Comedy albums

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

No one's mentioned Victor Borge.

MG

[JSngry]

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.

That was on GNP, right? I used to have that one...

The Fantasy, you say it was suppressed? Does that mean before or after it was on the market for a while?

In other words, how difficult might it be to find a copy today?

[Mark Stryker]

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.

That was on GNP, right? I used to have that one...

The Fantasy, you say it was suppressed? Does that mean before or after it was on the market for a while?

In other words, how difficult might it be to find a copy today?

For what it's worth, I can report being able to find over the years all of Sahl's LPs -- exept "At Sunset." The search goes on. Regarding the pitch issue, would it not be possible to transfer the LP to computer files, pitch correct and then dub to CD?

Larry: It's too bad that comedy book didn't materialize -- great idea and you would have been ideal to write it. To have seen Lenny Bruce in his prime at Mr. Kelly's -- wow!. Maybe not Coltrane at the Vanguard, but still. We'll talk more about that later. Back to the premise. Anyway, onward.

[Larry Kart]

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.

That was on GNP, right? I used to have that one...

The Fantasy, you say it was suppressed? Does that mean before or after it was on the market for a while?

In other words, how difficult might it be to find a copy today?

"Anyway ... Onward" was on Mercury. The later one on GNP was "Sing a Song of Watergate." IIRC, "Anyway ... Onward" was much better. The stuff about personal interactions between LBJ and Humphrey makes you believe that Sahl had to have been there in the White House on a visit that day, as he claims to have been, though the very convincing story he tells on "Sing a Song of Watergate" about interaction between JFK and himself on a plane full of reporters during a bout of very bad weather is in fact an adaptation or appropriation of an exchange between JFK and a reporter, not Sahl.

"Mort Sahl at Sunset" was out for a minute or two before it was withdrawn. I assume it's hard to find and expensive. I have it on a cassette that a friend made for me.

[JSngry]

"Sing a Song of Watergate", yeah, that's the one I had. I wanted to like it, but couldn't. "True" as it was, it wasn't funny.

I've heard "Anyway ... Onward" at some point though, probably back in high-school days. I remember it as being pretty good.

And speaking of LBJ...

Anybody remember "Welcome To The LBJ Ranch"?

[BruceH]

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.

God, that's amazing! And pretty funny in itself.

[GA Russell]

No one has mentioned The First Family from 1961 yet.

I suspect that it's popularity was based solely on the popularity of Jack and Jackie themselves rather than the jokes. So I imagine that hearing it today wouldn't be so amusing.

But I could be wrong. Does anybody have it?

[GA Russell]

Reading between the lines, it was my impression that in the 50s Sahl was a Democrat poking fun at the Republican administration. So all the Democrats in the audience thought he was funny.

In the 60s he was poking fun at the Democratic administrations, and the Democrats in the audience didn't think it was so funny anymore.

I remember seeing Sahl a number of times on TV in the 60s explaining how his act was to poke fun at whoever was in office at the time, and it seemed to me that he was justifying his act, apparently in response to audience negativity.

[Larry Kart]

No one has mentioned The First Family from 1961 yet.

I suspect that it's popularity was based solely on the popularity of Jack and Jackie themselves rather than the jokes. So I imagine that hearing it today wouldn't be so amusing.

But I could be wrong. Does anybody have it?

Not so amusing back then. It did, however, allow Lenny Bruce to say right after the assasination of JFK: "Whew, Vaughn Meader." That's a Yiddishy "Whew," as in "Think about the poor man." It also reveals how often the basis of Lenny's thinking, even perhaps the real basis of what he actually felt, was to place or see everything at the level of showbiz at its greasiest. Meader, of course, played JFK on The First Family album, and what Lenny was saying, accurately as it turned out, was the Meader's career was, overnight, over.

[Chuck Nessa]

I never thought Sahl was funny - an interesting case, but not funny.

[Free For All]

The first comedy LPs that I listened to repeatedly were by the Smothers Brothers (I got to meet them in the 80s when I played their show, that was a lot of fun) and Bill Cosby.

These are the two I remember most:

[Christiern]

No one's mentioned Victor Borge.

MG

Working under his actual name (Børge Rosenbaum) he originally did many of his routines (including, I believe, phonetic punctuation) in Danish. I also recall, shortly after the war (WWII, natch) that he did commercials that were shown in movie theaters--there was one for Pepsodent. We didn't have them on TV--we didn't have TV, for that matter.

I think he was very funny and marveled at how well his humor aged.

I wasn't wild about the "First Family" album. Stil love PDQ Bach and the Hoffnung Festival albums.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

No one's mentioned Victor Borge.

MG

Working under his actual name (Børge Rosenbaum) he originally did many of his routines (including, I believe, phonetic punctuation) in Danish. I also recall, shortly after the war (WWII, natch) that he did commercials that were shown in movie theaters--there was one for Pepsodent. We didn't have them on TV--we didn't have TV, for that matter.

