Comedy albums

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Discussion of comedy albums in the Verve thread made me think about this a bit.

One of the things that the LP record enabled was capturing the act of a stand-up comedian/enne.

I don't know much about this but I think Verve may have been one of the companies into the field early, in 1958/59. Chess were issuing Moms Mabley LPs from 1960. Riverside issued one or two - I think there was a Peter Ustinov LP on Riverside.

Anyone know more than me? (I should bleedin' well hope so!)

MG

[king ubu]

The Fantasy Beat 4CD box "Howls, Raps & Roars" includes a full disc of Lenny Bruce (which of course I don't understand at all...). Not sure if that was originally on Fantasy. Some of the other stuff included is mighty fine - the Ginsberg "Howl" album, stuff by Rexroth, Ferlinghetti, Corso etc. (no comedy of course).

Edit: newbury is still offering it for 16$ via amazon.com

Edited July 2, 2008 by king ubu

[Christiern]

Anna Russell's first comedy album came earlier than the ones you mention, I think. Ditto Lord Buckley (around 1952?)

Edited July 2, 2008 by Christiern

[Larry Kart]

The first Tom Lehrer album ("The Songs of Tom Lehrer") came out in 1953 and was a sensation in some circles.

[GA Russell]

To put it in perspective: Bob Newhart's autobiography came out late 2006. In it he says that his first album, which came out in 1960, won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word album because there was no comedy album category yet.

[JSngry]

Coral had a bunch of stuff - Buddy Hackett, Phil Foster, Steve Allen, and others. Firmly middle-50s.

I've seen Myron Cohen 78s on Yiddish(?) specialty labels too.

Speaking of 78s, there's this site: http://www.hensteeth.com/home.html which used to look like a BSN offshoot, but now is a shell of its former self.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Well, there have been comedy records since the beginning of the record industry. The change with LPs enabled a whole (or substantial part) of a comic's act to be produced. This was different to people like Tom Lehrer, who was singing short songs.

So I didn't know Lord Buckley was going so early. What label was he on? Was it Dick Bock's WP?

MG

[Larry Kart]

Lord Buckley recorded "The Naz" and other routines on two LPs for the Vaya label in 1951. He also recorded a 10-inch LP for RCA before that. One cut, The Lord's version of Marc Antony's funeral oration ("I came here to lay Caesar out, not to hip you to him..." etc.), was re-issued on a RCA comedy compilation album.

Don't agree Lehrer was only "singing short songs." His act was those songs and the persona they created.

[Teasing the Korean]

Some comedy albums I've wanted that have eluded me:

"How to Speak Hip" by Del Close and John Brent

Coyle and Sharp - 2 LPs on WB (IIRC)

Brother Theodore - 2 LPs:

(Theodore in an) Entertainment of Sinister and Disconcerting Humor (1955)

"Proscenium 21 Recorded at Carnegie Hall on May 21, 1955 at Midnight" 33 1/3 RPM 12" and 10" (rare)

Side A: Tears from a Glass Eye

Side B: With a Tongue of Madness

Coral Records Presents...Theodore (in Stereo) (1959)

Coral Records CRL 57322 33 1/3 RPM 12"

Side A: 1) Introduction and Berenice 2) The Willow Landscape 3) Curse of the Toad

Side B: 1) Quadrupedism

Brother Theodore was a riot. There are some Letterman clips on Youtube.

I love that late 50s/early 60s era of comedy, when white, middle class, suburban US society was starting to come apart at the seams.

Edited July 2, 2008 by Teasing the Korean

[Christiern]

The excerpts from Coyle and Sharpe's radio shows contain some priceless material.

[Teasing the Korean]

The excerpts from Coyle and Sharpe's radio shows contain some priceless material.

Ever hear the bit where they want to open a "hell" theme park and pay a guy to remain in a pit with live snakes?

[Bright Moments]

allan sherman

[JSngry]

Lord Buckley recorded "The Naz" and other routines on two LPs for the Vaya label in 1951. He also recorded a 10-inch LP for RCA before that.

