You have to be pretty old to remember The Hudson Brothers. They were a trio of brothers from Portland, Oregon who, in the early-mid 1970s, had a teen-idolish music career, a summer replacement variety show and then a Saturday morning variety show.
Our video tonight is an episode of The Hudson Brothers’ Razzle Dazzle Show from 1974.
It’s a wild artifact of its time. Written by Chris Bearde, who worked on many of the top variety shows back then, including shows by Sonny & Cher and Marty Feldman, and with a cast that included a pre-Gong Show Murray Langston (The Unknown Comic), Freeman King and Rod Hull, the guy with the Emu puppet. Also in the cast and acting as the announcer for the show was Peter Cullen, better known today as the voice of Optimus Prime.
The Hudson Brothers stuck around the fringes of fame as a unit until the early 80s, but since then one of the married both Goldie Hawn and Cindy Williams (and is the father of Kate Hudson), another produced and wrote for Aerosmith, Ringo Starr, Ozzie Osbourne and more. The youngest brother became a prolific producer of television, movies and documentaries (including The Seventh Python, which ran in this space a few months ago). They did pretty well for themselves.
With that, go back and visit the state of the variety show, 1974. There’s some good, dumb fun and pretty decent music here.
Great opening! And I love the Big Wheel commercial!