I think he was very funny and marveled at how well his humor aged.

He aged well, too. He came to Cardiff sometime in the eighties I think and packed what was the main venue here at the time. He was an absolute scream!

I wasn't wild about the "First Family" album. Stil love PDQ Bach and the Hoffnung Festival albums.

Mention of Hoffnung reminds me that, over here, we didn't have anything like the stand-up scene there was on record in America. Most British comedy records were musical. Hoffnung, Flanders & Swann, Paddy Roberts. Peter Sellers, who wasn't a comedian of course, was an exception, I think. He made a couple of pretty good albums of comedy sketches in the period 1958-60 (think I've got the dates right), and in 1964 or '65 came up with a once heard, never forgotten, 45 of "A hard day's night", which he recited in the style of Sir Lawrence Olivier in Richard III.

It wasn't until "Beyond the fringe" that British non-musical comedy albums came to the fore - and then there were also lots of LPs made of comedy radio shows, starting with the Goons, I don't know when (the shows were mid-fifties, but I don't know when the LPs were released).

Stand-up comedians in Britain were pretty crummy in the fifties, from what I recall, relying almost entirely on stock catch-phrases. The good/great ones, like Tommy Cooper, had a more visual humour which didn't go well on record.

MG

[Stereojack]

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.

The Buckley RCA 10" LP was recorded in 1955. The track on the 1970's RCA compilation is an alternate take (different musical backing), although it doesn't say so.

[Jazzjet]

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Peter Sellers had an album out about 1964 called Fool Brittania which was based around the Profumo and Christine Keeler scandals. It featured, among others, Anthony Newley and Joan Collins and was similar in style to the aforementioned First Family LPs.

The Goons albums were issued from around 1958 onwards, by the way. Some of the best-selling comedy LPs in the UK were those by Tony Hancock ( The Blood Donor etc ), which were recordings of his radio shows and would probably not translate too well to the US.

Ah, I'd forgotten about "Fool Britannia". If I recall, that was advertised heavily in Private Eye and the cover looked like a Private Eye job. Was it a Private Eye production, I wonder?

But I was thinking of Sellers' two Parlophone LPs - a 10" and a 12" The 10" included the classic "Balham, gateway to the South" and the 12" had the interview with "Twit Conway".

And wasn't "The blood donor" a programme in Hancock's TV series? Which would make it late sixties, by which time quite a lot had changed on the British humour scene.

MG

[Jazzjet]

Peter Sellers had an album out about 1964 called Fool Brittania which was based around the Profumo and Christine Keeler scandals. It featured, among others, Anthony Newley and Joan Collins and was similar in style to the aforementioned First Family LPs.

The Goons albums were issued from around 1958 onwards, by the way. Some of the best-selling comedy LPs in the UK were those by Tony Hancock ( The Blood Donor etc ), which were recordings of his radio shows and would probably not translate too well to the US.

Ah, I'd forgotten about "Fool Britannia". If I recall, that was advertised heavily in Private Eye and the cover looked like a Private Eye job. Was it a Private Eye production, I wonder?

But I was thinking of Sellers' two Parlophone LPs - a 10" and a 12" The 10" included the classic "Balham, gateway to the South" and the 12" had the interview with "Twit Conway".

And wasn't "The blood donor" a programme in Hancock's TV series? Which would make it late sixties, by which time quite a lot had changed on the British humour scene.

MG

Just checked my much - played Hancock LPs and The Blood Donor/Radio Ham soundtracks were released in 1961, not long after the TV programmes were broadcast. Probably reissued many times thereafter. And, of course, he did basically the same shows on radio before that.

I've got a box set of Peter Sellers ( A Celebration Of Sellers ) which contains all his albums ( The Best Of Sellers, Songs For Swingin' Sellers, Peter and Sophia, Sellers Market plus numerous singles including the aforementioned Hard Days Night and She Loves You - Inspired By Phil McCafferty,The Irish Dentist ). Comedy gold and probably the high point of British comedy, along with The Goons and Python.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Peter Sellers had an album out about 1964 called Fool Brittania which was based around the Profumo and Christine Keeler scandals. It featured, among others, Anthony Newley and Joan Collins and was similar in style to the aforementioned First Family LPs.

The Goons albums were issued from around 1958 onwards, by the way. Some of the best-selling comedy LPs in the UK were those by Tony Hancock ( The Blood Donor etc ), which were recordings of his radio shows and would probably not translate too well to the US.

Ah, I'd forgotten about "Fool Britannia". If I recall, that was advertised heavily in Private Eye and the cover looked like a Private Eye job. Was it a Private Eye production, I wonder?

But I was thinking of Sellers' two Parlophone LPs - a 10" and a 12" The 10" included the classic "Balham, gateway to the South" and the 12" had the interview with "Twit Conway".

