Steve Coleman Article In NYT

[JSngry]

"Pay attention to Steve Coleman" is like "Drink Coca-Cola", a wish for success disguised in the form of a command.

Although, yeah, pay attention to Steve Coleman.

Unless you don't want to, in which case, don't.

Again, it's not complicated. At least not that part of it.

[JSngry]

Pay attention to Steve Coleman?

To what extent? Instead of?

That's a question that presupposes a limited curiosity and an even more limited capacity to absorb.

Are you sure that you want that to be your leading line of inquiry?

[jcam_44]

Oh, so Pi is the one seeking mainstream validation, eh?

Can't wait to hear that Mike Ladd/Kanye joint.

Welllll....that might actually be interesting, although not necessarily healthy...

I was stating that Pi was the one pushing the promotion of steve coleman, ie. interviews, booking Vanguard etc. generally it is the label that does the promotional push around the time an album is released. My comment was in reference to mainstream validation, which I can't imagine Steve to be seeking, but wouldn't want to speak for him.

[Larry Kart]

To me, the article read like a publicity piece. I guess for Mr. Coleman and his fans, that's a good thing.

When was the last time you read anything in the NYT that was not a publicity piece for something. either a gig or a book or a record or a party or SOMETHING?

These guys do not - for reasons I would not claim to know - do not just wake up one day and say, hmmmm....Don Byas was one helluva tenor player, let me do a column about Don Byas.

Now, if somebody has a book coming out about Don Byas, or if some guy is giving a lecture about Don Byas, or if somebody has discovered a treasure trove of heretofore unknown ANYTHING about Don Byas and wants the world to know about it, then there will be that article that Don Byas was one helluva tenor player.

It is, after all, a news paper, not a collection of gentle musings. To what extent tail wags dog, I don't know, but I do find that I'm never disappointed to just assume that to be so, and wake me when I'm wrong.

A different era, perhaps, but I wrote a whole lot of pieces for the Chicago Tribune from 1978 to 1989 that were entirely generated by my own musical tastes/interests and were the precise equivalent of me waking up one day and thinking "Don Byas was one helluva tenor player, I'll do a column about Don Byas." The piece I wrote about Roscoe's "L-R-G/SII Examples" album was one such; there were many more. Occasionally I might get a "Who's that?/why's that?" question from an editor, but it was my beat and either they trusted me or didn't know enough to care that much or say "Why not Kenny G?," in which case I would have told them why not.

I'll add that if there had been no Don Byas music available to listen to, I might not have written such a piece, though I do recall more than once writing pieces about "Why is there none ( or so little) of this important stuff available?" -- in particular one about all the wonderful important comedy albums that were out of print. But then I knew that a fair number of readers would remember some or most of the albums I was talking about. In general, it was my belief and practice that you could (and should be able to) get away with writing about almost anything in a mass-market publication as long you could set the table swiftly and in an inviting manner.

But I can see that times probably have changed.

[colinmce]

I don't want to turn this into a counter-productive bitching session, but I just can't help myself. I hate the NYT too much.

Big surprise Pi-- the one founded by Wall Street millionaires*-- gets the direct line to the paper. They wouldn't have it any other way. Do they know any other way?

*nothing against them. Great label, assuming they're great guys.

In short, though, Larry has it: times have changed. Organic personal taste is a dying art, no more so than in the press. It's sold in bulk lots now.

[Steve Reynolds]

I could see 20 shows per month like some people I know.

I could travel to Germany and England and Italy to see some musicians I've never seen live.

I could listen to music 40-50 hours a week like I did for a good 10-15 years when I was younger and was living a different lifestyle (ahem)

None of the above is possible or preferable for me to live a sane life so I pick my musical searches pretty carefully these days. If you've followed any of my journeys here and there, you might know I've touched base with a sorts of music.

He had a good 25 minutes in an incredibly charged atmosphere at that concert and he didn't take advantage. In fact, he had my attention when he started playing and didn't by the time he stopped.

I could not listen to Wire, Keith Rowe, The Grateful Dead, Jason Lescalleet, Yo La Tengo or Giant Sand.

I could stop wasting some other time following Captain Sig....

But for music, live especially, I see 10 shows I'd like to see over the next 2 months - but my life will give me 3-5 that I will actually see.

I choose ICP with Mary Halvorsen & Marcus Rojas next Thursday

Vinny Golia with Max Johnson & Tom Rainey on May 23rd

Myra Melford, Mark Dresser & Matt Wilson first set on May 27th. Second set Dresser with Larry Ochs & Vladimir Tarasov.

I guess I could do better but I don't know what could be much better than those 3 nights?

Vijay Iyer?!?!?!

Don't think so

[colinmce]

Maybe Nate Chinen feels like he has a well-developed personal taste. That's very sad for him if he thinks he does.

[JSngry]

Oh, so Pi is the one seeking mainstream validation, eh?

Can't wait to hear that Mike Ladd/Kanye joint.

Welllll....that might actually be interesting, although not necessarily healthy...

I was stating that Pi was the one pushing the promotion of steve coleman, ie. interviews, booking Vanguard etc. generally it is the label that does the promotional push around the time an album is released. My comment was in reference to mainstream validation, which I can't imagine Steve to be seeking, but wouldn't want to speak for him.

Hey. I'm with you on all of that, maybe my poke at the sheer ludicrousness of the notion that Steve Coleman was ready for a total sell out/buy in was not made clear, in which case, my bad.

To me, the article read like a publicity piece. I guess for Mr. Coleman and his fans, that's a good thing.

When was the last time you read anything in the NYT that was not a publicity piece for something. either a gig or a book or a record or a party or SOMETHING?

