All hail His Satanic Badness... one of the greatest entertainers of all time... Mr. Sammy Davis, Jr. There he is on my Video Bar.Sammy hams it up with an English showman named Bruce Forsyth. Sammy rocks the balls off of “For Once In My Life.” And, of course, Sammy’s flossin’ the bling-bling like it ain’t no thing-thing. So don’t playa-hate, luxuriate!
UPDATE (07/03/07): The clip with Sammy doing “For Once In My Life” is here.
Great find. Reminds me of the Mike Douglas Show.
ReplyDeleteCheck this out if you will.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSmX9ZLeFQw
Back in the 1970s, our family would spend a week at Lake Tahoe every July, and my aunts would take my brothers and I to see a dinner show. Thirty years ago this summer, we were lucky enough to see Sammy at the South Shore Room at Harrah's, which later I think was renamed "The Sammy Showroom." Awesome show - of everyone we saw there, the only one that came close was Tom Jones. And he wasn't half as cool as Sammy.
ReplyDeleteI have a Sammy Davis memory that also coincides with a favorite Richard Pryor memory. There was a time when Sammy had a late night talk show. Rich was frequent guest during the peak of the Funk Age - 1975. Anyway, it was obvious Sammy was big fan of Rich. He knew all the characters. And before Is It Something I Said? came out, Rich previewed Mudbone. Made my ass wanna hear the album. Minnie Riperton was a guest, as well. So Minnie gets introduced and she's hugging and kissing the guests. She gets to Rich and he grabs her and falls down on the couch with her - as if he's tonguing her down. He did the same to the next guest who was a male. Sammy's laughing but not his gratuitous laugh he often did.
ReplyDeleteOn another episode, the Fifth Dimension were the guests. As he introduced each member, he stopped at Florence LaRue (who I thought was much sexier than Marilyn McCoo) and said, "Looking gooooood!!" He knew he lost himself because he looked at the camera and said, "Just a little humor, darling" to his wife. Flo was looking good. Sexy tight dress that was especially flattering to her ample round brown chest.
Finally, Sammy was interviewed by Tony Brown in the mid-80s. And he wasn't that cheesing cooning Sammy that we despised. He straight up Black! I was surprised and dug him from then until his death.
Sammy's an underrated entertainer in terms of developing Black style. He had it. But like Michael, he got hung up in Paul Mooney's tag "The Illusion of Inclusion."
Good one, Dave! Hit me up sometime on the email.
Amazing clip, Bumpster. Amazing! As much TV as I watched in the '70s, I somehow slept on "The Mike Douglas Show."
ReplyDeleteSly was fucked up. I thought Ali was gonna smack him.
Jeff, I envy you seeing Sammy live. I'd give anything.
DeAnge! What's up? Thanks for commenting. I also slept on Sammy's late-night talk show. Hopefully, those will see the light of day on DVD.
Any way to catch up on vids from old posts? The current sidebar is all betty boop. Any way to catch the older picks from UBM-TV?
ReplyDeleteHey Jeff. In Sammy's case, I do provide the link to part 1 of the Bruce Forsyth show, which will lead you to the other YouTube clips. I'm trying to do that in each case (Grace Jones, Flip Wilson, etc.)
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, all of this stuff should be relatively easy to track down via the YouTube seach engine.