Ernie Kovacs - "Mack the Knife" without O-scope / Blackout Ending with The Nairobi Trio

[From "Kovacs Corner" on YouTube.com] - In one of his last scheduled "specials', this is a classic Kovacs endings which wraps around various comedy blackouts. Kovacs' "Mack the Knife" sequence was usually accompanied with an oscilloscope's waveform display of the song. Apparently in this episode Ernie was pressed for time and needed to forego those clips. "Mack the Knife" was composed in 1928 by Kurt Weill for his then wife Lotte Lenya, the late Austrian cabaret singer, stage, and film actress . (For those who don't recall, she was the female villain in the second Bond film "From Russia with Love" who tried to kill Sir James with the pointed dagger that popped out from her shoe). Ernie's regulars included Jolene Brand, Bobby Lauher, and Joe Mikolas. Ernie's theme song is, of course, the recording of "Oriental Blues" by Robert Maxwell. The Nairobi Trio end the show with their rendition of the tune "Solfeggio".

• Category

  Comedy

[MOTOPAC]

The guy at 1:11 looks like Butthead in real life!

[Lampshade51]

Even Kovacs' credits at the end of his show are more entertaining and creative than most whole programs today!

[James Reyes]

Interesting collection of blackouts from the late great Ernie Kovacs. This clip from the final Ernie Kovacs special that was aired weeks after his tragic death in Jan, 1962.

[Barry I. Grauman]

This version of the "Nairobi Trio" was originally videotaped as a "clue" for Ernie's game show "TAKE A GOOD LOOK", around 1960. Because Edie Adams was a regular panelist, she couldn't participate in acting out the clues with Ernie (not without being involved in "fixing" a game show). So, the lineup probably was Ernie, Jolene and Bobby.

[wmbrown6]

And on this, Ernie's cohorts in the Trio appear to have been Jolene Brand (on keyboards) and Bobby Lauher (bopping Ernie on the head with his mallets).