He was a cultural TV icon best known for introducing Elvis and the Beatles, but Ed Sullivan had a much deeper effect on American music and culture than most ever realized. For twenty-three years, tens of millions of people gathered around the television to see what new and different acts he might feature on his […]
Long before HBO turned Sunday night into TV-monoculture ground zero, there was Ed Sullivan. Born in Harlem and raised in Port Chester, New York, the sportswriter, syndicated columnist and radio-program personality was tapped by CBS to host a weekly variety show for the television network. The master of ceremonies had a few ideas about what […]
Watching Sunday Best is a bittersweet experience. Mostly because so many of the people featured in this brilliant Netflix documentary are no longer with us, including director Sacha Jenkins, who passed away in May of this year. The finished product is a beautiful special that pays homage to the wonderful legacy of Ed Sullivan and the legendary artists he showcased. Whether it’s Nat King […]
As the opening credits of the documentary “Sunday Best” roll, Billy Preston in a killer chartreuse suit takes to “The Ed Sullivan Show” stage. Ray Charles pounds the keyboards and brass players ready to enter a sped-up version of “Agent Double-O-Soul.” From the get-go, Sacha Jenkins’s film about the variety show trailblazer Ed Sullivan and […]
On July 21, Netflix debuted Sunday Best, a documentary about The Ed Sullivan Show—the longest-running variety show in U.S. broadcast history—and how it featured Black American performers at a time when discrimination was still rampant in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional in 1954, and the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, the documentary highlights […]
Ed Sullivan, the legendary TV host whose eponymous variety show helped launch Elvis Presley and the Beatles to superstardom, was one of the key figures in the early evolution of rock & roll. Before American Bandstand‘s Dick Clark and Soul Train‘s Don Cornelius later set the standard for youth-oriented music programs, Sullivan was America’s first oldest teenager. He quietly helped change television, music […]
Since 2020, The Ed Sullivan Show has found an entirely new audience online where its collection of celebrated TV moments has amassed more than two and a half billion views across YouTube, Facebook, and Apple Music. Now, The Ed Sullivan Show has reached another milestone in its celebrated history: It’s surpassed one million subscribers on its popular […]
Back in 2014 when fans celebrated the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ first televised performance in America, I asked my father for his reflections. What it was like to watch the four members perform live, on TV, in 1964? He was only eight years old at the time, but distinctly remembers the event. “What we […]
Since the dawn of television, music has seamlessly used the medium to connect with new audiences. Whether it was on talk shows or variety formats such as The Milton Berle Show, The Dean Martin Show, or The Johnny Cash Show (and, thankfully, the music was usually far more exciting than the programme titles), or in serialised productions like The Adventures […]
It’s hard to believe that Creedence Clearwater Revival was only together for a few short years. They released some of the most enduring music of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Songs like “Down on the Corner,” “Proud Mary,” “Born on the Bayou,” and “Fortunate Son” assured that they would be forever enshrined in the classic rock […]