[quote name=\'davemackey\' date=\'Jun 20 2005, 03:49 AM\']Tommy Oliver first came to prominence when he arranged and conducted the hit song "Johnny Get Angry" for the singer Joannie Sommers. There's an instrumental break with kazoos in the middle and you can just imagine some of the guys who played with TO in the 80's doing that kind of stuff on "Face The Music".
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Nicely researched! And while Joanie Sommers only had that one hit, her voice was one of the most heard up and down the radio dial in the 1960s. She was the voice for countless Pepsi-Cola singing commercials. "Now it's Pepsi. for those who think young".
A comment on Face the Music. Producer Ray Horl was driven to drink (it was walking distance) by the backstage insane antics of Executive Producer Sandy Frank. The best thing about my contestant appearance on that show was watching "the man" in his purple velvet suit rant and rave... in front of the contestants.
Sandy's ego and antics are legendary in the world of television syndication. So much so that NATPE released a video tape about the history of the business and it's most colorful characters that includes the well known legend about Sandy needing to keep an appointment with a TV programmer at a station in or near Ohio. The story goes that he got aboard the only flight scheduled to leave New York early enough to keep the appointment; it was a non-stop, coast to coast flight. Ray forced the plane down in the city of his appointment by feigning a heart attack 30,000 feet over the approximate location the TV station and telling the crew that his cardiologist was in that city.
He made the appointment. He denies the story to this day. At least two people I've met who worked for Sandy say they have zero doubt that it's true.
Television game shows: show business only one notch above the circus!
Randy
tvrandywest.com
