David Letterman and "Cats" Collection, 1985-2013
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- All credit (or blame) for this compilation goes to @TweetinThies and @TwelveParPod, who both planted the seed.
1. September 17, 1985. Dave opens the show by making up new lyrics to "Memory." The clip continues for a few more minutes because.
At this stage the lyrics consist only of "Midnight, and the kitties are sleeping."
2. September 18, 1985. Dave makes a brief reference to his singing debut the night before. Later in the act, he debuts the Top Ten list, and the band closes it with a few seconds of "Memory."
Also, you can hear the band playing a few bars of "Memory" in its opening theme as Dave enters onstage.
3. September 19, 1985. The second Top Ten list, and the band again closes it with "Memory." Dave likes the concept.
For the first 20 Top Ten lists that aired from September 18 to November 4, 1985, the band played "Memory" for 14 of them. Here are three from that period:
4. September 25, 1985.
5. October 22, 1985. Preceded by TV Guide's ad for the Tri-State special. And a couple of "hypmotized" moments.
6. November 4, 1985. More "hypmotized" moments.
Note: At the end of Clip #6, the joke that Dave threatened to tell again and again until it was overheard on buses, that's here:
The Prudhomme Joke Collection, Late night, Oct.-Nov. 1985.
• The Prudhomme Joke Col...
7. February 27, 1986. Five months later, Dave revises his singing career, still stuck with the opening line and nothing further.
Preceded by the Carson close voice/over.
8. November 20, 1986. A "Cats" promo, starring Chris Elliott and Gerard Mulligan.
Preceded by an actual "Cats" ad from a few years later.
9. May 21, 1987. A Tour of Hoover Dam remote aired on the last night the show was in Las Vegas. Towards the end of the piece, Dave adds more lyrics for the first time. The new version:
"Midnight, and the kitties are sleeping;
Downstairs in the basement, while birdies are cheeping."
10. June 22, 1989. Dave, Michael Keaton, and "Cats."
11. February 16, 1990. Dave, Ivana Trump, and "Cats."
12. June 18, 1991. Towards the end of a comedy bit called Guide to New York Tourists, a pre-recorded Dave sings.
Preceded by Paul's revised lyrics to Lovin' Spoonful's 1966 classic, "Summer in the City" (despite Paul sourcing it back to 1965).
Late Show:
13. August 30, 1993: Paul Newman's "Where the hell are the singing cats?"
14. September 10, 1993. Dave gives taped tour of the Sullivan Theater; a "Cats" character is outside, smoking. Also the Late Show debut of Kathleen Ankers as Helen, the Ill-Tempered Ticket Lady..
15. October 26, 1993. Roof-Cam, 1: "Cats" characters arrested on Broadway.
16. November 19, 1993. Dave thinks the show is over and taxis to "Cats."
The revised lyrics:
"Midnight, and the kitties are sleeping,
Downstairs by the fireplace, and birdies are cheep[ing]"
17. January 19, 1994. The "Cats" cast takes a curtain call.
18. August 15, 1994. Roof-Cam, 2: "Cats" characters on the garage roof. With Gerard Mulligan and Rick Scheckman.
19. September 22, 1994. Bill Murray directs the casts of "Miss Saigon," "Cats," and "Phantom of the Opera."
20. January 10, 1996. Dave invites a pedestrian onstage to be warmed up by characters from "Cats."
21. June 18, 1997. Roof-Cam, 3: Two "Cats" characters walk into Flashdancers.
22. April 23, 2008. Dave makes one more lyric revision:
"Midnight, and the kiddies are sleeping,
Downstairs by the furnace, while birdies are cheeping."
23. December 10, 2013. Brian Williams in "Cats" makeup.
This channel is f'in nuts. Not only finding all these segments, and painstakingly gunning for accuracy I suspect; but even locating and including show intros that are relevant to the topic ("Cats"), and throwing in a decent top 10 or two just because it works. Then putting all of that in chronological order. For real! I love OCD-ish high performers!
I live alone. :)
Holy nuts. You found the segment of backstage tour of the "newly renovated" Sullivan Theater - and psychically divined that there was a short cameo in it with some bum wearing a Cats outfit. Well dang blang it, I AM impressed now. (Okay. I already was.)