These guys do not - for reasons I would not claim to know - do not just wake up one day and say, hmmmm....Don Byas was one helluva tenor player, let me do a column about Don Byas.

Now, if somebody has a book coming out about Don Byas, or if some guy is giving a lecture about Don Byas, or if somebody has discovered a treasure trove of heretofore unknown ANYTHING about Don Byas and wants the world to know about it, then there will be that article that Don Byas was one helluva tenor player.

It is, after all, a news paper, not a collection of gentle musings. To what extent tail wags dog, I don't know, but I do find that I'm never disappointed to just assume that to be so, and wake me when I'm wrong.

A different era, perhaps, but I wrote a whole lot of pieces for the Chicago Tribune from 1978 to 1989 that were entirely generated by my own musical tastes/interests and were the precise equivalent of me waking up one day and thinking "Don Byas was one helluva tenor player, I'll do a column about Don Byas." The piece I wrote about Roscoe's "L-R-G/SII Examples" album was one such; there were many more. Occasionally I might get a "Who's that?/why's that?" question from an editor, but it was my beat and either they trusted me or didn't know enough to care that much or say "Why not Kenny G?," in which case I would have told them why not.

I'll add that if there had been no Don Byas music available to listen to, I might not have written such a piece, though I do recall more than once writing pieces about "Why is there none ( or so little) of this important stuff available?" -- in particular one about all the wonderful important comedy albums that were out of print. But then I knew that a fair number of readers would remember some or most of the albums I was talking about. In general, it was my belief and practice that you could (and should be able to) get away with writing about almost anything in a mass-market publication as long you could set the table swiftly and in an inviting manner.

But I can see that times probably have changed.

And that is why I would have read the Chicago Tribune instead of the New York Times between 1978-1989, if I was going to read either.

Feel free to locate and resurrect that piece about the great OOP comedy albums here if you feel like it, please. That's a little side pursuit of mine, looking for those things in the used bins. Would love to see what your list has on it!

[JSngry]

I don't want to turn this into a counter-productive bitching session, but I just can't help myself. I hate the NYT too much.

Big surprise Pi-- the one founded by Wall Street millionaires*-- gets the direct line to the paper. They wouldn't have it any other way. Do they know any other way?

*nothing against them. Great label, assuming they're great guys.

If we kill the rich, who do we replace them with?

Not at all a fan of the NYT, seems to keep getting more absurd with each day, and Nate Chinen rankled my red flags when he came on board at Jazz Times (another thing I no longer bother with) with his introductory hey, I'm a typical young person, I like some jazz but not all of it and do love some other non-jazz things so don't be surprised if I piss you off, I'm like, motherfucker, please, just write your stuff and let my view of you emerge, don't create a "fully-formed type" and then proceed to fill it with all the empty at your disposal, I mean, fuck that, and fuck you too Nate Chinen, just...world gone wrong for me and mine, you and yours, not so much, apparently.

But Pi, yeah, Pi has been doing good work for quite a while now, and if they now feeling the frisky moneydick to move in on the Vanguard & the NYT, then swing that moneydick boys, SWING that moneydick. This is what a label is supposed to do, this is why people dreamed of getting a Columbia contract back in the day, to get that money machine working for them, and if we find all that repulsive, well, hey, I've given up on repusivity not being a simple fact of life, and if repulsivity brings me Henry Threadgill records, then...no such thing as a free lunch, etc. Moneydick IS gonna swing somewhere, that's just what moneydick do. Court composers, etc., always. Moneydick not swung is Moneydick impotency.

There is always a game to play, always.

[Leeway]

To me, the article read like a publicity piece. I guess for Mr. Coleman and his fans, that's a good thing.

Just want to respond to your astute comment Paul. What we're seeing now around Coleman is a full blast PR effort, Tesla-level power, full court press, alley-oop, 4 on 2 at the net, free penalty kick PR effort. When the shills have had their moment, it will be time to sort through the evidence and touch reality.

[JSngry]

Yeah, PR, what a vile bitch she is.

[JSngry]

But wait, Steve Coleman is no Henry Threadgill!

Well, no, but he is Steve Coleman, and there's enough body of evidence and reality to be touched to confirm (objectively (enough)) that as a structuralist/conceptualist, both him and Henry Threadgill are pretty damn unique, thorough, and evolving. Look at the evidence and then look for equivalents/paralles as far as who's dealing with what - specifically - and how. As well as hellacious alto players, yin-yang, but hellacious, still/especially. Coleman's got that very Tristano-ish macromathlogic going off into his own specificlogics and Henry's this guy who carves fire sculptures out of ice, but both, hellacious in terms of both concept and effective applications of techniques to establish same in their playings.

Ok, so much for evidence and reality.

Now it's time for the touching on the realities of the personal taste appreciation of same instead of making it like "I don't dig it that much, it must not be that hip, because if it was that hip I WOULD dig it" (ain't nobody THAT hip, some come close, but ain't nobody THAT hip).

Take it away!!!

[AllenLowe]

1) on a news level, the NY Times still does an excellent job; ain't perfect, but I read it every day.

2) what Larry is talking about is an era before demographics and event promotion were everything. I used to work for a weekly up here, and when I suggested they actually review something that had already occurred, they thought I was completely crazy. Arts articles were ONLY to promo upcoming events. To me this is the ultimate perversion of arts criticism on the journalist level.

[Larry Kart]

Yeah, PR, what a vile bitch she is.

