Jack Sheldon (1931 - 2019 ) was a jazz trumpet player who came out of the West Coast jazz scene in the 1950's. He played and led his own groups and orchestras and has appeared and toured with some of the all-time greats in jazz. He also played on several pop recordings and film soundtracks. However, it is his voice that is best known to those who watched the "Schoolhouse Rock" educational series on television. (Jack was the voice of the congressional bill in one cartoon, singing "I'm only a bill".) In the sixties, Jack ventured into stand-up comedy and later starred in his own situation comedy program on CBS-TV-"Run, Buddy, Run".
This rare clip is a good example of Jack's talent as a stand-up comedian. The performance is from a TV pilot aired in 1964 on the CBS Network. The program was called "The Nut House". It was produced by Jay Ward and Bill Scott (of "Rocky & Bullwinkle" fame), but never made it as a regular series. The program was pre-recorded on video tape and aired for one hour. The night the program aired, I recorded much of the sound track on reel-to-reel tape (no home VCR's in those days). Several years later, a kinescope recording of portions of the video tape was made available on a VHS cassette by a mail order house that marketed public-domain material. Fortunately, this routine of Jack's was included in that VHS issue.
The routine Jack performed on the program was one he had recorded the year before on a stand-up comedy record album. It's about hunting with a falcon-a very unlikely subject for a comedy bit.
Not until I obtained the VHS copy of the kinescope recording did I learn that one minute and thirteen seconds of the routine was cut from the telecast, possibly because of time constraints, but perhaps because of CBS Standards and Practices.
Jack appeared in other sketches on this "nutty" program. He appears as a guitar player in one I posted at:
www.youtube.com...
Another sketch in this program featured Jack as a percussionist who, because he lost his first set of cymbals, had his next pair permanently fused to his hands. Apparently, only my audio recording of that one survives, because it was not included in the VHS release.
15 окт 2024
