Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for March 17th

An Ed Sullivan debut -- An instrumental hits No. 1 (which is a kind of rarity) -- Truly legendary singer's birthday...

3/17/1968 (48 years ago today) - It's the tail-end of the British Invasion (and, actually, these guys are from Australia) as The Bee Gees make their U.S. television debut on (where else) "The Ed Sullivan Show" performing "Words". Lucille Ball and George Hamilton also appear on the show. Sufficiently weird, though we admit to liking alot of the Bee Gees singles pre-"Saturday Night Fever", what can we tell you...

3/17/1973 (43 years ago today) - Classic movie scene results in a massive hit: the banjo pickin' yee-haw-inducin' instrumental "Dueling Banjos" (taken from the film "Deliverance") by Eric Weissberg starts a three week run at No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart. Probably the only upbeat three-minute sequence in what was really a dark and twisted movie, this was the first of two instrumentals to go to the top of chart this year -- Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein" hits No. 1 in April.

3/17/1919 - Born on this day singer Nat King Cole, one of the all-time greats (and my Mom's hands-down favorite vocalist). Nathaniel Adams Cole first came to prominence as a jazz pianist who gradually started using that fantastic soft baritone voice to develop into a major musical force, including becoming the first African-American host of a national TV variety series -- "The Nat King Cole" show got the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, Peggy Lee, Eartha Kitt, and more to appear for union scale or no pay at all in order to help the program save money and stay on the air. In fact, though, it was Nat himself who pulled the plug on the show in December 1957 due to a lack of commercial sponsorship which led him to quip "Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark". Also did albums in Spanish and acted in many films and TV shows, Nat was genuinely an American pioneer and probably taken for granted now that we think about it...

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"Love is more than just a game for two...", xoxo!