Oldest known surviving color “Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” (Aug. 24, 1964) found, restored.

They wouldn't have been doing kinescopes for military bases as late as 1964, would they?

 

Could it have been (if it was taped in LA) a microwave chain feed to KNBC for this relatively infrequent mostly music episode? AT&T had microwave relays coast to coast then.
Then if this tape was recorded off air - and I think I see a bit of ghosting - on a BW videotape machine, it was not at KNBC but one of the others. Possibly unauthorized. Maybe someone was doing some personal time-shifting while they were on duty at their station.
But who said it was recorded in LA? It could have been recorded in NYC at one of the non-WNBC stations.

 

I'm wondering if they found the tape in the Hefner estate after he died 11 months ago. He was an LA based video hoarder with resources/connections in 1964.

 

The bandleader was, of course, Skitch Henderson, who conducted the tonight show orchestra before Doc.

Slightly OT, but stumbled on some 1960s Carson while channel switching the other day. He and McMahon were guesting on an episode of Here's Lucy. The plot of the show involved him doing his monologue. Early 1969, I think.

 

It's a minor point and likely irrelevant to the discussion of the tape's origin, but this program is from Friday August 21st, not August 24th of 1964. Carson mentions it being Friday in his monologue and contemporary TV listings confirm his guest lineup that Friday night.

 

There's a lot of ringing and horizontal luminance smear (and a nasty edge on the right side), which tells me it might be an off-air recording. I've seen weirder things on 2" before.

Hefner absolutely did own two 2" quad VTRs in his mansion during this era, but that would've been Chicago back then. I think Audio magazine did a pictorial spread (ahem) on the audio/video system that Hef had in the mid-to-late 1960s, and I can remember being stunned to see he had broadcast video recorders and a full-time staffer just to record stuff off the air for him. But they erased the tapes pretty much every week and he didn't keep that much in a permanent library (not until many years later). He also had a fairly in-depth library on motion picture film.

 

Wow I would LOVE finding some OTA stuff recorded from the 50s and 60s! (I thought VHS came out in 1977)

 

Re the Phil Linz harmonica incident, there is more to the story. NY got red hot after that and won the pennant, with the Linz incident widely credited. Berra got fired anyway after the season. The Yankees had won 14 pennants in 16 years, but did not win again until 1976.

 

It's possible that a facility that had a quad machine to make the recording would also have had a precision demodulator and that's how they made the recording (if it's truly off-air). So, FM quality directly to the magnetic track on the quad at 15 ips. Of course the transmission source would have had to have a high quality source, like a microwave relay or quad playback.

 

You qualify for an additional title here: Steve Hoffman, Video Detective

 

Doesn't seem like it's Carson's Tonight Show without him(or Doc).

 

The notes indicated it may have been aired on the 24th:

 

Dave Crossthwaite has said it was a 7.5ips low-band 2" B&W recording... but it still managed to record the colorburst signal, which is how he was able to regenerate correct color out of it on an AVR-1 VTR in playback. There have been past examples of "accidental" color when a B&W VTR had the bandwidth to record the colorburst signal, even though at the time it could only play back B&W.

 

Berra's replacement as the Yankees' manager for 1965 was Johnny Keane... who'd helmed the team (the St. Louis Cardinals) they'd faced in the 1964 World Series!

Late in the 1964 season, when it looked like St. Louis was out of the NL race, Cardinals owner Gussie Busch put out feelers to Leo Durocher to manage the team in '65. Keane got wind of this, and when the Yankees came calling, he jumped at the offer without letting Busch or the Cardinals know his plans. After the Cardinals won the Series, they staged a press conference to formally announce Keane's contract extension... only to have Keane hand Busch his resignation letter.

Ironically, the Cards ended up not hiring Durocher after all. Instead, the managerial job went to Red Schoendienst, who would lead the team to further pennants in 1967 and '68.

