Thanks for joining me on a trip down what Robin Williams always referred to as Amnesia Lane via the half-hour episodes of my father’s distance-learning TV shows Man and His Music and Pop Music, U.S.A., the former of which aired 50 years ago on public television in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dad’s in full performance mode here, singing “You Are My Sunshine” and other songs from his adolescence (in the picture, Dad’s the second from the right in the barbershop quartet), backed by a quartet of colleagues from the University of Cincinnati and the city’s vibrant jazz scene.  The overarching structure for this episode features several allusions to The Tonight Show, hosted at the time (and for over 30 years) by the comedian Johnny Carson (the same show now hosted by Jimmy Fallon).  The references most folks at the time would have caught, Carson’s show being as popular as it was, include drummer Larry Brown acting as studio sidekick Ed McMachon, who began each show with a prolonged “Here’s Johnny!”; the fact that this episode was recorded in front of what would have been called at the time a “studio audience,” small though it was; and Dad mimicking Carson’s trademark golf swing, which he usually did at the end of his opening monologue.

I hope you enjoy “Musical Designs in Western Culture.”