Was it this show?

Hi fivefids,
I hope you didn't think I was being too harsh towards you or anyone in my previous post, but on occasion some people tend to post clips without really fully understanding the clip in the context of the times it was produced in, and then subsequently attempt to shred it to bits! I understand where you are coming from and what you are saying...

Some further thoughts...
In a era with such a mindset heavily biased against older people when most guys pushing Seventy would have been considered really far too old and in serious need of retirement (not like now with the likes of Mick Jagger for instance!)... Bing was still doing what he always did as an entertainer, even if it meant covering some Beatles. He sure didn't have to do it, but he did and I give him props for being courageous!

Speaking of Bing and Beatles, around this time Bing put out a generally panned album titled "HEY JUDE, HEY BING!". On this album he performs a few Beatles songs along with a couple of others tossed in for good measure! As for the intellectual appeal of the Beatles, you are right, and hence this is why I think their appeal was fairly universal, even inviting talent to cover their songs that fell outside the ages one might normally asscoiate with a youth oriented pop music driven culture.

Speaking of other established middle age and beyond artists covering Beatles and other contemporary pop, Sinatra did cover quite a bit of stuff like that on several of his albums from the mid-Sixties well into the mid Seventies, think how many times the Beatles song "Something" has been covered by many easy artists, even by Andy Williams too! Not the least bit uncommon for Peggy Lee to cover such stuff, and the list could go on and on!

As for long established easy artists still around now and doing similar moves, it is done but so infrequently as to be considered a novelty, such as when Pat Boone released a metal album several years ago, or back in the late Nineties when lounge music was all the rage you had people like Steve and Eddie Gorme performing on a compliation album titled LOUNGAPALOZA the song "Black Hole Sun" (actually that was pretty good!) among other examples too numerous to mention!

The difference from something like that posted clip and such newer CD performances of the Nineties is that by now, everybody is in on the joke, so that whole earnest fun loving goofiness of those variety show performances is gone and replaced by an all knowing smirk. Sure it is fun still, but there is something missing, and it somehow feels a bit dishonest at its core.

As a final note, the mechanics of pop amd radio have changed so much since the late Sixties, back then you had a widely popular concept on both FM and AM that was know as M.O.R. radio, or "middle of the road". One song might be something like "Penny Lane", the next song would be something like Sinatra's "Strangers In The Night", then toss in some Lovin Spoonfull "Summer In The City" or Spanky And The Gang "I'd Like To Get To Know You" and then perhaps Andy Williams bellowing out "Love Story"...and you get the idea I'm sure!
This kind of stylistic rotation happened over and over all night and day on many stations of the era, no wonder why pop could be covered so efffortlessly on a random variety show circa 1969. Think of the various ages of the artists in that clip. Bobbi Gentry was in her mid Twenties and Engelbert Humperdinck was in his very early Thirties and both of those two were around the same ages as actual Beatles members, while Gwen Verdon was a fortysomething and Bing was in his late Sixties! Funny but true...nobody wanted to get left out of the youth movement, and what better way to witness this in the form of that wonderfully goofy Hollywood Palace clip that featured everyone from a young Twentysomething to a veteran Sixtysomething in a Beatles medley!

Filling up your tank is filling up the pockets of the enemy