The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Considering Jimmy Webb's fame as a songwriter in the late 60s I have long found it surprising that there didn't seem to be any video evidence of him appearing on American TV at the time, that is until I came across this remarkable footage taken from a show called Playboy After Dark. According to the info attached to the video, Webb's performance alone at the piano of 'One Of The Nicer Things' was filmed in September 1968 but not broadcast until March the following year. In keeping with most of the other excerpts I've seen of this Hugh Hefner fronted show, an audience of mostly young women stand around him in very close proximity while he performs.

This clip says so much: so much right and so much wrong. To those of us of a certain age and perspective it presages - and explains - the tragic arc of his career.

Jimmy Webb made a beautiful record of 'One Of The Nicer Things' released as a single at the time and which featured the kind of orchestration he would usually reserve for a Richard Harris or a 5th Dimension record. Making allowances for the limitations of his singing voice at the time, I think it's a real shame that Webb didn't record a whole album in a similar vein to that 45 and with all the romanticism we associate with his most famous songs. Looking at what was recorded by others in late '68 and '69, he certainly had enough quality material for such a project.

The first time I saw Webb perform was in the early 70s when he was wearing his hippie look with the regulation shoulder length hair and big beard. It was on a BBC TV In Concert show and when he performed a few of his famous songs from the 60s it was a bit like 'Jimmy Webb sings the hits of Jim Webb in the style of a singer-songwriter circa 1971'. Despite the phoniness of the studio setup, his performance in 1968 of that beautiful song seems much more natural and in fact I found it rather charming.

Here's an oddity, a TV performance of Webb's much underrated album 'The Animals Christmas' from 1986.





'blue'