I knew the guy who created that series of ads and this one in particular -- his name was Richard Rand (a terrific, smart, kind-hearted man who sadly is no longer with us) -- and the Threadgill ad had nothing to do with PR. Rather, Richard was a very knowledgable jazz fan, and he thought it would be fun if he could get Threadgill into this ongoing series of ads, many of which used figures from the arts who were of note in their fields but not yet household names -- that "not yet famous but of great worth" pattern being the premise of the ad campaign. But no one would have thought to put Threadgill in there if Richard hadn't proposed doing so -- this because he knew and admired Threadgill's music. IIRC, neither Threadgill nor any of other other people pictured in the series, were paid in money for doing so. Instead, their reward was an ample supply of Dewers, several cartons worth, I think. John Litweiler, who knew Richard better than I did, might know for sure.

1) on a news level, the NY Times still does an excellent job...

No, it does not. For instance, that recent "blockbuster" series on Hillary Clinton is a journalistic disgrace. For IMO convincing evidence of that, go here:

http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com

and scroll down to “The Pseudo-Journalism Rules.”

[Larry Kart]

Ask and ye shall receive, Jim. (Actually I wrote another piece on this subject, which was the piece I was thinking of, but I'm still looking for it).

Tracking Laughs

An Amusing, Critical History Of The Comedy Album

May 22, 1988|By Larry Kart, Entertainment writer.

It`s intended as a reference work and priced accordingly, at $55. But Ronald L. Smith`s hefty new tome ``Comedy on Record: The Complete Critical Discography`` (Garland) is a compulsively readable book, too-an informative and often very amusing trip through the history of recorded American humor.

Amply fulfilling its stated goal, ``Comedy on Record`` lists in alphabetical order, rates from zero to four stars and describes, often in considerable detail, virtually every comedy album ever released in this country-beginning with ``Abbott and Costello on Radio`` (``an excellent compilation of the boys` silliest word-confusion routines,`` the album gets four stars) and concluding, some 730 pages and 2,600 recordings later, with a look at a trio of albums put out by the ``The Zoo,`` a pool of ``obnoxious, pseudo-hip`` Manhattan disc jockeys.

Editor of ``Rave,`` a comedy magazine, and the author of biographies of Bill Cosby and Johnny Carson, the 35-year-old Smith is himself a dedicated collector of comedy records. (``The main reason why this book exists,`` he says, ``is that the author always wanted a book like it.``)

As a consumer guide, ``Comedy on Record`` has two facets. The star ratings reflect Smith`s estimate of each recording`s artistic, historical and entertainment value, while frequent ``collector`s notes`` give his sense of an album`s rarity and its price range in used-record stores. (Most of the albums in ``Comedy on Record`` are, unfortunately or not, out-of-print.)

Aware that ``tastes in comedy vary tremendously,`` and eager to be as objective as possible, Smith says that his ratings ``are intended for that mythical `average reader.` ``

But Smith`s own solid sense of taste manages to emerge in the book`s extensive critical and descriptive passages. And as all that information begins to accumulate, one realizes that ``Comedy on Record`` has become both a useful consumer guide and an informal but detailed history of the field.

Merely by restricting himself to comedy albums, Smith makes an arguable but important historical point: That even though comedy singles of great popularity date back to the 1890s, something changed when the comedy album became a viable proposition in the mid-1950s.

A look at some of the key early figures of the comedy-album era (Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Shelly Berman and Jonathan Winters) suggests that the rise of urban hipness was the chief reason behind the successful marriage of those performers with the phonograph record.

Because Sahl, Lehrer, Bruce and the rest were available to the public in just a few big-city clubs, and intermittently and often in censored form on television, much of the potential audience for their humor could encounter it most easily on record-if, indeed, they could find it anywhere else.

By the same token, this was the time when such overtly ``blue`` comics as Belle Barth, Redd Foxx and Rusty Warren began to sell under-the-table albums in carload lots (5 million albums in all for Warren over the years, estimates Smith), because almost nowhere else in the marketplace could sexual and scatological humor readily be found.

The principle was the same in both cases—supplying a type of entertainment that the rest of the mass media was as yet unprepared to handle. And once comedy albums became a familiar item, the next, perhaps inevitable, step was taken in 1959 by Bob Newhart—a Chicago-area accountant whose taped sketches had been aired on a local radio station but who had never performed in front of an audience when he was signed to make his first ``live`` recording at a Houston, Texas, nightclub.

If Newhart was an extreme case of the ``album`` comedian, the boom in comedy on disc made album sales a major source of income for the likes of Berman and Sahl-while making a hit album was the goal of most would-be hip young comics.

Packaging a comic`s best material, or just preserving a typical night in a club, was the principle behind most comedy albums at first. And when the comic was as brilliant as Sahl, Berman, Bruce or Winters were, who could complain?

But other heads were at work on what might be called ``album humor``—

comedy that was conceived to be heard, not seen, and that could be crafted only in a recording studio.

In that vein, the druggy, late-1960s counterculture humor of the Firesign Theater is what most people recall—although some 10 years before, another San Francisco figure, Henry Jacobs, had come up with an obscure but no-less spacy album, ``The Wide Weird World of Shorty Petterstein.``

The success of the Firesign Theater was again based in part on the general unavailability of their type of stuff anywhere but on record.

But that principle no longer applied to other kinds of American humor that a few years before had seemed far-out. And in a few years more, the same would be true of the surrealistically elliptical Firesign style—which could be heard, in debased or even in superior form, from a number of young radio personalities.

Smith quite rightly suggests that the era of the comedy album is over, a victim of the videocassette. After all, who would want to buy a copy of, say, Robin Williams` ``A Night at the Met`` album or Emo Phillips` ``Live From the Hasty Pudding Theater`` when the same performances of those very visual comics not only are available on video but also can be rented for a dollar or two?

