Okay, where is this from? The fine chanteuse Shelly Goldstein sent me this link to Sammy Davis singing "If I Were a Rich Man" on some variety show, supposedly around 1969.
Point of interest: The original production of Fiddler on the Roof was still running on Broadway in 1969. It didn't close until 1972. There's usually a "grand rights" restriction on the usage of show tunes like this. You can't present them in anything resembling the context of the show without special permission from the producers of the show and that is rarely given while the show is still in first run. Right now, you could put on a ball gown and go on The Tonight Show and sing "Defying Gravity" and all you have to do is pay the royalty or have someone pay the royalty to Stephen Schwartz and the producers of Wicked. But you can't paint yourself green, put on a witch outfit and go up on a hidden elevator while singing it without a special o.k. because when you do it that way, you're doing a scene from that show.
So I want to know where this number was performed. I was thinking Sonny & Cher, partly because of the weird premise and partly because of the bad audience sweetening but they didn't go on until '71. Maybe it isn't '69 then. I also want to know if the producers of Fiddler on the Roof blessed it or were outraged or what.
Not that it's bad. Sammy was a great performer and his expressed desire to do a Black company of Fiddler was not as ridiculous as some might think. The show was very popular — and culturally relevant — overseas with a Japanese cast…so why not Black? And Sammy was, after all, half Jewish.
So…anyone know anything about this?