It is amazing that this clip exists. As you may know, NBC destroyed all the tapes of the first decade and a half ofThe Tonight Show. What little exists of Johnny Carson's early years of that program is mostly grainy, eighth-generation black-and-white snippets. But here, miraculously, we have almost eight minutes from September 1, 1964…and in full color.
It's a segment with Stan Zabka, a musician who had worked as the Associate Director of The Tonight Show. Apparently, because of that job, Mr. Zabka was able to get his mitts on a copy of either the whole show or just his segment on 2" videotape and that's how this survived when all else was lost. So here's your chance to see what the program looked like in 1964, just shy of Carson's second anniversary as host. Thanks to Kevin Segura for letting me know about this little treasure.