In rock ‘n’ roll’s early days, Hollywood discovered they could package a bunch of musical performances and weave them in between a flimsy plotline. Teenagers lined up and paid their money to watch the current chart-toppers sing and play. That concept changed in 1964. The T.A.M.I. Show featured 12 of the hottest musical acts appearing live in front of a crowd of rabid teens in the Santa Monica (California) Civic Auditorium. Jan & Dean, Chuck Berry, Gerry and The Pacemakers, The Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Lesley Gore, The Beach Boys, Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas, The Supremes, The Barbarians, James Brown and The Famous Flames, and The Rolling Stones all performed live.
Videos by American Songwriter
Theaters showed the two hours of nearly nonstop music across the country beginning in November 1964. After its theater run ended, it was occasionally shown on television and disappeared for decades. Before the official home video release of the concert in 2010, bootlegs were widely circulated, including different lineups and sequencing. More times than not, tapes did not include The Beach Boys’ segment.
Electronovision
The show was captured using a new technology with higher resolution than standard television cameras. Producers transferred the black and white footage to 35mm film and captured the audio live to mono. What you see (and hear) is what you get. There were no video outtakes or extra audio tracks to fix after the fact. The only part of the film that strayed from that formula was the intro, which featured 16mm clips of the artists arriving at the venue in handheld format. All of the performers were on hand for the filming, something the director Steve Binder emphasized by having them all appear on stage at the end of each act.
Electronovision was the brainchild of Bill Sargent, the T.A.M.I. Show’s executive producer. The former U.S. Navy engineer started a pay-TV home entertainment company, followed by subscription television, offering closed-circuit broadcasts of sporting events to theaters. The 525-line resolution of standard television cameras seemed limited to Sargent, who upped it to 880. The first use of the technology was to capture the wildly successful 1964 Broadway stage production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton and share it with movie theaters. The next project was to put together a concert event. The result was the T.A.M.I Show.
They’re comin’ from all over the world
Hey, everybody, see ’em arrivin’
The greatest stars you’ll ever see
Some are flyin’, and some are drivin’
From Liverpool to Tennessee
Teenage Awards Music International
T.A.M.I. was designed as a nonprofit organization to produce concerts and award ceremonies to generate money for music scholarships and programs to benefit teenagers worldwide. Sargent set out to round up talent for the show, securing Gerry and The Pacemakers and Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas through manager Brian Epstein. Both acts were on tour in the U.S. and came as a package deal. Sargent then approached Motown and got a similar grouping of acts, including Marvin Gaye, The Miracles, and The Supremes. The Four Seasons wanted too much money ($45,000). The producers signed James Brown for $15,000, and Gerry and The Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas, and The Rolling Stones for $25,000.
Jan & Dean hosted the festivities, and P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri wrote the theme song to play over the film’s opening credits. The song mistakenly mentions The Rolling Stones as being from Liverpool. The version issued by Jan & Dean as a single in 1965 corrected the error, substituting “London town.” Movie attendees were encouraged to vote using ballots distributed at theaters with the plan of airing future award shows. None of them ever came to fruition.
Chuck Berry’s checkin’ in from St. Lou
He’s gonna sing “Maybellene” and “Memphis” too
The representative from New York City
Is Lesley Gore, now, she sure looks pretty
Integration
A 57-day filibuster delayed, but couldn’t stop, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The end of legal segregation was here at last. Half of the stars of the T.A.M.I. Show were African American. It was an accurate reflection of teenage popular music. Represented were British invaders, Motown hipsters, Southern soul vibes, East Coast “girl group” sounds, West Coast surfing grooves, and a ’50s rocker.
Don’t forget the Motor City sounds of the day
The Baby Lovin’ Supremes and Marvin Gaye
The king of the blues, soulful James Brown
The Beach Boys singin’ now, “I Get Around”
Yeah, get around, round, round, I get around
Soul Brother No. 1
James Brown and The Famous Flames (Bobby Bennett, Lloyd Stallworth, and Bobby Byrd) were unhappy about performing before The Rolling Stones. Drummer Melvin Parker, bassist Bernard Odum, organist Lucas “Fats” Gonder, guitarist Les Buie, saxophonist Nat Jones, and longtime “capeman” Danny Ray pulled out all the stops as they tore through a set of hits. Movie director Steve Binder was informed the day before the shoot of Brown’s decision not to rehearse, so he had no prior knowledge of what moves the singer would execute. The hardest working man in show business vowed to make The Rolling Stones wish they’d never come to America. He pulled out every stop.
Those bad-lookin’ guys with the moppy long hair
The Rolling Stones from Londontown are bound to be there
Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J., too
They’re all gonna be here to sing for you
The Stones
After The Rolling Stones closed the show, Brown shook their hands and congratulated them. Seven days later, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, and band manager Andrew Loog Oldham went to The Apollo Theater to see Brown perform. He invited them onstage to take a bow, which The Rolling Stones took to mean there were no hard feelings.
The Beach Boys
When Hamlet was captured and shared with movie theaters, Richard Burton required as part of his agreement all of the film copies be removed from circulation after the movie theater run concluded. Beach Boys manager Murry Wilson followed the same approach and agreed to the band’s participation as long as their segment was not included in all future broadcasts of the show. Most bootlegged copies circulated in the coming decades did not include their part.
What Happened Next?
Binder went on to direct Elvis, Elvis Presley’s 1968 television comeback special. Electronovision went out of business the year after the T.A.M.I. Show, but Sargent revived the concept a decade later and had success with James Whitmore’s one-man show Give ’em Hell, Harry!, a biographical play based on the life of U.S. President Harry S. Truman. The movie concept would be revisited with Monterey Pop by D.A. Pennebaker and Woodstock by Michael Wadleigh. In 1980, The Police released the song “When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around” which included the lines:
Turn on my VCR
Same one I’ve had for years
James Brown on The T.A.M.I. Show
Same tape I’ve had for years
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Photo by Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
