The Secret Soul Jazz of Ozzie & Harriet

[JSngry]

full-length version gets less soul-jazzy and is ruined by somebody "cleaning it up".

This was the doing of Jimmy Haskell, who was at Imperial Records with The Irrepressible Ricky, so that could have been damn knows who playing that!

However, check this out, probably not by Jimmy Haskell (but maybe so, or maybe Ernie Freeman, hello Imperial Records), I'm pretty sure (and also not Soul Jazz):

 

 

[Dave James]

Jimmie Haskell, the music director for the Ozzie & Harriet television show, was awarded Grammys for his arrangements of Ode to Billie Joe (Bobbie Gentry), Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon and Garfunkel), and If You Leave Me Now (Chicago). 

[JSngry]

By cleaned up, I was referring to what the YouTube guy did to the audio. What kind of ears hears that as an improvement?

What's really freaky, though, is that it appears that they used this ending on some kind of syndication package. I got a Roku channel that's got 320 episodes of episodes (8 seasons!), some damn near totally intact with commercials (another thread, perhaps). So it's really disorienting to watch an episode from 1954 or so, where everything is so totally, organically "whitebread" and then all of a sudden, here comes Soul Jazz piano to roll us on outta there.

Freaky!

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

So it's really disorienting to watch an episode from 1954 or so, where everything is so totally, organically "whitebread" and then all of a sudden, here comes Soul Jazz piano to roll us on outta there.

If this series ran up to 1963 then well before 1963 someone among the bigwigs behind the scenes must have gotten wind of the fact that soul jazz sold well even outside the community on the "wrong side of the tracks". So not that big a surprise as they may well have figured that soul jazz-tinged clips might be an asset.

Makes me wonder when someone, then, will do a thread on that the Ozzie Nelson big band DID belong up there after all among the greats of the (white) big bands of the swing era ... (The occasional recordings by the band did swing very well but overall ... ho hum ...)

[JSngry]

The series actually ran through 1966! Dave & Ricky each got married (as did Wally, iirc), and Dave, at least, had kids. That show ran a looooong toime!

I suspect they added that ending to the older episodes for the syndication package b/c by then (whenever that was), The Irrepressible Ricky was now a Teen Idol, so episodes where he was a kid (literally!) needed some kind of a then-"real time" connect less the people forget.

[Dave James]