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!!
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