Video: Paul Butterfield Tells The Truth

Stump the chumps, er, the celebrity panel, and win fabulous prizes! Or at least some snog time with Kitty Carlisle...

By Fred Mills

Now THIS is one of those unusual blasts from the past that makes YouTube a true national (international?) treasure - why they can't monetize that sucker fully yet just boggles the mind.

Over the holidays some enterprising blues fanatic tracked down an episode of TV panel show To Tell the Truth, presumably dating to the mid ‘60s, featuring harmonica legend and bandleader Paul Butterfield as the guest. It's worth watching just for the part at the end when Butterfield gets up and jams with the house band, and the video quality is surprisingly good for its vintage.

The main segment, though, is priceless. For those not familiar with To Tell the Truth - Wikipedia entry here - the format involved a four-person celebrity panel attempting to figure out which of the guests is actually who he/she claims to be. That actual "person" is pledged to answer the panel's questions truthfully, but the impostors are allowed to lie through their teeth. In its initial incarnation the show ran on CBS from 1956 to 1968, later going into syndication and ultimately going through a series of revivals as well. For this episode the panel was made up of what a lot of viewers considered to be the "classic" lineup of Orson Bean, Peggy Cass, Kitty Carlisle (hot, very hot), and Tom Poston (yes, that Tom Poston, later of Newhart fame).

Here, Butterfield (as Number One) along with a college student (Number Two) and a salesman (Number Three) attempt to stump the panel; the salesman doesn't really fool anyone, but the four votes get split evenly between Butterfield and the student, and it's a whale of a lot of fun watching the panelists demonstrate varying degrees of knowledge and ignorance of the blues and the then-contemporary music scene.

Through it all, Butterfield has a kind of semi-bemused look on his face. This is a guy, after all, that has played with the likes of Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters, Mike Bloomfield and Howlin' Wolf. You can practically see the thought bubble over his head going, "Please God, don't let Orson, Peggy, Kitty or Tom hit me up for a backstage pass at tonight's show down at the Café Wha?..."