But a vast amount of classic American humor is available only on record—a treasure trove to which Smith`s book is a delightful and enlightening, though not flawless, guide.

Among the few outright errors, both of omission and commission, is the listing, without comment or star rating, of Second City master Severn Darden`s lunatic album ``The Sound of My Own Voice``—and under the name ``Steve Darden`` to boot. (The problem there, Smith explained in a phone conversation, was that he had been unable to obtain the album, while the source that informed him of its existence had garbled Darden`s first name.)

Smith`s decision to omit most so-called ``spoken arts`` or ``novelty``

records was sound, but his inclusion of S.J. Perelman and Ogden Nash albums makes one wish he had found room for the monologues of Ruth Draper—which are wise, funny and beautiful and had a strong influence on Lily Tomlin`s work.

As for Smith`s taste in humor, the only major quarrel I have with him is over the low ratings he gives to ``Vintage Bob and Ray`` (a collection of the sketches the team did for the old ``Monitor`` radio show) and to an album that preserves four episodes of ``Vic and Sade,`` the slice-of-life comedy series that was on the radio from 1932 to 1944.

``Irritatingly slow, inanely repetitious and achingly dull`` is Smith`s response to the oblique, gently demented wit of ``Vic and Sade,`` which usually reduces this writer to tears—while Smith`s estimate of ``Vintage Bob and Ray`` (``to the average listener much of this stuff will seem jokeless and bewildering``) makes me wonder whether, in this case, ``average listener``

isn`t a synonym for ``idiot.``

But Smith`s judgments are on target most of the time, while for anyone who cares about American humor, the wealth of solid (and sometimes bizarre)

information in ``Comedy on Record`` is itself worth the price of the book.

Where else, for instance, can one learn that Don Adams lifted two complete routines from Jackie Mason`s brilliant first album, ``I`m the Greatest Comedian in the World, Only Nobody Knows It Yet,`` discover who wrote Jackie Vernon and David Frye`s material and find out that a weird Kay Ballard parody of ``Autumn Leaves`` was created for her by none other than Lenny Bruce?

[JSngry]

Great PR for Dewar's then. Hipster Appeal!

Shoulda been paid in/with more than whiskey, though. That's kinda Conquering The Wild West-ish, at least at face value.

OTH, Henry doesn't look like he was appalled at any of it, working that game like it ought to be worked.

More vile PR bitchery signalling a desire for musical mediocrity:

I looked for the Columbia stand-alone ad (1/4 page iirc) for Let My Children Hear Music to no avail. Gotta be out ther somewhere, though.

Whoever duke said it to, "it's my job to make records, it' your job to sell them", oh, wait, Duke never played the PR game, did he...he was too pure for anything like that.

[Larry Kart]

And here's the other one:

It`s Not Funny!

American Humor Hasn`t Been Well Preserved

March 22, 1987|By Larry Kart, Entertainment writer.

Popular entertainment is made to be consumed--in vast quantities and as quickly and as completely as possible. And perhaps that is the way things have to be--in order to keep the wheels of the entertainment industry turning and to give our amusements that air of constant change without which they might not be so exciting to us.

But not everything that was made to be enjoyed at the moment deserves to be thrown away, which is why attempts are being made to preserve the best of our popular-culture heritage.

The movies, jazz, comic strips, the music of the Broadway stage--thanks to the efforts of a host of dedicated fans, the past treasures of many of our homegrown arts are once again available, in books and on records, tapes and videocassettes.

But when it comes to the history of American humor, some of our most famous and influential comedians still rest in a cultural limbo--unless their careers happened to coincide with the heyday of radio and thus can be repackaged for the nostalgia trade.

If one wants to know what Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade et al. were like, some of their best work is available on records and tape from companies that specialize in ``the good old days.``

But then, just at the point where Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Jonathan Winters, Shelly Berman, Bob Newhart, Woody Allen and a host of other hip, young comics began to redefine the shape of American humor, the trail of recorded evidence comes almost to an end--even though these performers made the comedy album commercially viable.

Fortunately, Bruce and Allen are well-represented on record today--the former because he remains a cult figure, the latter because his films keep him in the limelight. Otherwise, though, it`s welcome to the wasteland.

There is no Sahl currently available, except for one unrepresentative album, no Winters, no Berman, no Nichols and May, no Second City or Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, and almost no Newhart or Lord Buckley or Bob and Ray--the list goes on and on, even if one thinks only of the most well-known figures and forgets about such eccentric gems as the album Severn Darden recorded for Mercury, Henry Jacobs` ``The Wide Weird World of Shorty Petterstein`` and Del Close and John Brent`s ``How To Speak Hip.``

And the labels that control the rights to those recordings seem to have little or no interest in re-releasing them--either because they don`t know what they`ve got in their vaults, or because they believe, perhaps with good reason, that a Sahl, Winters or Nichols and May album wouldn`t sell in sufficient quantities to make a reissue financially worthwhile.

Polygram, for instance, owns the Verve and Mercury catalogues--two labels that encompass a great many important comedy albums of the 1950s and `60s, including most of Sahl, Winters and Berman and all there is on record of Second City and Nichols and May.

But Tim Rogers, the executive in charge of that portion of the Polygram empire, says that ``we have just tentative (reissue) plans right now.

``Comedy is not my forte,`` Rogers adds, ``but check back with me in a few months. I think we might be doing something.``

Hardly encouraging words. But looking at things from a bottom-line point of view, there is no reason why the major comic performers of the recent past should matter very much to Polygram or any other major label.

Yes, a Nichols and May anthology or collections of the best of Mort Sahl or Jonathan Winters would be significant cultural events.