 

Where’d you find those notes? The information that part of a local newscast is on the start of the tape. If that newscast was in L.A. then the mystery of what coast this tape was made is completely solved. Why the audio is that good is anybody’s guess.

I’d love to see that newscast recording, along with the entire tape and commercials!

dan c

 

D'oh! Yes, LB was 7 1/2. I literally never recorded or played anything low band - it was just a curiosity to me, seeing the button on the control panel.
The clip specifically mentions off air recording, but I wonder if it's possible it was recorded from a regional microwave network. We used to share microwave feeds around the state, and I'd often see program feeds for transmission with local breaks, ID's, etc. from the other PBS stations.

 

The video description on Youtube.

 

Thanks, BeatleJWOL. I hadn't seen the note. However, I did check for guest lists on the 24th and none that I encountered (in two online newspaper archives) had this guest lineup on Monday, the 24th. That's not conclusive, of course, since the preponderance of TV listings for the program didn't identify any guests; just the network and local time/channel. Best of Carson re-runs began in January of 1965 and I searched a few months of those Saturday listings without finding a match in guests. No baseball in winter, of course, but I also don't think it's likely the program aired in Los Angeles or New York City on the 24th. One-day broadcast delays were more likely to occur in very small markets in the US and Canada.

I remember, as jtiner recalls, that we once got all of our Red Sox games in Bangor, Maine, on a microwave relay from Boston. So shared feeds offer another potential tape source.

Sound quality remains a mystery.

 

That was really a treat...thank you for posting that.

I'd really like to see/buy the whole hour. Love to see the Dorsey Band in 1964 in color!!

The quality seems excellent, and audio pretty great as well. I'm in agreement that this isnt an off the air recording. I would bet that this recording has something to do with the Dorsey Band and Frank Jr. Someone, maybe Frank Sr, wanted this preserved for posterity. Just a guess.

Does anyone know any plans to release this on DVD or as a Download? I'm first in line!

 

Of course not. You don't think they go through all this time and effort and money to actually let people see it and spend money to own it, do you?

 

Yea, I know. Gets me crazy......theres a MOUNTAIN of stuff thats been digitized but is just not for sale.
Like seasons 3-14 of "Knots Landing", which was one of the most popular shows on Television.

Or Seasons 3-5 of "The Big Valley".

 

I mastered at least two seasons of Knotts Landing for syndication myself back in the 1980s. There is a ton of stuff that's in the vaults and ready to go that, for reasons known only to the studios, are still not available for streaming, download, or home video.

 

Because of the one day delay-lag discrepancies of the guest lists in newspapers, someone could check the two dates in the LA Times, and some NYC paper. I am not sure if the NY Times carried decent TV listings in 1964. Only LA and NYC newspaper listings count for this. But the NY Times or other papers may have had a review of the episode the next day or the day after that.

Because of the sound quality, if those listings show this guest list was broadcast in NY on Aug 21 and in LA on Aug 24 (it is proved to be shown on Aug 24 in LA), is it possible that this episode was broadcast in NY live and recorded at NBC then, or recorded earlier on Fri Aug 21 and played for broadcast that night in NY and the East Coast network, and that original NBC tape was physically flown to LA to be played to the West Coast network at KNBC on Aug 24? (It's physically possible, and much cheaper than a microwave relay.) And someone at a different station recorded it off air from KNBC that night, Aug 24.

This looks like it was a more important than usual show and should have been shown on a Friday night in NYC, when NYC was still clearly more important than LA.

I think that the short bit showing Skitch Henderson at 5:18 looks like it is from a different, lesser, camera model, or not their best camera unit. It has poorer sync and is much grainier.

 

I don’t believe there were “lesser” color camera models at that time. RCA made the cameras, and there was one model to choose from. It’s likely a dimmer part of the studio so they upped the gain. Those cameras were light hogs.

Video is so easy now. It’s pretty amazing how complicated color broadcasting was back then and for years afterward.

dan c