Five artists who left their mark on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’
Since the dawn of television, music has seamlessly used the medium to connect with new audiences. Whether it was on talk shows or variety formats such as The Milton Berle Show, The Dean Martin Show, or The Johnny Cash Show (and, thankfully, the music was usually far more exciting than the programme titles), or in serialised productions like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet orThe Monkees, music and television have always been a match made in heaven. Later, MTV elevated this union to unprecedented heights, launching the careers of countless new singing sensations and raising a whole generation of fans for who music was as much a televisual media as it was an audio experience.
By the early 2000s, talent shows such as Pop Idol, The X-Factor and, to a much lesser extent, The Voice, were the best places to catch the next generation of ‘talent’ on television. The X-Factor’s viewership peaked in the UK in 2010, with 19.4 million people tuning in to watch Matt Cardle crowned the winner. In the age of TikTok, streaming, DIY artists and bedroom pop-stars, it now seems quite quaint that a new singer could get their breakthrough from a medium as antiquated as a talent show or variety performance on the TV.
In today’s fragmented media landscape, it’s rare for a singer to capture the collective public consciousness with a television appearance, though Chappell Roan’s late 2024 performance on SNL proved a notable exception. Once upon a time, however, prime-time TV was the perfect springboard for launching a music career. While The X Factor dominated musical television in the 21st century, its impact pales in comparison to an American variety show that began way back in 1948. If you want to make it in music, you first have to make it in America—and in the 1950s and 1960s, that meant making it on The Ed Sullivan Show.
When The Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show, it’s estimated that 73 million Americans tuned in to watch their television debut stateside. While not every artist boasted that kind of pulling power, being booked to play on Ed Sullivan was the seal of approval from the industry that every major musician needed, and let the world know that they were one to watch.
Five iconic Ed Sullivan Show performances:
Elvis Presley (1957)
Elvis Presley burst onto the scene in 1956 like a bolt of lightning from the blue. With an otherworldly name, look and sound, no one had seen or heard anything like him before, and there would never be another like him again.
There is a misconception that Elvis made his television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, but his first time in front of the cameras was actually for The Dorsey Brothers’ nationally broadcast show, The Dorsey Stage Show, where he shocked the world into life with his singing and swinging dance moves. Following further appearances from Elvis and his hips on The Milton Berle and The Steve Allen Shows, which shocked the nation, Ed Sullivan banned Presley from ever appearing on his own show.
When Elvis became too popular to refuse, Sullivan backed down from this position, and Elvis appeared not once but three times as a musical guest on the show in 1957. Worried about the reaction to his evocative and provocative dance moves and raw sexual charisma, though, Sullivan and the studio only let the rock and roll sensation appear on the condition that he only be filmed from the waist up. Happy with any glimpse of him that they could get, it is estimated that a staggering 82.6% of the American TV audience tuned in to catch Elvis’ first Ed Sullivan appearance.
The Beatles (1964)
Ed Sullivan was an American institution on television, and Elvis was as close as you can get in American culture to a mythic figure, but the television show was also the birthplace of the British invasion.
Following their chart success in the UK with debut singles such as ‘Love Me Do’, ‘Please Please Me’, ‘From Me to You’, ‘She Loves You’, and ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’—each one more successful and popular than the last—the Fab Four set their sights on cracking the American market. When they arrived at JFK Airport on February 7th, 1964, 5,000 fans were there to greet them. Just two days later, when they headed to the 728-seat Studio 50 to tape their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, an astonishing 50,000 fans had requested tickets.
When the show aired that night, the group ran through their songs ‘All My Loving’, ‘Till There Was You’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, a record 73 million viewers had tuned in at home. It’s safe to say that The Beatles had made it in America.
Roberta Peters
Elvis and The Beatles both pulled in huge audiences for their performances on the show, and naturally, they were both invited back to perform again and again. Elvis appeared on the show three times, while The Beatles went one further with four outings.
No one appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show more times than opera singer Roberta Peters, though, who was brought back to the show an incredible 65 times, where she alternately sang alone or duetted with fellow singers Robert Merrill, Cesare Siepi and Risë Stevens. As well as holding the record for most appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, Peters is also notable for her 35-year association with the New York Metropolitan Opera Company, one of the longest such associations between any singer and a company in opera.
Other singers who delighted the show’s audience with repeated performances included Connie Francis, Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway and Nancy Sinatra among plenty of others.
The Doors (1967)
Owing to the shows grand reputation and huge audience base, the network were very careful about what kind of content they were happy to present to the public. Whilst attitudes and ways of thinking had changed a lot since Elvis had first swung his hips into the public consciousness in 1956, there was still a minimum level of decorum expected of acts on the show.
When The Rolling Stones appeared on the programme to sing their latest single, ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’, the network deemed the title too risque and requested that it be changed to the more family-friendly ‘Let’s Spend Some Time Together. The group agreed and performed the new lyric but with no shortage of eye-rolling and sarcastic intoning from front-man Jagger.
Similarly, the producers requested The Doors change the suggestive line “girl, we couldn’t get much higher” from their hit single ‘Light My Fire’ to the clunky “Girl, there’s nothing that I require”. During the live show, Morrison defied the demand and sang the original line, causing a furious Ed Sullivan to declare to the band afterwards that “you will never do this show again”.
Bob Dylan
Elvis, The Doors, and The Rolling Stones weren’t the only musical revolutionaries that The Ed Sullivan Show tried to censor. Bob Dylan, one of the era’s biggest names, famously never made an appearance on the show—despite being booked to perform on the May 12th, 1963 episode, in anticipation of his second albums imminent release.
When Dylan informed Sullivan and the show executives that he intended to sing his new tune ‘Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues‘, the suits at CBS took one listen to the lyrics and told the young folk singer that the song was too controversial to air and potentially libellous to the John Birch Society. They asked him to sing another song instead.
Agreeing not to sing the song on the show, Dylan went one step further and pulled out from the planned appearance altogether, refusing to sing for the show at all if they felt the need to censor him. Giving up the opportunity to play before the biggest television audience in the world might not seem like the wisest career move for a rising star with only one record to his name, but things seem to have worked out alright for Dylan anyway.
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