March 4, 1964 Columbia Recording Studios, New York City, NY

Saturday, March 7, 1964

Grandstand was a sports anthology show on the BBC in England, very similar in format to ABC’s Wide World of Sports in the U.S. The first broadcast was on October 11, 1958 and it concluded a 48-year run in January 2007. On Tuesday, February 25, 1964, Sam was in Miami where he attended the Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali)-Sonny Liston fight. He was accompanied by his wife, Barbara, Allen Klein and his wife, Betty, and J. W. Alexander. Following Clay’s victory he is mobbed in the ring and surrounded by sports reporters. During an interview, Clay spots Sam in the crowd, calls him up into the ring and introduces him as the “world’s greatest rock ‘n roll singer.” This clip has been seen on numerous occasions, particularly whenever there is a retrospective of Muhammad Ali’s boxing career.

One week later, Sam hooked up with Clay again in New York City, where Sam produced Clay’s rendition of the song, “Hey, Hey, The Gang’s All Here.” Very likely the next day, March 4, Sam went with Clay to a New York television studio where Clay conducted a Transatlantic interview with BBC Sports commentator Harry Carpenter. Midway through the interview, Carpenter can hear Sam talking off camera and he asks Clay who is there in the studio with him. Clay pulls Sam into the camera frame and then says to Carpenter, “As you can see, like me, he’s awful pretty.” Sam and Clay then proceed to give Carpenter a little a capella sample of the “Gang’s All Here” recording. Clay appears to be totally mesmerized by Sam and looks up at him with longing eyes as if he were just another of Sam’s teenaged fans. The March 7 broadcast date is based on the fact that Grandstand aired on Saturday afternoons, and this would have been the first Saturday following the interview date.