This is a fascinating clip from The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson and it's from 10/03/1965. Not many of the shows from that period survived.
You may know this part already. When Johnny took over the show, it was an hour and 45 minutes every night and it started twice. They would start the show at 11:15 and then go to commercial around 11:28. At 11:30, that commercial break would end and they'd do a new opening, billboarding the guests again. This was because some local stations ran a 15-minute newscast at 11 PM and some had a half-hour. The two starts were so stations could join the broadcast at either time.
Originally, Johnny did his monologue at the start of the 11:15 segment but more and more, stations then were shifting to 30-minute newscasts so fewer and fewer of them were airing that labor-intensive bit of stand-up. Around early '65, Johnny decided the first fifteen minutes had to go so he could do his monologue for everyone to open the show. For a time, he just plain refused to do the first 15 minutes of the show, insisting he was sick and leaving it to Ed McMahon and the show's bandleader, who then was Skitch Henderson.
Eventually, Johnny won. NBC agreed to get all their stations lined-up to start at 11:30 but the "first fifteen" starring Ed and Skitch continued for several months until that happened. They'd play games, chat, sometimes interview one guest, all the time reassuring the audience that Johnny Carson would be along shortly. Some nights, it was pretty grim until he showed up.
This is an excerpt from the "first fifteen." Skitch seems to have been off that night and the bandleader seems to be someone named David. I do not recognize this man but he and Ed introduce a band number spotlighting the great trumpeter, Clark Terry. Terry played in the band for most of the sixties, leaving in 1972 when Johnny moved the show from New York to Southern California. This clip appears to be from a 1965 visit that the show paid to Hollywood but Mr. Terry came along to join what was probably a band made up mostly of L.A.-based musicians.
After he left The Tonight Show, Clark Terry continued to be one of the greats of the jazz trumpet…and I seem to recall him sitting in with the band in Burbank every now and then and offering up an amazing solo. He toured and did concerts and some people say he played on more jazz recordings of his era than any other trumpet player. He passed away last Saturday at the age of 94. Here he is doing what he did as well as anyone who's ever held one of those instruments…