Tonight Temps

Hey, remember that Tonight Show clip I posted featuring the band and Clark Terry? Matthew Harris, a follower of this blog, knows Dick Lieb, who was in the Tonight Show band back then. He wrote to Mr. Lieb and got back this response…

This clip is interesting in that it's from 1965 (this includes the years I was there) and while it does feature Clark Terry, I do not recognize the band! It is not the regular Tonight Show band and I'm curious as to what band it was?

I talked to Clark and his wife several weeks before he died and he called me back on New Year's Eve, which blew me away. I was very touched and honored that he would do this for me.

I think it's obvious. The Tonight Show was visiting Hollywood for a couple of weeks and NBC didn't want to spring to bring out the regular band. So they had someone — maybe Dave Grusin — assemble a group of L.A.-based musicians. Clark Terry came out to augment them or maybe he happened to be in Los Angeles for other reasons so they had him sit in.

By the way! It may be of some interest to note that for years when Johnny was based in New York but coming out here to do shows sometimes, the shows from Burbank were always aired on a one-day delay. His shows in N.Y. were broadcast the same day they were taped but those done out here were not. There was probably some now-outmoded tech reason for this having to do with transmitting the show back to New York so it could be telecast from there to the entire country.

That changed Tuesday, February 9, 1971. Carson had his show out here when a 6.6 earthquake hit at 6 AM. Johnny was awakened at the Sheraton Universal Hotel and moments later, he got a call from one of his writers, Pat McCormick, saying, "The God is Dead rally has been canceled!"

When it became apparent that the show could go on that night, Johnny insisted that NBC find some way to broadcast that evening's show the same evening so he could do a properly topical monologue. He opened with Pat's joke. The rest of the stay consisted of "same day" telecasts and the show they'd taped the previous evening was played a week later. Thereafter, any shows done from L.A. were aired the evening they were done.

The Joey Bishop Show, which aired opposite Carson for two years, was off the air by then. When it was on, it was done from L.A. and aired on a one-day delay. That may or may not have hastened its demise since Joey didn't do a lot of topical material…but it always seemed to be that having his competitor a day behind in referring to current events gave Johnny a big advantage. I think that also hurt David Letterman's shows when he decided to give himself and his staff a three-day weekend by taping Friday's show ahead.