2 Albums Open Ed Sullivan Collection

Quite amazingly, one of the nation’s most celebrated pop music treasure chests--the Ed Sullivan television show library--has never been available on record. Until now.

Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” may have been the everyday TV home of rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘50s and ‘60s, but Sullivan’s Sunday-night CBS variety show was the most important TV showcase for all music--from rock and jazz to country and classical.

Steve Gottlieb, a former Wall Street lawyer who made a splash in the record business in the mid-’80s with a series of albums devoted to television theme songs, has arranged with the Sullivan estate to release music from the shows in a series of 25 or more albums.

The first two volumes in the series, which is titled “The Sullivan Years” and is available through Gottlieb’s TVT Records, are devoted to jazz great Louis Armstrong and the ‘60s British rock invasion.

The Armstrong package features 18 performances, including “Mack the Knife” and “Hello, Dolly!” The “British Invasion” album consists of 16 tunes by such ‘60s rock groups as the Animals, Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas and Herman’s Hermits.

The next volume, titled “The Mod Sound” and due next week, features 17 songs by such ‘60s outfits as the Mamas & the Papas, the Fifth Dimension and Spanky & Our Gang.

Why has this music--an estimated 9,000 performances--remained stored all these years in a vault at a CBS warehouse in New Jersey?

“Some people approached (the estate) with the idea of skimming the catalogue . . . just using Elvis or the Beatles or (Barbra) Streisand,” said Gottlieb, who spent two years pursuing the rights. “Our approach was to put together a comprehensive series.”