[Opening audio clip: "Rag Mop" by the Ames Brothers]
Kellams: Okay, it's time for a new Pryor Center profile. Randy Dixon from the Pryor Center is with me.
Dixon: Do you remember when that song was a big hit?
Kellams: No.
Dixon: Yeah. Me either.
It was 1950. It was a song called "Rag Mop," and it was made popular by a group called the Ames Brothers. That was from one of their appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1954. They were a group that formed in the late '40s and were huge. They had several hits all through the '50s, and then sort of broke up in the early '60s and went their own ways and had solo careers.
There's one brother you may remember — he played Mingo on Daniel Boone.
Kellams: And is involved with one of the most memorable Tonight Show clips of all time.
Dixon: Absolutely. He is at the height of the Daniel Boone phenomenon, and he's on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He's going to teach Johnny how to throw a tomahawk. There's an outline of a cowboy on a piece of plywood, and he throws the tomahawk and it hits right in the crotch.
Kellams: And the audience loses it.
Dixon: That's not the brother we're going to be talking about today, unfortunately.
No. That was his brother Ed — the youngest brother of the Ames Brothers. This is Vic. And the reason we're doing a piece on some brothers from the Midwest does have to do with Arkansas. There was a Vic Ames show. It was a grand experiment for Little Rock television, especially in 1968. This show premiered on May 20, 1968, from 11:30 to 12:30. It was live. It was five days a week. And here's a quote from an article in the Arkansas Gazette:
“The program format will follow that of the national variety talk shows, with Ames in charge. He's a darkly handsome, shiny-eyed singer, once with the Ames Brothers Quartet, then trio, now disbanded, ABC network stars will appear from time to time, along with friends of Ames and Arkansas talent."
Kellams Can I just tell you — this is a heavy lift for a five-day-a-week, one-hour variety show led by one guy.
Dixon: Well, it was like having The Tonight Show in Little Rock in the sixties. That's a heavy lift. And it was live.
In researching this, there are no actual recordings that I know of of the show. Parts of it showed up in the KATV news archives, but most of that was film that had been shot behind the scenes, and it was silent. That doesn't work well on radio. And so I did find these outtakes from promotional spots. Let's listen to one of those right now.
[Audio clip — Vic Ames promotional outtake]
"How about if we start it from the bridge now." ... "I think I like better what you did before. Let's take it the other way." ... "Hi, this is Vic Ames inviting you to watch the Vic Ames Show, coming to you on channel 7 — live and in color — weekdays at 11:30. Who's Vic Ames? "
Kellams: Can we get into the idea — to have to create this — because I think it's a bold swing.
Dixon: Oh, it really is. There was nothing like this. It all comes down to a guy named Robert Doubleday. Bob Doubleday was the general manager at the time. He came from California. He graduated either from USC or UCLA, but had been in the first class of broadcasting majors. He came to Little Rock, moved his family, and was always a pioneer and a risk taker. He made channel 7 kind of look like a big city. He was tight with the ABC network people. Roone Arledge used to come to town all the time. Peter Jennings came to town when he was in his twenties as this up-and-coming kid at ABC.
Bob Doubleday got the idea — remember the Vapors Club in Hot Springs? They would get big-time acts: the Smothers Brothers, Tony Bennett. And Vic Ames was performing there one night, and Mr. Doubleday saw him and approached him and said, "What would you think about doing your own variety show?"
So I happen to know the original producer. We know Ben Combs. He and I have worked on some projects. He was the producer of the special Johnny Cash at Cummins Prison. That was a production of KATV. I talked to Ben last night.
[Ben Combs audio clip]
"When we decided to do the Vic Ames Show piece, J. Odom, the man who primarily developed Maumelle, had a company called National Investors Life Insurance Company in this beautiful granite building on Second and Broadway over by the county courthouse. We went to his facility because he had an auditorium. And that would enable us to have a live audience — guests to laugh and sing and have a big time. And that's what made the show equivalent to one of the — you know, Today show or The Tonight Show — from a local market. That gave us an equivalency of being a professionally done, highly attended, very popular local show. So we had color cameras. We had the remote truck. It was just amazing. There was a lot of publicity, by the way, in the Hollywood press about this bold attempt by a local TV station — of all places in Little Rock, Arkansas.”
Dixon: It was like nothing else on Arkansas television. I just want to let you know that we actually do have some old film of the singer singing. This is another outtake, but he's singing without a song — and it just sort of goes awry.
[Audio clip — Vic Ames outtake]
"Without a song, the day would never end. Without a song, a road would never bend. When things go wrong, a man ain't got no friend without a song." ..."Hi, I'm Vic Ames." ... "Don't talk, don't talk, just sing." ... "I forgot the song, I — I was just singing." ... [continues singing] ... "I've got my trouble and I won't win, as sure as I know that I've chosen, will alone. Oh, I'll get along as long as the song is deep in my soul. I'll never know what makes that rain to fall. I'll never know what makes that grass so tall. I only know there ain't no love at all without a song. And that is the end of the entire song."
Dixon: What do you do for an hour every day, Monday through Friday, in Little Rock? What's your content?
Well, this is the same question I asked Ben Combs.
