop on The Joey Bishop Show. It was on one of these episodes when Regis was gifted the opportunity to sing "Pennies from Heaven" to his idol Bing Crosby. The next day after this impromptu, live television performance, he signed a record deal with Mercury Records leading to his 1968 debut album It's Time for Regis!

Regis sings what he knows and what he knows are songs from the Bing Crosby songbook. Despite the influence of his idol, Regis does not have a crooner's voice. It's higher pitched and better suited for faster tempos. His television experience and sense for the live audience make him less a Crosby impersonator, whose style was honed through the intimacy of radio and film, and more the inheritor of the vaudevillian tradition and performers like Al Jolson (especially audible on Southern-set songs like "Swanee" and "Mame" or Jolson classics like "Toot, Toot, Tootsie!") Throughout the whole album, Regis competes with the album's production. It's not that the production and Regis's voice are at odds (though their wills were,) but that the production is always in danger of outshining him. Helmed by Wrecking Crew veteran Steve Douglas, the album's sound runs on bass and brass and is bulwarked by a choral group; mixing nostalgic musical styles with a popular, buoyant maximalism. (Sometimes these qualities are juxtaposed in jarring ways as when, on "Swanee," a Motown intro suddenly gives way to minstrelsy banjos.) Douglas orchestrates to take the load of musical entertainment that Mercury and Douglas didn't trust Regis to deliver probably because he was untrained and inexperienced or because he wanted to be a crooner singing old popular songs in a time when they were no longer popular in a fashion that wasn't either. Regis actually performs well despite his limitations but he ends up on a record that floats toward the timeless past while being mercilessly pinned to the more dated sounds of 1968.

Nobody bought the record and nobody seemed to like it, including Regis. The negative reaction scared Regis from trying again (at least not for another thirty years,) and he stowed away the album as an embarrassment. But he treasured the experience, that made for a great story and a childhood dream fulfilled then put away.

Here is the discography surrounding Regis Philbin's debut album:

It's Time for Regis!

"Swanee" by Regis Philbin

Regis Philbin Singing to Bing Crosby on The Joey Bishop Show

Regis Philbin on Late Night with David Letterman

Pass the Headphones!!