Displaying items by tag: red skelton

Thursday, 26 April 2018 14:24

Trash to Treasure

SARATOGA SPRINGS – Garage sales. Flea markets. Estate sales. Tony Izzo has rummaged through the past on a scavenger hunt to uncover history for as long as he can remember.

“I go to several of them a week and collecting things since I was a kid,” says the city resident, who works by day as a local attorney. “I especially enjoy collecting audio, and there is a lot of audio history out there - things that sat in someone’s attic or garage - but the problem is when people find this sort of stuff they can’t find anything to play it on, so they throw them out without knowing what they are.”

At one local sale he came upon a slew of boxes filled with audio tapes with no idea what they contained. “Nobody was paying much attention to them. I ended up buying five or six boxes and only paid a few dollars a box,” he recalls. “There were hundreds of tapes - 90 percent of them were re-recordings of commercial albums, but I learned there were also tapes from the estate of a man who was a local radio broadcaster and his collection had things he had accumulated throughout his career.”

The broadcaster was Herb Sabin of the radio station WKAJ AM 900, which was located on West Avenue in Saratoga Springs. Several hours’ worth of tapes revealed a local historical goldmine.

In the mid-1970s Saratoga Race Course hosted a series of 10-day events during consecutive summers in advance of the racing meet. The festival, called the Saratoga Fair, featured art exhibits and parades, firework shows, live animals, a children’s petting zoo, and nightly performances by some of the biggest entertainers of the day.

“The Saratoga Fair was a significant event in the 1970s for NYRA and for this city,” Izzo says. “I went to a number of them with my folks. For a few bucks you had access to the fair grounds and a major headline entertainer each night.”

A bandstand erected on the dirt track staged appearances by Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, and The Smothers Brothers; Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and O.J. Simpson came from the sports world to sign autographs. Each of the festivals drew more than a quarter of a million people over the 10-day gathering.

Sabin’s tapes feature the broadcaster’s rough-cut interviews with dozens of fair-goers, celebrities and local officials. George Bolster talks about his collection of historic Saratoga photographs, Tom McTygue speaks of the festival as being “a real boost for Saratoga,” Edward Villella, introduced by Sabin as “one of the most in-demand dancers in ballet,” is interviewed about the New York City Ballet’s summer season. Bob Hope talks about sustaining patriotism in the era of Watergate, cracks a few jokes about his stay at the Gideon Putnam hotel, and reminisces about his early days of struggle in Chicago during the 1920s.

“To me this is a very comprehensive and thorough audio history of this event that has not been very well documented. Just to hear the sounds of that event. I’m very pleased it’s preserved, instead of it just being thrown away in the trash,” Izzo says.

There are also interviews with singer Donna Fargo – who then had recently had a hit with the song "The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA," “Tonight” show bandleader Skitch Henderson, and excerpts from Red Skelton’s live stage show.

Bandleader Mercer Ellington charmingly talks about performing the songbook of his father, Duke Ellington: “mostly the standards, like ‘A Train,’ things that are easily identifiable – we’re not going to get far out and play any modern jazz or anything of that sort. We’re going to play the favorites for the people and the things they know him best for.”

The 1974 and 1975 festivals drew 254,000 and 293,000 people, respectively, and were co-sponsored by NYRA and Harry M. Stevens Inc. – who collectively invested about $1 million in the project each of the years. Joe Dalton, executive vice president of the Greater Saratoga Chamber of Commerce estimated the annual fair brought in to the local community about $3 million. But NYRA and the Stevens company bowed out after two years, citing a loss of $1.3 million. The 1976 fair was sponsored by a non-profit organization comprised of local residents and business owners. That season, too, resulted in a financial loss and in January 1977, the group announced the fair would be no more. Whether it was ultimately financial concerns, the trampled grounds of the race course in advance of the summer meet, or complaints from other area venues that ultimately doomed the fair isn’t clear, but after a three-year run it ceased after the Bicentennial Summer of 1976.

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Other Voices, Other Rooms

Through his foraging, Izzo has uncovered a plethora of additional raw goodies on reel-to-reel and cassette tape. Whether they were publicly broadcast, or played once and disposed of, is not known. Among his collection are backstage interviews with Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey dating to 1956, and Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett in 1960; Aaron Copland and Helen Hayes in conversation at Skidmore College; talks with Lloyd Bridges - accompanied by his pre-teen son Jeff Bridges, writers Joseph Heller and Frank Sullivan in Saratoga Springs, musician Count Basie in Glens Falls, and actress Jayne Mansfield who talks about her role in a production of “Nature’s Way” in the 1960s as well as how she is required to film two versions of her movies – one for open-minded European audiences, and one for the more conservative American market.

There is also a reel-to-reel tape Izzo possesses of a high-quality live Arlo Guthrie appearance in October 1975 at the Great Saratoga Music Hall, which stood at 106 Spring St. and has long since been converted to condominium apartments. The tape depicts stage announcements by Lena Spencer – the co-founder of Caffe Lena - introducing Guthrie and announcing upcoming concerts at the hall by Tom Paxton and Don McLean.

Guthrie meanwhile is heard joyfully interacting with the audience throughout his show and performing Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright,” Woody Guthrie’s “Talking Dust Bowl Blues,” “Do Re Mi,” and “This Land Is Your Land,” and a series of tunes carved from the great American songbook -“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Oh Mary Don't You Weep,” and “Goodnight Irene,” among them.

“Here’s what I learned,” Izzo says, “the lesson is if you come across something and don’t have the means to play it – think twice before throwing it away. It may be something significant. You just never know what you’re going to find.”

A partial list of entertainers performing at the Saratoga Fair.

1974 – Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, Red Skelton, Glen Campbell, Tony Orlando & Dawn, The Smothers Brothers, Mac Davis, Anne Murray, Willie Mays, O.J. Simpson. Admission: $2 adults, $1 kids. Parking: $1.

1975 – Olivia Newton John, Lynn Anderson, Mac Davis, B.J. Thomas, Red Skelton, Tanya Tucker, Roger Miller, the Mills Brothers, Bob Hope, Hudson Bros. Sports clinic, Q&A session with Mickey Mantle, Dave DeBusschere, Craig Morton, Ralph Kiner, Emerson Boozer. Admission: $3 adults, $1.50 kids. Parking: $1.

1976 – Johnny Cash, Fifth Dimension, Tanya Tucker, Donna Fargo, Anson Williams of Happy Days, Charlie Rich, Pat Boone Family. Tickets: $3.50 adults, $1.50 kids. Parking: $1.  

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Published in Neighborhood Buzz

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