And wasn't "The blood donor" a programme in Hancock's TV series? Which would make it late sixties, by which time quite a lot had changed on the British humour scene.

MG

Just checked my much - played Hancock LPs and The Blood Donor/Radio Ham soundtracks were released in 1961, not long after the TV programmes were broadcast. Probably reissued many times thereafter. And, of course, he did basically the same shows on radio before that.

I've got a box set of Peter Sellers ( A Celebration Of Sellers ) which contains all his albums ( The Best Of Sellers, Songs For Swingin' Sellers, Peter and Sophia, Sellers Market plus numerous singles including the aforementioned Hard Days Night and She Loves You - Inspired By Phil McCafferty,The Irish Dentist ). Comedy gold and probably the high point of British comedy, along with The Goons and Python.

Ah yes - I'd forgotten what those LP titles were. Funny, I can't find the sleeve of "Songs for swinging sellers" on the web. As I recall, it had a pic of Sellers being hung.

MG

[Jazzjet]

Peter Sellers had an album out about 1964 called Fool Brittania which was based around the Profumo and Christine Keeler scandals. It featured, among others, Anthony Newley and Joan Collins and was similar in style to the aforementioned First Family LPs.

The Goons albums were issued from around 1958 onwards, by the way. Some of the best-selling comedy LPs in the UK were those by Tony Hancock ( The Blood Donor etc ), which were recordings of his radio shows and would probably not translate too well to the US.

Ah, I'd forgotten about "Fool Britannia". If I recall, that was advertised heavily in Private Eye and the cover looked like a Private Eye job. Was it a Private Eye production, I wonder?

But I was thinking of Sellers' two Parlophone LPs - a 10" and a 12" The 10" included the classic "Balham, gateway to the South" and the 12" had the interview with "Twit Conway".

And wasn't "The blood donor" a programme in Hancock's TV series? Which would make it late sixties, by which time quite a lot had changed on the British humour scene.

MG

Just checked my much - played Hancock LPs and The Blood Donor/Radio Ham soundtracks were released in 1961, not long after the TV programmes were broadcast. Probably reissued many times thereafter. And, of course, he did basically the same shows on radio before that.

I've got a box set of Peter Sellers ( A Celebration Of Sellers ) which contains all his albums ( The Best Of Sellers, Songs For Swingin' Sellers, Peter and Sophia, Sellers Market plus numerous singles including the aforementioned Hard Days Night and She Loves You - Inspired By Phil McCafferty,The Irish Dentist ). Comedy gold and probably the high point of British comedy, along with The Goons and Python.

Ah yes - I'd forgotten what those LP titles were. Funny, I can't find the sleeve of "Songs for swinging sellers" on the web. As I recall, it had a pic of Sellers being hung.

MG

Try this link ( can't work out how to post images in forum messages yet, eg album covers. Any help? ) :

Songs For Swingin' Sellers

[paul secor]

Any Firesign Theatre fans around? I have a fair number of their albums - both by the group and and by individual members - but haven't listened to them in years.

edit - Have no idea what I'd think of them now. Don't think I have any desire to listen.

Edited July 5, 2008 by paul secor

[Stereojack]

At the time I thought their first four albums were brilliant. After that, they got just a liitle too "out", and not very funny. Haven't had any desire to listen to them lately, but I still think "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers" is a classic.

[Christiern]

Firesign Theater was a product of Pacifica Radio, when I was working there--I never found them funny, too strained.

Since we have some of our British members on this thread, I wonder if any of you recall two funny songs that I used to hear on London juke boxes back in the mid-Sixties?

"Nobody Loves a Fairy When She's Forty"

and (don't recall the title) one whose lyrics began with "When you're feeling glum, stick a finger up your bum, and laugh, laugh, laugh...."

Anyone here recall something like that?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

and (don't recall the title) one whose lyrics began with "When you're feeling glum, stick a finger up your bum, and laugh, laugh, laugh...."

Anyone here recall something like that?

I can almost hear it, Chris, but I don't know who or what it is. Sounds like something by Bill Oddie; perhaps a song from the radio show "I'm sorry, I'll read that again", which was at its peak of popularity in 1965/66.

Perhaps the fairy one is, as well.

I think only one LP of "I'm sorry, I'll read that again" ever came out, which I've got, and those aren't on that LP, which doesn't really mean anything if they weren't from that show and that was excerpts, not a complete show.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

"Nobody Loves a Fairy When She's Forty"

Ah, more than Bill Oddie, this sounds like Kenneth Williams. But I don't know.

MG

[Christiern]

Not Kenneth Williams. I was working with and seeing a lot of him in those days. That said, I will admit that both songs sound William-ish.

I somehow--way in the back of my faint memory--associate one or both of the songs with a satirical magazine--Spy?