Musical Chairs (U.S. Syndicated Game Show)

Musical Chairs is a game show that aired from June 16 to October 31, 1975 on CBS. Singer Adam Wade hosted, making him the first African-American game show host. Wade was pedigreed, having had three Billboard top ten hits in 1961. The series was recorded at the Ed Sullivan Theater (CBS Studio 50) in New York City and sportscaster Pat Hernon was the announcer.

The series aired at 4:00 PM (3:00 Central Time) against NBC's Somerset and ABC's Money Maze (and later You Don't Say!); it was not successful in the ratings against that competition.

Usually appearing on each episode were guest singers and musical groups, among them The Tokens, The Spinners, Larry Kert, Margaret Whiting, The New Christy Minstrels and Sister Sledge as well as up and coming singers and stars such as Alaina Reed, Kelly Garrett, Marilyn Sokol, Jane Olivor, and Irene Cara.

On June 3, 2015, Tribune Entertainment announced plans of reviving the series, with Tevin Campbell being named host of the series. The series debuted on Sept. 19, 2015.

Gameplay
Four contestants competed, one usually a champion. Three rounds and nine songs were played. A singer (the host and/or one of the guest performers) would begin to sing a song, but stop at a certain point. The singer then sang three different lyrics for the next line of the song, which were displayed on back-lit panels (the third panel occasionally contained humorous or absurd lyrics, written by songwriters/lyricists that were on the show's staff). On occasion, the performers would sing an entire verse and/or chorus and Wade would ask a simple trivia question related to the song, with three possible answers. The players then picked which of the three options s/he thought was correct by pressing a button on their console.

For the first question in each round, the first three players to lock in the correct answer won the money for that question. On the second question, only the first two correct answers won the money, and for the third question, only the first correct answer won the money. The questions were worth $125 for the first round, $250 for the second round, and $500 for the third round. However, after each question in the third round, the player with the least money was eliminated from the game, although they did get to keep any winnings up to that point.

Bonus Round
The day's winner chose one of three categories, then heard the melody of a song. The lyric was then shown with ten words missing; each time a word was correctly placed the contestant won $100. Getting all 10 in the proper places within 30 seconds won $10,000.