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N0KFQ > TODAY 09.02.16 16:45l 61 Lines 2954 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 84221_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Feb 9
Path: IW8PGT<F1OYP<IZ3LSV<IR1UAW<IQ5KG<I0OJJ<N6RME<N0KFQ
Sent: 160209/1545Z 84221@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
1964
America meets the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show
At approximately 8:12 p.m. Eastern time, Sunday, February 9,
1964, The Ed Sullivan Show returned from a commercial (for Anacin
pain reliever), and there was Ed Sullivan standing before a
restless crowd. He tried to begin his next introduction, but then
stopped and extended his arms in the universal sign for "Settle
Down." "Quiet!" he said with mock gravity, and the noise died
down just a little. Then he resumed: "Here's a very amusing
magician we saw in Europe and signed last summer_.Let's have a
nice hand for him_Fred Kaps!"
For the record, Fred Kaps proceeded to be quite charming and
funny over the next five minutes. In fact, Fred Kaps is revered
to this day by magicians around the world as the only three-time
Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques Grand Prix
winner. But Fred Kaps had the horrific bad luck on this day in
1964 to be the guest that followed the Beatles on Ed
Sullivan_possibly the hardest act to follow in the history of
show business.
It is estimated that 73 million Americans were watching that
night as the Beatles made their live U.S. television debut.
Roughly eight minutes before Fred Kaps took the stage, Sullivan
gave his now-famous intro, "Ladies and gentlemen_the Beatles!"
and after a few seconds of rapturous cheering from the audience,
the band kicked into "All My Lovin'." Fifty seconds in, the first
audience-reaction shot of the performance shows a teenage girl
beaming and possibly hyperventilating. Two minutes later, Paul is
singing another pretty, mid-tempo number: "Til There Was You,"
from the Broadway musical Music Man. There's screaming at the end
of every phrase in the lyrics, of course, but to view the
broadcast today, it seems driven more by anticipation than by the
relatively low-key performance itself. And then came "She Loves
You," and the place seems to explode. What followed was perhaps
the most important two minutes and 16 seconds of music ever
broadcast on American television_a sequence that still sends
chills down the spine almost half a century later.
The Beatles would return later in the show to perform "I Saw Her
Standing There" and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" as the audience
remained at the same fever pitch it had reached during "She Loves
You." This time it was Wells & the Four Fays, a troupe of comic
acrobats, who had to suffer what Fred Kaps had after the Beatles'
first set. Perhaps the only non-Beatle on Sullivan's stage that
night who did not consider the evening a total loss was the young
man from the Broadway cast of Oliver! who sang "I'd Do Anything"
as the Artful Dodger midway through the show. His name was Davy
Jones, and less than three years later, he'd star in a TV show of
his own that owed a rather significant debt to the hysteria that
began on this night in 1964: The Monkees.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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