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An excerpt from the January 2, 1963 Perry Como Show. Portions of this video have already appeared at least four times on YouTube. All of the available copies of this show are rooted to a source video of below par quality. I recently tried cleaning up such a source video in order to burn it to a DVD. The end result -- while still a long way from ideal -- was enough of an improvement to warrant posting it as a viewing option for those who've either never seen it or enjoyed it in the past. Incidentally, this program was originally broadcast in color, but unfortunately no color versions are known to still exist. So as not to make this an exact reproduction content-wise of other versions on YouTube I've tagged on a second brief performance from the same show. This second performance, of Bonfá and a saxophonist playing the tune “Desafinado“ in the relative style of Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz, has appeared elsewhere on YouTube and caused a bit of confusion. Some have wondered why the clip begins with a close-up shot of Getz and Byrd's “Jazz Samba“ album and then pans up to show two musicians performing who are neither Getz nor Byrd. The reason for this can only be understood by watching the entire segment from which the clip was excerpted. It was part of a salute to the best selling record albums of 1962. They would show, for instance, the cover of the album “Judy at Carnegie Hall“ and then have a singer -- in this case Sandy Stewart -- singing one of the songs Judy Garland sang on the album. Or show the cover of the Elvis Presley album “Blue Hawaii“ followed by Perry Como singing the album's title cut. So it should come as no surprise that after showing the Getz/Byrd “Jazz Samba“ LP cover the musicians shown performing a song from it would be neither Getz nor Byrd, both of whom had appeared on the Como show two-and-a-half months earlier, which I've also posted here. And what about the mystery sax player who accompanied Bonfá in the brief “Desafinado“ performance at 7:34? The other version of this clip on YouTube includes plenty of viewer comments speculating about the sax man's identity. Paul Gonsalves, Bud Shank and Quindio Teixeira have all been mentioned. Some insist it's actually Stan Getz. One even suggests, perhaps with tongue-in-cheek, it's Perry Como. I thought it looked like Boomie Richman, so I wrote to Boomie's son Barry to find out. He confirmed the sax man was indeed his father, which is now mentioned in the comments at the other video. Barry, an accomplished musician in his own right, has included a photo of his father with Perry Como on his website at Given Boomie's lengthy career performing with some of the greats in several genres of music which included plenty of TV work, one would expect there to be numerous videos floating around on YouTube which feature him. But so far, aside from the Como spot, I'm only aware of two other videos. One is a 1947 Dorsey appearance at -- or you can go directly to Boomie's solo at The other is a 1955 performance showing him playing tenor sax with a jazz band led by Leonard Bernstein at The first good view of Boomie can be seen near the end -- you can go directly to it at If anyone knows of any other YouTube videos featuring Boomie Richman please mention it in the comments. Enjoy the music!
