Six of the characters have names derived from jazz musicians or critics. Valerie and Kim Bechet are named after Sidney Bechet, the Creole clarinetist and soprano saxophonist from New Orleans who first performed in Europe in 1919 and spent the 1950's, the last decade of his life, in the country he considered his ancestral homeland, France. Inspector Hugues Panassié is named after a French jazz critic who wrote a number of books about the music, including "The Real Jazz" (1942) and "Louis Armstrong" (in French in 1969 and his own English translation in 1971). Officer Luter is named after Claude Luter, French bandleader who used Bechet as a guest artist in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Eva Taylor is named after a 1920's jazz singer who was the wife of Clarence Williams, a bandleader and songwriter who used her on a lot of his records. And Lu Watters was the name of a (male) jazz trumpeter who founded a New Orleans-style revival band in San Francisco in 1940.
This season premiers a rearranged intro without the hands going up and a push down the stairs. Most other parts "updated" for the next few seasons.
Juliet Prowse(Valerie) and Angela Lansbury (Jessica) have both starred alongside Elvis Presley, Juliet Prowse in G.I. Blues (1960) playing cabaret singer/dancer Lili and Angela Lansbury in Blue Hawaii (1961) as the mother of Chadwick (Elvis Presley)