[Ben Combs audio clip]
"We had Vic invite musical guests — people who were playing the Vapors in Hot Springs, for example — who would frequently be guests. We had a lot of musical talent in Arkansas, people who performed at the Rep or sometimes the symphony, so we showcased local talent. Vic was the emcee. Cal Dring was his Ed McMahon, his sidekick. Judy Pryor was a great music talent and she sang frequently. We had dancers called the Vic Ames Girls and they would do a dance during the show. But the real content came from Bob Doubleday's connections to the hierarchy at ABC. My job was to work with the promotion directors and all of the studios — because, as you remember, Universal, 20th Century Fox, all those different studios were the ones who really produced the TV shows that ran on the network. So they would all have promotion managers. And what they did is they agreed to send the second bananas who were on the ABC TV shows — the young star that would support the big star. So we had a steady stream of up-and-coming TV stars who were really the second leading character in all these different TV shows."
Kellams: The Vic Ames dancers. This just keeps getting better and better.
Dixon: It was awesome. I tried to get hold of Judy Pryor and could not get in touch with her before our deadline here, but hopefully I can run her down soon. But I do know one of the dancers from that time.
Kellams: Of course you do.
Dixon: Betty Brinkley Harrison was one of the three hostess dancers on the program. I'll talk to her too.
[Betty Brinkley Harrison audio clip]
"Being part of the big game show was great. And it was such an exciting time in Little Rock for television. I mean, we were the hostess and we danced. We performed to live music by the Henry Shead Trio, who were such a popular group in Arkansas. And then we performed in front of a live audience, which made it exciting every day. But I remember there was so much energy in the studio. Everyone was so excited. And you really had to be quick and ready for anything to happen because this was before modern technology. There was no editing because it was live. So whatever you saw on the show was real."
Dixon: Well, describe your look. Describe what your uniform looked like.
"Oh, we had a little purple dress. It was high neck, short sleeve, purple. We had a dark purple belt, and then we wore boots — and that was our uniform. They were like go-go boots."
Dixon: Kind of like go-go boots?
"Yeah. And we would dance. We would do some choreography and sometimes we'd dance around Vic and he would sing. We met a lot of celebrities that came in. It was a really exciting time."
Kellams: This just gets better and better. I've got a friend, Chris Selby, who's going to be hearing this and he's going to become obsessed with this show.
Dixon: Well, there were miniskirts too. So it was go-go boots with miniskirts. And they had these little hats. It was a really cool outfit. Well, I'm going to have a post on Facebook on the Pryor Center page, and you've got to see it — some of the behind-the-scenes video.
Now, Betty mentioned the Henry Shead Trio.
Kellams: The money that's being spent on this must be — anyway.
Dixon: Oh, it was incredible. There was a house band.
Kellams: You're spending money to perform.
Dixon: So you've got Vic and you've got Cal Dring as his co-host, you had Judy Pryor who would sing the duets, you had the dancers, and then you actually had some decent stars that would come in. They were filling it with decent content.
All right. Here's the rundown of the very first show: Governor Winthrop Rockefeller; an actor named Ben Alexander — another one of these B-side actors; he was Officer Frank Smith on Dragnet. Also, the A&M college — which would have been UAPB — the a cappella choir came on. And then pre-recorded segments with Andy Williams and pianist Peter Nero.
So we were talking about the Henry Shead Trio. He was a longtime musician and actor, originally from Fordyce. And here's Vic with Henry Shead talking — well, it's another promo:
[Audio clip]
"Henry Shead, myself and lots of fine folks — we'll be looking for you."
Kellams: Let's go back to 1968. Television is king. If you've got a show on every day, you're going to become well known.
Dixon: Yes. And he was. Everyone on the show was. I found this — it was KATV's live coverage of the opening of the David D. Terry Lock and Dam on the Arkansas River. This is anchorman Jim Pitcock with the coverage, and one of the featured entertainers, Vic Ames.
[Audio clip — Jim Pitcock/KATV coverage]
"You know, an interesting part of the program today — the Corps of Engineers, they've invited people to ride down on the river. And from the looks of things, we're getting a lot of boats who have traveled down from Little Rock to attend the dedication. Right now, let's switch over to the entertainment stand, where at the moment, Vic Ames is singing." ... [Vic Ames singing] ... "Vic Ames providing entertainment right before the official dedication gets underway at the David Terry Lock and Dam. The actual program will begin around 11 o'clock this morning."
Kellams: I'm having fun with this. I love this because it's a big swing. It's experimentation. It's surprise.
Dixon: It's expensive. Well, that's the bottom line. It only lasted a year. I posed that question to Ben Combs:
[Ben Combs audio clip]
"He thought if he could have an entertainment show equivalent — what, a lower budget, but equivalent to some of the station's weekend entertainment shows — he could syndicate the game show. He really thought it would work. And he had some stations that did take the show, but the cost of it — and the fact that they could produce their own shows so much cheaper and use their own on-air personalities — it never really took off the way we all hoped that it would. But that was the behind-the-scenes reason that we did the show: hoping that it could be syndicated."
Dixon: This program begs for a musical show closer.
Kellams: You never need any nudge to do that. What are we going to close with?
Dixon: How about Vic singing "Born Free"? Well, that's how we can close. With your permission.
Kellams: Okay, you know what? This one's so good — we're not going to do a new one next week because our schedules aren't going to align. We'll be back with a new one.
Dixon: Hey, I still have that heptachlor in my back pocket.
Kellams: Oh, yeah. We'll use it when we need it. Be careful about that.
Randy Dixon is with the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. Check out their website and their Facebook page. I'm going to let you play DJ. What are we about to hear?
Dixon: We're about to hear the hit "Born Free" from Vic Ames in the KATV satellite studio.
[Vic Ames — "Born Free"]
"Born free, as free as the wind blows. As free as the grass grows. Born free to follow your eyes. Live free and beauty surrounds you. The world still astounds you each time you look at a star. Stay free, where no walls divide you. You're free as the roaring tide. So there's no need to hide. Born free."
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