Was RCA doing LPs in 1951 or before?

[Teasing the Korean]

Lord Buckley recorded "The Naz" and other routines on two LPs for the Vaya label in 1951. He also recorded a 10-inch LP for RCA before that.

Was RCA doing LPs in 1951 or before?

JIM FLORA COVER ART!!!

[Larry Kart]

Lord Buckley recorded "The Naz" and other routines on two LPs for the Vaya label in 1951. He also recorded a 10-inch LP for RCA before that.

Was RCA doing LPs in 1951 or before?

RCA Victor began issuing LPs in 1950.

Nice to see another Flora cover. Wish I still had my old LP of the Andre Previn-Shorty Rogers "Collaboration." IIRC its cover was a Flora masterpiece and perfectly suited to the clever-goofy music.

[Larry Kart]

Here's a link to the cover of "Collaboration":

http://singinandswingin.blogspot.com/2007/...dre-previn.html

The colors are a little washed out, though.

[Christiern]

The excerpts from Coyle and Sharpe's radio shows contain some priceless material.

Ever hear the bit where they want to open a "hell" theme park and pay a guy to remain in a pit with live snakes?

I remember that one, it was one of my favorite.

Allan Sherman? Never found him funny. Ditto Steve Allen.

[Mark Stryker]

Some tidbits, thoughts and links:

First, Newhart, one my heroes -- slyly subversive ("Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Ave," "Retirement Party") and just so smart, unique and hilarious ("Nobody Will Ever Play Baseball," "Infinite Number of Monkeys," "Introducing Tobacco").

"The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" not only won the Spoken Word Grammy for 1960 as mentioned earlier in this thread, but it won Album of the Year too. Newart has said that business was so bad at Warner Bros Records in early 1960 that Jack Warner had considered shutting down the entire division but changed his mind when "Button-Down Mind" became a hit -- it sold 700,000 copies and spent 14 weeks as No. 1 on the Billboard pop charts. At one point they were selling so swiftly that Warner Bros ran out of record jackets and sold thousands in plain white sleeves with IOUs for the jackets.

At the time, Newhart was a neophyte, having never even worked a true nightclub until the week in Houston when the album was recorded. He tells a story about how after one of the first shows, the crowd was simply roaring and the club owner said to him backstage, "You've got to go back out there." Newhart says, "What do you mean? I've done everything I have." And the owner practically pushes him back on stage. So he gets out there and the crowd quiets and he says, "Which bit do you want to hear again?"

As mentioned previously in the thread, there have been comedy records of some sort since the beginning of recording, but the genre really took off with the LP. As MG noted, the LP allowed the the reproduction of a comic's nightclub act. But it also coincided with the new kind of comedian that developed in the late '50s (Bruce, Sahl, Nichols and May, Winters, Berman, Newhart). The synergy peaked between 1958-63. At one point in 1961 there were about a dozen comedy records in the Billboard top 150 albums, half them in the top 40. If you didn't guess by now, I once did a shit load of research on this for a story (South Bend Tribune, 1992), which is where I've cribbed all of this info. This was, obviously, in a period when there weren't all that many opportunities to hear young comics on TV and there was no such thing as a "comedy club" as we know them. Newhart said to me for the story that it was the college crowd driving the record sales:

"They'd buy our records and they'd get pizza and a six-pack and they'd sit around somebody's living room and that was their nightclub. And we were dealing with areas they were concerned about. They always called the '50s the 'dead '50s' but I always thought there was a lot of revolt and anti-system feeling. I don't think everybody rolled over and playd dead. God knows Lenny was dealing with issues and Mike and Elaine with the telephone company routine and other large monoliths and I was attacking the corporation -- we were talking to their concerns."

