Thread by @thedonz5

Another long-winded thread!

I'm preparing something that'll mean extremely little to the vast majority on the planet, but hopefully a lot to a very select few:
The comedy team of Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses.

Jay had grown up in Baltimore. He was related to one of my mom's closest friends, which led her to babysat him in the '40s. By the mid-'60s, Jay and Tom had been performing regularly at The Cellar Door in D.C.

It was around this time when the two of them played me a reel-to-reel recording of one of their sets.

They appeared on a few talk shows, and I recorded some of them off the air onto my own reel-to-reels.

Then, in c. 1971, they abandoned their stand-up career and moved to L.A. to become tv writers, landing jobs with Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett. They became quite successful.

And they wrote for MTM on her short-lived "Mary" show in 1978, when they first got to work with Dave and @Merrillmarkoe.

(Merrill also worked with them on the series "Open All Night" in the Fall of '81, which included a cameo with Dave.)

So it was on September 10, 1982, when Patchett and Tarses guested on Late Night. Since they all knew each other from the past, there was a unique comfort level. The show would air ten days later.

They were in NYC holding auditions for their upcoming series "Buffalo Bill," starring Dabney Coleman. The show would premiere the following June.

In a few years Tom and Jay would split apart over career disputes. Tom would create "Alf" while Jay's interests led him to create "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd."

I had intended to upload the LN appearance only, but then I realized I should also include those talk-show stand-ups I had recorded five decades earlier.

I dug out the tape yesterday and digitized it last night. It was at double the recording speed on the left channel with other "stuff" going on on the right.

Using the defunct audio editing application Peak, I slowed them down by half, extracted the channel I wanted and created new files in full mono. Then finally got to listen to these recordings for the first time in over half a century.

The first is from The Merv Griffin Show. Unlike everything about me, I didn't document the recording date at the time. When I catalogued all my reel-to-reels in SF in 1977-78, I wrote down "circa 1967?"

But tonight I found the exact date: Merv introduced the duo and mentioned that they began a stint at the "Plaza 9" "yesterday."

That's all I needed. I dug out my New Yorker DVD collection and began with 1967.

Each issue begins with columns of entertainment announcements around the city -- Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, jazz clubs, and cabarets. "Plaza 9" was the first in the "cabaret" section.

The four January issues yielded nothing. But February came, and there they were, premiering at Plaza 9 on February 6, 1967. Which gave me the Merv Griffin date: February 7, 1967.

The other stand-up segment is likewise undated. All I had written down was that it was The Tonight Show, with George Carlin guest-hosting. I also recorded on that same show Buddy Rich's "West Side Story" medley.

But the broadcast date for this one still eludes me. Nothing in the Wikipedia TS roster. I emailed Carson Entertainment last night for help. No reply yet.

So it may go as "undated" for now, though likely sometime in 1967. Maybe '68.

The reason for doing this: Jay's daughter Jamie passed away on Monday. She had become a giant in the entertainment world, the first woman to become ABC's president.

So this is the closest I have to honor her. In the 1982 LN interview, Jay wishes his son Matt a happy birthday, but here's no mention of Jamie.

Hopefully an upload in a couple days. (end)

In my haste, among other typos, I incorrectly gave the LN date. They appeared on September 20, not 10, 1982. The show aired on September 30.