But while it is possible that such albums would sell, the chance that they would not is what keeps the recorded legacy of so many of our major comedians out of circulation.

So anyone who wants to know what Sahl, Winters and all the rest were really like is faced with the problem of how to break into a locked museum--simply because the record companies that control the rights to this material aren`t interested in putting their comedic treasures on display.

Dealing with dilemmas of just that sort, the Smithsonian Institution has ridden to the rescue in the past--as such savvy, dedicated executives as Martin Williams, J.R. Taylor and James Morris have used the Institution`s quasi-governmental clout to compile ``The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz,`` ``The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics`` and the invaluable, seven-record ``American Popular Song`` anthology.

This time, though, the Smithsonian can`t help--in part because it, too, has to take account of the bottom line.

``I`ve proposed the idea (of an anthology of American comedy on record),`` Williams says, ``but I was told that it didn`t `test well.` What we need is some young idealist who has an independent label.``

Echoing that estimate is veteran producer Richard Bock, who recorded Lord Buckley and Henry Jacobs in the 1950s, when he was with the World-Pacific label.

``It (a comedy reissue series) probably wouldn`t come off,`` Bock says, “unless it was being done by someone from the outside. As soon as, say, Fantasy wants to get stuff from Polygram and Atlantic and Capitol, then the hackles come up. But if the person involved is a respected, neutral source who can say, `The only way to do this properly is to get all you guys to cooperate,` then it might work.``

So in case that ``young idealist`` does exist, let`s explore the possibilities. First, he would have to get his hands on Ronald Smith`s forthcoming book``Comedy on Record`` (Garland Publishing)--a 600-page tome, priced at about $50 and aimed at the library market, that describes, says Smith, ``every comedy record ever made.``

The author of ``Stars of Standup Comedy`` and a biography of Bill Cosby, and the editor of ``Rave`` magazine, Smith has a long list of favorite albums that have gone out of print--including work by Jackie Vernon (``the inspiration for Steven Wright``), the late Herb Shriner (``he has a big reputation among comedians, but who would know it``), Jean Shepherd (``a unique monologist``), Jackie Mason (``very underrated``) and Smith and Dale(``their Jubilee album is the greatest record of vaudeville material ever made``).

So there is, as Smith says, ``an awful lot out there.`` But he also has some horror stories to tell about the cavalier attitude of the record companies that control the rights to this material.

Having spent five years in search of an obscure, Groucho Marx children`s single, ``The Funniest Song in the World,`` Smith finally found that it had been made for an outfit called the Young People`s Record Company.

``I went there,`` Smith says, ``asked if they had a copy in their archives ``and was told that they had destroyed every one because they `needed the space.` Then when I asked if the record will ever be reissued, they said, `It can`t be--because we also destroyed the master. It was our property, and we could do with it as we pleased.```

One hopes that the major labels haven`t been that high-handed with the comedy records they control--because the thought that, say, Capitol-EMI might have lost or destroyed the master of the Mel Brooks-Carl Reiner ``2,000 Year Old Man`` album is enough to send chills up the spine.

But so much for tales of despair and woe and on to a vision of the promised land. If our idealistic producer can acquire the rights to all or most of the best comedy albums ever made, how then should he or she proceed?

Well, some comics--Sahl, Winters, Bruce, Newhart and Richard Pryor for openers--have been gifted and prolific enough to make the idea of collected-works sets attractive. And right here in Chicago, radio station WFMT-FM has on tape all 67 Second City revues--a comedic motherlode of major proportions, provided the rights to issue the best of it could be resolved.

But compiling a comprehensive historical anthology of American comedy on record would seem to be the first thing that needs to be done.

Yes, it would be difficult to assemble. And whatever the dimensions of such an anthology might be, some very hard choices would have to be made.

But if we are serious about preserving one of the richest strains in our cultural heritage, it`s a task that is well worth undertaking. After all, the things we laugh at are among the best possible guides to who we really are. And besides, as Ron Smith says, ``not only does this stuff have tremendous historical value, a lot of it is just plain funny.``

[JSngry]

Ask and ye shall receive, Jim. (Actually I wrote another piece on this subject, which was the piece I was thinking of, but I'm still looking for it).

Tracking Laughs

An Amusing, Critical History Of The Comedy Album

May 22, 1988|By Larry Kart, Entertainment writer.

It`s intended as a reference work and priced accordingly, at $55. But Ronald L. Smith`s hefty new tome ``Comedy on Record: The Complete Critical Discography`` (Garland) is a compulsively readable book, too-an informative and often very amusing trip through the history of recorded American humor.

Amply fulfilling its stated goal, ``Comedy on Record`` lists in alphabetical order, rates from zero to four stars and describes, often in considerable detail, virtually every comedy album ever released in this country-beginning with ``Abbott and Costello on Radio`` (``an excellent compilation of the boys` silliest word-confusion routines,`` the album gets four stars) and concluding, some 730 pages and 2,600 recordings later, with a look at a trio of albums put out by the ``The Zoo,`` a pool of ``obnoxious, pseudo-hip`` Manhattan disc jockeys.

Editor of ``Rave,`` a comedy magazine, and the author of biographies of Bill Cosby and Johnny Carson, the 35-year-old Smith is himself a dedicated collector of comedy records. (``The main reason why this book exists,`` he says, ``is that the author always wanted a book like it.``)

As a consumer guide, ``Comedy on Record`` has two facets. The star ratings reflect Smith`s estimate of each recording`s artistic, historical and entertainment value, while frequent ``collector`s notes`` give his sense of an album`s rarity and its price range in used-record stores. (Most of the albums in ``Comedy on Record`` are, unfortunately or not, out-of-print.)