Random notes: Sahl's "The Future Lies Ahead" (Verve, 1958) was the first spoke-word comedy album taped live in a nightclub, the hungry i in San Francisco. Berman's "Inside Shelly Berman" (Verve, 1960) was the first best-selling comedy record, entering the top 40 in April 1959 and peaking at No. 2 for five weeks. That album spent nearly an entire year in the top 40 and more than two years in the top 150.

Surprisingly, not as much classic comedy LP audio on youtube as I might have guessed, but I found these for starters:

Newhart: "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Ave." http://youtube.com/watch?v=7FopDTIrZSU

Newhart: "Tobacco" http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dsc2nQ3BCZA

Woody Allen:

Mort Sahl:

Edited July 3, 2008 by Mark Stryker

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Very interesting, with a particular thank you to Mark.

MG

[Jazzjet]

I always enjoyed Shelly Berman. I've got one of his LPs - 'Inside Shelly Berman' - and it is excellent, in the tradition of Mort Sahl. Includes some great telephone routines which were a staple of his act.

[Big Beat Steve]

On a side note:

Ever since I saw this cover in a cover art book I've been asking myself this:

This line - HIPSTERS FLIPSTERS FINGER POPPIN DADDIES - also is the album title of a 60s Brit R&B album by Geno Washington & The Ram Jam band (on Pye, IIRC). Hard to see a connection between Lord Buckley and 60s British R&B (except pure coincidence), but what are the real origins of this catchphrase? Anybody know?

Edited July 3, 2008 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

Hard to see a connection between Lord Buckley and 60s British R&B ...

Why? Buckley was a cult figure from Day One.

Pretty sure that that phrase is original to Buckley.

[Larry Kart]

I once was going to write a book about so-called hip comedy, having written about comedy so often for the Chicago Tribune over the years and having interviewed virtually every still-living figure in the field, and went so far as to take a month off and write a sample chapter, about Mort Sahl. In the course of all this I discovered Sahl's first album, "Sahl at Sunset," which he had had suppressed because it was taped surreptitiously (at a 1955 concert at the Sunset Auditorium in Carmel that Brubeck and Sahl shared) by the Weiss brothers of Fantasy Records -- the Weisses, in addition to whatever financial shenanigans they may have engaged in here, infuriating Sahl because in order to get his whole set onto one LP they sped up the tape, so Mort's voice is noticebly more high-pitched and his delivery is even more manic that usual. In any case, IMO this is the Sahl record. The common complaint about him, unfair or not, is that Mort (as some feel was the case with George Carlin) could be clever, caustic, etc., but how often was he actually funny? Here he is -- explosively -- in part because much of the audience doesn't quite know who he is and/or what to expect from him, and Lord does he feed off of this. Terrific, too, in an utterly different way, is "Anyway ... Onward," which in part recounts Sahl's supposed visit to the LBJ White House in the latter days of that administration. The portrait of LBJ the tyrannical schoomzer in action is worthy of a very good political novel, and it's funny too.

[Larry Kart]

Also, through an incredible piece of luck, a friend and I (both way underage) bullshitted our way into Mister Kelly's in (I think) 1959 and caught Lenny Bruce there in vintage form. The feeling of being in the same room with Bruce at work was something else -- like being in the same room with a ticking time-bomb. Lenny even made up or debuted a routine that night, the not-that-great one about Gov. Long of Louisiana and the stripper. One knew that was the case because the last key step in the real-life drama -- when Louisiana's state director of mental health had Long committed, and Long then fired the state director of mental health -- was in that morning's paper. Far more striking though was a dialogue of some lengtb that Bruce engaged in with a passing Mister Kelly's busboy. Don't recall the content of what passed between them, but it was clearly utterly real and spontaneous (you could tell by the busboy's initially deer-caught-in-headlights response, though he eventually stepped inside Lenny's irresitible vibe wholeheartedly), and further by the intense, what-the-hell-is-he doing? anxiety visible on whichever of the club's two owners, brothers George and Oscar Marienthal, happened to be there that night.

[Teasing the Korean]

Anyone have either of those 2 Brother Theodore records from the 1950s?