Thanks, Charles!
@@dongiller you don't have to ;)
Thanks to Dave, for decades now, every time Cats is mentioned I sing, Midnight and the kitties are sleeping. LOL
For the last 34 years, from time to time, I have found myself thinking "Midnight...and the kitties are sleeping...." thanks to this show.
I'm really looking forward to re-living this all over again. Thanks as always for your hard work.
Me too! I thought it was only me, as no one I know remembers that reference.
I remember it as "Midnight and the kitties are sleeping... all alone by the furnace."
Was the first thing I thought of today when Gary Bettman announced new time for Lake Tahoe NHL game
This is a gem, the first top ten list!
Every time I hear "Memory" from Cats being played, I sing Dave's version in my head. I was 13 when I the first clip live and have been doing it ever since.
Grabs you by the what?!
Thanks for all the work you put in to these.
I was a teen back than,so I only got to see Letterman during summer vacation.
Thank you so much for these old Letterman shows
I love when you include an intro.. gets you into the groove for what's to follow. Cheers!
Thanks! Both Twitter folks I credited had pointed me to someone’s You Tube clip of Dave’s first “Kitties.” It was cut up to show only him singing. To me, it was incoherent and left out all context. I think that’s what I tried to fix here. It makes this collection far longer than it perhaps needs to be (I got several complaints about that in the Meg Parsont 3-parter), but, to me, context is everything. Plus more for the Dave fans. :)
I love that opening theme. Such good memories
September 17, 1985
I was barely 14 years old, in the 8th grade and yet was plagued with knowledge that I was the only person in my school, among students, teachers, and administrators who knew that there is no word for "Dude" in Chinese. Indeed, I also was the only one who cared.
*Cue Wonder-Years-esque musical opening chords*
@@deme9873 Ha ha ha
Thank you for this. I was watching the really bad trailer to Cats the other night and this just popped up in my feed. Literal "Memories" .
All the kitties are sleeeeeeeping
Oh, this stuff is gold. Thanks for another collection.
Thanks for posting all this great content!
'meeeeedniiiightt....and the keeeties are sleeeeeping'
"..YOU'RE LOOSE..!!! ..YOU'RE LOOSE..!!! ..YOU'RE LOOSE..!!!" 😆
This is terrific! Thanks for compiling these
Thanks for posting this! Anything cats related is automatically hilarious!
Meeednight and the keeedies are sleeeping downstairs by the fuuurnace ( in the basement ) and the birdies are cheeeping. It took him a year to come up with a third line and twenty to come up with a fourth.
I could have sworn I saw Dave singing this, sitting at his desk, holding a blue card over his mouth. Must be another song he used to do.
😅
I am now searching for Doug Schwander's Miss America Pageant performance of "The Heat is On".
that was awesome , thank you for this channel.
i'm the guy yelling out shit around the 1:06:00 mark. everyone in the crowd thought he was talking to me, including the staffers, but apparently i was wrong. i'm glad i got a laugh, though.
Wow great timing on all the news publicity going on with the new Cats! July 21 2019
One of my favorite collections
Did I just witness the birth of the "Top Ten List" couched in a montage of "Cats" jokes?
Wow. The birth of the Top Ten list.
This is magnificent.
Took me 17 days for this one, but I took it in pretty small chunks. So much great stuff at once!
..after all these years, I still believe that THIS particular musical opening arrangement (including the night-time video of a taxi cab driving around in the middle of nowhere, NYC)....'R-O-C-K-S'..!!! 😎
Thank You! I've been wanting to see the dancing cat at 36:00 ever since I first saw it in 1991!
8:45 ... wow the birth of the top 10 list !!
Very funny stuff, thanks Don.
Ah, my hometown of Milwaukee, home of the original Top Ten list. We miss this!
I'd love to see a "Do we have time for this?" compilation... but considering how long it would be, I doubt you'd have time for that.
Yeah. Won’t happen. :)
The "David Letterman's Tri-State Area" TV Guide ad reminds me of Bill Wendell's open for it that said "....and almost nothing else you read about in TV Guide"
Back again...
