Continuing our Free-form week of music on the Roundtable, I've been slowly digging through a collection of tapes I got in several years ago which featured a lot of early live television variety shows. This one, a live performance featuring the Everly Brothers, comes from a popular variety show at the time, The Big Record, hosted by Patti Page, herself a pop icon of the early/mid-fifties. It was broadcast on February 5, 1958 and features the Everly's doing their first hit, Wake Up Little Suzie.

I'm not sure if this recording has ever been made available or even if a film of the TV show exists. Like a lot of material from the 1950's, Videotape was only in the development stages so very little was actually preserved in that form. Most of what was preserved were filmed versions, or Kinescopes of the shows with typically terrible sound. That's not the case with this tape, as you'll find out when you hit Play.

I'll see what else I can dig up this week that's equally obscure. Stay tuned.