Aware that ``tastes in comedy vary tremendously,`` and eager to be as objective as possible, Smith says that his ratings ``are intended for that mythical `average reader.` ``

But Smith`s own solid sense of taste manages to emerge in the book`s extensive critical and descriptive passages. And as all that information begins to accumulate, one realizes that ``Comedy on Record`` has become both a useful consumer guide and an informal but detailed history of the field.

Merely by restricting himself to comedy albums, Smith makes an arguable but important historical point: That even though comedy singles of great popularity date back to the 1890s, something changed when the comedy album became a viable proposition in the mid-1950s.

A look at some of the key early figures of the comedy-album era (Tom Lehrer, Stan Freberg, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Shelly Berman and Jonathan Winters) suggests that the rise of urban hipness was the chief reason behind the successful marriage of those performers with the phonograph record.

Because Sahl, Lehrer, Bruce and the rest were available to the public in just a few big-city clubs, and intermittently and often in censored form on television, much of the potential audience for their humor could encounter it most easily on record-if, indeed, they could find it anywhere else.

By the same token, this was the time when such overtly ``blue`` comics as Belle Barth, Redd Foxx and Rusty Warren began to sell under-the-table albums in carload lots (5 million albums in all for Warren over the years, estimates Smith), because almost nowhere else in the marketplace could sexual and scatological humor readily be found.

The principle was the same in both cases—supplying a type of entertainment that the rest of the mass media was as yet unprepared to handle. And once comedy albums became a familiar item, the next, perhaps inevitable, step was taken in 1959 by Bob Newhart—a Chicago-area accountant whose taped sketches had been aired on a local radio station but who had never performed in front of an audience when he was signed to make his first ``live`` recording at a Houston, Texas, nightclub.

If Newhart was an extreme case of the ``album`` comedian, the boom in comedy on disc made album sales a major source of income for the likes of Berman and Sahl-while making a hit album was the goal of most would-be hip young comics.

Packaging a comic`s best material, or just preserving a typical night in a club, was the principle behind most comedy albums at first. And when the comic was as brilliant as Sahl, Berman, Bruce or Winters were, who could complain?

But other heads were at work on what might be called ``album humor``—

comedy that was conceived to be heard, not seen, and that could be crafted only in a recording studio.

In that vein, the druggy, late-1960s counterculture humor of the Firesign Theater is what most people recall—although some 10 years before, another San Francisco figure, Henry Jacobs, had come up with an obscure but no-less spacy album, ``The Wide Weird World of Shorty Petterstein.``

The success of the Firesign Theater was again based in part on the general unavailability of their type of stuff anywhere but on record.

But that principle no longer applied to other kinds of American humor that a few years before had seemed far-out. And in a few years more, the same would be true of the surrealistically elliptical Firesign style—which could be heard, in debased or even in superior form, from a number of young radio personalities.

Smith quite rightly suggests that the era of the comedy album is over, a victim of the videocassette. After all, who would want to buy a copy of, say, Robin Williams` ``A Night at the Met`` album or Emo Phillips` ``Live From the Hasty Pudding Theater`` when the same performances of those very visual comics not only are available on video but also can be rented for a dollar or two?

But a vast amount of classic American humor is available only on record—a treasure trove to which Smith`s book is a delightful and enlightening, though not flawless, guide.

Among the few outright errors, both of omission and commission, is the listing, without comment or star rating, of Second City master Severn Darden`s lunatic album ``The Sound of My Own Voice``—and under the name ``Steve Darden`` to boot. (The problem there, Smith explained in a phone conversation, was that he had been unable to obtain the album, while the source that informed him of its existence had garbled Darden`s first name.)

Smith`s decision to omit most so-called ``spoken arts`` or ``novelty``

records was sound, but his inclusion of S.J. Perelman and Ogden Nash albums makes one wish he had found room for the monologues of Ruth Draper—which are wise, funny and beautiful and had a strong influence on Lily Tomlin`s work.

As for Smith`s taste in humor, the only major quarrel I have with him is over the low ratings he gives to ``Vintage Bob and Ray`` (a collection of the sketches the team did for the old ``Monitor`` radio show) and to an album that preserves four episodes of ``Vic and Sade,`` the slice-of-life comedy series that was on the radio from 1932 to 1944.

``Irritatingly slow, inanely repetitious and achingly dull`` is Smith`s response to the oblique, gently demented wit of ``Vic and Sade,`` which usually reduces this writer to tears—while Smith`s estimate of ``Vintage Bob and Ray`` (``to the average listener much of this stuff will seem jokeless and bewildering``) makes me wonder whether, in this case, ``average listener``

isn`t a synonym for ``idiot.``

But Smith`s judgments are on target most of the time, while for anyone who cares about American humor, the wealth of solid (and sometimes bizarre)

information in ``Comedy on Record`` is itself worth the price of the book.

Where else, for instance, can one learn that Don Adams lifted two complete routines from Jackie Mason`s brilliant first album, ``I`m the Greatest Comedian in the World, Only Nobody Knows It Yet,`` discover who wrote Jackie Vernon and David Frye`s material and find out that a weird Kay Ballard parody of ``Autumn Leaves`` was created for her by none other than Lenny Bruce?

And here's the other one:

It`s Not Funny!

American Humor Hasn`t Been Well Preserved

March 22, 1987|By Larry Kart, Entertainment writer.

Popular entertainment is made to be consumed--in vast quantities and as quickly and as completely as possible. And perhaps that is the way things have to be--in order to keep the wheels of the entertainment industry turning and to give our amusements that air of constant change without which they might not be so exciting to us.