I've been looking for clips of Dave making fun of the "singing cats." It was such natural bait for his derision.
12:00 Dean Paul Martin was the son of Dean Martin and had a singing group with Beach Boy Billy Hinsche and Desi Arnaz jr. (Dino, Desi, and Billy) scoring two top 30 hits 1965-2968. He was also a talented tennis player competing at Wimbledon’s Junior tournament. He starred in Tv show The Misfits of Science and several films. An avid pilot as well, he died in 1987 while flying an f4 phantom with the California Air National guard slamming into a mountainside at over 400 mph. RIP
1985 the year I got married, thank you for finding these gems, I appreciate your hard work!
Dave may have missed his true calling- Lounge Singer!!
am I insane or did the CATS cast do a top 10 list or 2 in the early/mid-90s as well? when the trailer dropped, that was one of the first things I thought of.... that and the Halloween my mom made me a costume based on Victoria, and it fell apart during the kindergarten Halloween party....
Great, the very first top ten list, eh?
Yeah. I’ve included it in other compilations.
Wonder if Letterman heard the late Sue Thompson 1965 song "Paper Tiger" which Sue said "Come on kitty, here kitty kitty kitty"??? 🤔
I'd love a compilation of Dave coming way too close to the camera. That would be a lot of clips, I think. :).
I hate to be that guy but I don't get the hyp-moe-tized joke. Is that from a song in cats?
Don, can you do a montage of Dave being Hyp-mo-tized!?
In time.
gluecement I dunno, it comes off as pretty racist these days
@@pauldzim What doesn’t?
Amazing work as always, Don Giller. Can I ask, do you have a database of Letterman segments or just a very good memory?
Thanks! Databases galore. I’d be lost without ‘em. :)
Why do I, seeing that this is up on this channel, get the impression that the Cats production is dead ;)
A random thought related to this collection (I think)....
I remember at least one episode where Dave kept singing some version of "Oklahoma" in a similar style of silliness. Did he do this more than once?
I found a couple of instances; there were probably more. June 6, 1989: Dave welcomed a new network affiliate, KTVY in Oklahoma City. Larry Bud then sings an off-key rendition of the song, and Dave follows through by imitating him for a few seconds.
And January 3, 1994 (Late Show): the monologue ends with Dave attempting to dance, and he walks first to an audience member, then to his desk while thenCBS Orchestra plays “Oklahoma!” Dave then begins singing the song with the band.
@@dongiller What I remember would have definitely been during the NBC years. I want to say that the one I remember was during a monologue, but I don't trust my memory from 30 minutes ago, much less 30 years.
Either way, great job as always with coming up with that info so quickly!!
Call me phlegmatic but I wouldn’t mind a whole lot getting a couple of tickets to that other installation of cats!
Look how full Lake Mead was.
Are we witnessing the birth of the top 10 in this video?
Nobody reads my descriptions.
What's weird is that I like the song more now
Edit: also it's now officially weirder to see young McCulkin than 30s McCulkin
I didn't think Kids Are People Too was still on the air in 1985.
40:15 = Paul Newman double fingerbang / "Where the hell are the singin' cats?"
Thanks, Don! PS - there's a Cats segment that you missed (and one I cannot find on youtube). "How Many Guys in Cat Suits Can Fit into a Coffee Shop?" Hilarious. 2000-09-12 (Chris Rock, Emmylou Harris).
It seemed too peripheral to include here.
"Mario Lanza" haha
I want to marry this channel and have its babies.
Don Giller 46:15 Who was that man that was playing on the Saxophone?
David Sanborn.
Whatever became of Steve Jordan, the original drummer?
Google is your friend.
Donz, Dave also sang the Cats song in his interview with Emilia Clarke in 2013.
Good to know!
57:07 Bill Murray
Where the rest of the howard stern collection? Been waiting for that one don!
This is a one-person operation. I’ll get to it on my time.
@@dongiller understandable. Still love every upload though! Don giller, we speak your name.
So that explains the headaches. :)
No Chinese word for dude? Go to know. 😅
Meats? Please.
Blo nee