But not everything that was made to be enjoyed at the moment deserves to be thrown away, which is why attempts are being made to preserve the best of our popular-culture heritage.

The movies, jazz, comic strips, the music of the Broadway stage--thanks to the efforts of a host of dedicated fans, the past treasures of many of our homegrown arts are once again available, in books and on records, tapes and videocassettes.

But when it comes to the history of American humor, some of our most famous and influential comedians still rest in a cultural limbo--unless their careers happened to coincide with the heyday of radio and thus can be repackaged for the nostalgia trade.

If one wants to know what Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Vic and Sade et al. were like, some of their best work is available on records and tape from companies that specialize in ``the good old days.``

But then, just at the point where Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Jonathan Winters, Shelly Berman, Bob Newhart, Woody Allen and a host of other hip, young comics began to redefine the shape of American humor, the trail of recorded evidence comes almost to an end--even though these performers made the comedy album commercially viable.

Fortunately, Bruce and Allen are well-represented on record today--the former because he remains a cult figure, the latter because his films keep him in the limelight. Otherwise, though, it`s welcome to the wasteland.

There is no Sahl currently available, except for one unrepresentative album, no Winters, no Berman, no Nichols and May, no Second City or Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, and almost no Newhart or Lord Buckley or Bob and Ray--the list goes on and on, even if one thinks only of the most well-known figures and forgets about such eccentric gems as the album Severn Darden recorded for Mercury, Henry Jacobs` ``The Wide Weird World of Shorty Petterstein`` and Del Close and John Brent`s ``How To Speak Hip.``

And the labels that control the rights to those recordings seem to have little or no interest in re-releasing them--either because they don`t know what they`ve got in their vaults, or because they believe, perhaps with good reason, that a Sahl, Winters or Nichols and May album wouldn`t sell in sufficient quantities to make a reissue financially worthwhile.

Polygram, for instance, owns the Verve and Mercury catalogues--two labels that encompass a great many important comedy albums of the 1950s and `60s, including most of Sahl, Winters and Berman and all there is on record of Second City and Nichols and May.

But Tim Rogers, the executive in charge of that portion of the Polygram empire, says that ``we have just tentative (reissue) plans right now.

``Comedy is not my forte,`` Rogers adds, ``but check back with me in a few months. I think we might be doing something.``

Hardly encouraging words. But looking at things from a bottom-line point of view, there is no reason why the major comic performers of the recent past should matter very much to Polygram or any other major label.

Yes, a Nichols and May anthology or collections of the best of Mort Sahl or Jonathan Winters would be significant cultural events.

But while it is possible that such albums would sell, the chance that they would not is what keeps the recorded legacy of so many of our major comedians out of circulation.

So anyone who wants to know what Sahl, Winters and all the rest were really like is faced with the problem of how to break into a locked museum--simply because the record companies that control the rights to this material aren`t interested in putting their comedic treasures on display.

Dealing with dilemmas of just that sort, the Smithsonian Institution has ridden to the rescue in the past--as such savvy, dedicated executives as Martin Williams, J.R. Taylor and James Morris have used the Institution`s quasi-governmental clout to compile ``The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz,`` ``The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics`` and the invaluable, seven-record ``American Popular Song`` anthology.

This time, though, the Smithsonian can`t help--in part because it, too, has to take account of the bottom line.

``I`ve proposed the idea (of an anthology of American comedy on record),`` Williams says, ``but I was told that it didn`t `test well.` What we need is some young idealist who has an independent label.``

Echoing that estimate is veteran producer Richard Bock, who recorded Lord Buckley and Henry Jacobs in the 1950s, when he was with the World-Pacific label.

``It (a comedy reissue series) probably wouldn`t come off,`` Bock says, “unless it was being done by someone from the outside. As soon as, say, Fantasy wants to get stuff from Polygram and Atlantic and Capitol, then the hackles come up. But if the person involved is a respected, neutral source who can say, `The only way to do this properly is to get all you guys to cooperate,` then it might work.``

So in case that ``young idealist`` does exist, let`s explore the possibilities. First, he would have to get his hands on Ronald Smith`s forthcoming book``Comedy on Record`` (Garland Publishing)--a 600-page tome, priced at about $50 and aimed at the library market, that describes, says Smith, ``every comedy record ever made.``

The author of ``Stars of Standup Comedy`` and a biography of Bill Cosby, and the editor of ``Rave`` magazine, Smith has a long list of favorite albums that have gone out of print--including work by Jackie Vernon (``the inspiration for Steven Wright``), the late Herb Shriner (``he has a big reputation among comedians, but who would know it``), Jean Shepherd (``a unique monologist``), Jackie Mason (``very underrated``) and Smith and Dale(``their Jubilee album is the greatest record of vaudeville material ever made``).

So there is, as Smith says, ``an awful lot out there.`` But he also has some horror stories to tell about the cavalier attitude of the record companies that control the rights to this material.

Having spent five years in search of an obscure, Groucho Marx children`s single, ``The Funniest Song in the World,`` Smith finally found that it had been made for an outfit called the Young People`s Record Company.

``I went there,`` Smith says, ``asked if they had a copy in their archives ``and was told that they had destroyed every one because they `needed the space.` Then when I asked if the record will ever be reissued, they said, `It can`t be--because we also destroyed the master. It was our property, and we could do with it as we pleased.```

One hopes that the major labels haven`t been that high-handed with the comedy records they control--because the thought that, say, Capitol-EMI might have lost or destroyed the master of the Mel Brooks-Carl Reiner ``2,000 Year Old Man`` album is enough to send chills up the spine.

But so much for tales of despair and woe and on to a vision of the promised land. If our idealistic producer can acquire the rights to all or most of the best comedy albums ever made, how then should he or she proceed?

Well, some comics--Sahl, Winters, Bruce, Newhart and Richard Pryor for openers--have been gifted and prolific enough to make the idea of collected-works sets attractive. And right here in Chicago, radio station WFMT-FM has on tape all 67 Second City revues--a comedic motherlode of major proportions, provided the rights to issue the best of it could be resolved.

But compiling a comprehensive historical anthology of American comedy on record would seem to be the first thing that needs to be done.

Yes, it would be difficult to assemble. And whatever the dimensions of such an anthology might be, some very hard choices would have to be made.

But if we are serious about preserving one of the richest strains in our cultural heritage, it`s a task that is well worth undertaking. After all, the things we laugh at are among the best possible guides to who we really are. And besides, as Ron Smith says, ``not only does this stuff have tremendous historical value, a lot of it is just plain funny.``

Thank you. THIS is the type of content I look forward to on this forum. Thoughtful considerations of angles - and subjects - not always considered, thoughtfully or otherwise.

This and the PR, of course.

[Guy Berger]

FWIW I have no beef with Iyer or Coleman though I'm largely unfamiliar with both of their music. Which of the more recent Coleman records might you recommend?

I don't have an encyclopedic collection - but a long time ago JSngry (I think) recommended the live album RESISTANCE IS FUTILE and it's outstanding. Of the first three Pi albums (the new, fourth one is currently being delivered), I thought the 3rd (FUNCTIONAL ARRYTHMIAS) is the best.

To me, the article read like a publicity piece. I guess for Mr. Coleman and his fans, that's a good thing.

Just want to respond to your astute comment Paul. What we're seeing now around Coleman is a full blast PR effort, Tesla-level power, full court press, alley-oop, 4 on 2 at the net, free penalty kick PR effort. When the shills have had their moment, it will be time to sort through the evidence and touch reality.

Well, if this is really happening... that's great news and I'm very happy for Steve and the great music he's producing!

[xybert]

Man, for me Steve Coleman and his music are cause for celebration. Say what you want about Lehman, Iyer, Moran, Finlayson and whoever else but Coleman's been at it for decades and whether you like his music or not i believe that he can stand up to whatever scrutiny you want to throw at him. Big time.

Maybe i'm part of the dumbing down and lowering of society's standards for not raging at an article like this, but my filter just automatically kicks in and i take what i need from it without much stress. I have so much respect for Coleman. Promotional blitz? I don't see it, but Steve Coleman, a well established artist that has been doing his thing for decades has a new album out, so i'd expect there to be some words written.

Some of us here are really excited about the new album. I've really only listened in depth to the albums from 2006's Weaving Symbolics onwards. That just happens to be where i got on, after hearing a track from it on Coleman's Myspace page, and i've been hooked ever since. Some might have been following longer than me, but my point is those that have been following along in real time, that are excited to hear what is next, might have a different experience to those picking it up cold. And that's not to say that you're not approaching it with an open mind, but for humans context generally plays a part.

So yeah, i'll be listening to this album a lot and if i happen to be online i might post about it in the listening thread. I hope that doesn't get twisted in to being interpreted as some street team hype train BS or whatever. These are the days of our lives and this album is an event for me.

Edited May 2, 2015 by xybert

[jlhoots]

Tell me about the "vocals" on the new (S. Coleman) CD, & then I'll decide whether to part with $ for it.

FWIW, I love Functional Arrhythmias.

Edited May 2, 2015 by jlhoots

[HutchFan]

Man, for me Steve Coleman and his music are cause for celebration. Say what you want about Lehman, Iyer, Moran, Finlayson and whoever else but Coleman's been at it for decades and whether you like his music or not i believe that he can stand up to whatever scrutiny you want to throw at him. Big time.

Maybe i'm part of the dumbing down and lowering of society's standards for not raging at an article like this, but my filter just automatically kicks in and i take what i need from it without much stress. I have so much respect for Coleman. Promotional blitz? I don't see it, but Steve Coleman, a well established artist that has been doing his thing for decades has a new album out, so i'd expect there to be some words written.

Some of us here are really excited about the new album. I've really only listened in depth to the albums from 2006's Weaving Symbolics onwards. That just happens to be where i got on, after hearing a track from it on Coleman's Myspace page, and i've been hooked ever since. Some might have been following longer than me, but my point is those that have been following along in real time, that are excited to hear what is next, might have a different experience to those picking it up cold. And that's not to say that you're not approaching it with an open mind, but for humans context generally plays a part.

So yeah, i'll be listening to this album a lot and if i happen to be online i might post about it in the listening thread. I hope that doesn't get twisted in to being interpreted as some street team hype train BS or whatever. These are the days of our lives and this album is an event for me.

YEAH. Good for you, xybert! I'm not even a Steve Coleman fan -- I'm not really familiar with his music -- but I'm glad that you're sticking up for him!!!

Sheesh, a simple article about Steve Coleman -- and suddenly there's a big storm of HATE -- about the artist and the writer.

Good grief, people!

[uli]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAMYl6kJkjo

[jcam_44]

Tell me about the "vocals" on the new (S. Coleman) CD, & then I'll decide whether to part with $ for it.

FWIW, I love Functional Arrhythmias.

I would classify the "vocals" as non-intrusive. The voice used as an instrument.

[jlhoots]

Tell me about the "vocals" on the new (S. Coleman) CD, & then I'll decide whether to part with $ for it.

FWIW, I love Functional Arrhythmias.

I would classify the "vocals" as non-intrusive. The voice used as an instrument.

Somewhat, but not completely, reassuring.