Mort Sahl, R.I.P.

[JSngry]

...and I guess he has.

RIP and my god, where are the sharp minds these days?

[mjzee]

A type of jazz, right?  https://www.npr.org/2021/10/26/709562400/mort-sahl-a-political-satirist-and-stand-up-comedy-pioneer-has-died-at-94?fbclid=IwAR0LNPZZpoglgM15UJxqbPAk7Hl-DtbjetZdiek8jVc09kQy01Qn8DiK17U

[Teasing the Korean]

He's been alive this whole time?!?

RIP.

[JSngry]

Sorry, screwed the pooch when trying to combine an earlier thread I had started in Miscellaneous Non-Political (which in retrospect is cosmically ironic!) with this newer thread in the appropriate Artists forum....the first post is mine but this is not my thread, so sorry...

 

25 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

He's been alive this whole time?!?

RIP.

My first reaction as well, but...Fantasy Records! 1958, pre-Verve!

[BillF]

My reaction to the news was "How old could he have been?", as my jazz-loving student friends and I used to listen to his album, along with other recent releases like Mingus-A-Um!!

[Dub Modal]

RIP

He worked as one of DA Jim Garrison's investigators in the lead up to Clay Shaw's trial in NO. Garrison was subsequently tried on trumped up corruption charges and was defeated by Harry Connick Sr. in the following election. Another jazz connection there. 

[JSngry]

Oh, he got obsessive about the JFK assassination, the Warren Report, and then Garrison. It derailed his career, damn near killed it, not unlike how Lenny Bruce got obsessed with his trials on stage.

He eventually went kinda "hard right", but in a Stan Kenton way (or Clint Eastwood way)...always a sharp mind, even as he continued his search for somebody/something to believe in. Him & Dennis Miller would've made one helluva pairing.

To me, his perspicuity is summed up most succinctly in his line about

"Nixon’s the kind of guy that if you were drowning fifty feet off shore, he’d throw you a thirty foot rope. Then Kissinger would go on TV the next night and say that the President had met you more than half-way."

That's a great joke, structurally, you can make it about anybody for whom it fits, but in this case, it was about Nixon. and it hit the bullseye.

 

[felser]

Brilliant line.  Sahl was 94.  I've never actually really heard him.  I've made a point of picking up collections of comedians from that era (Lenny Bruce before he melted down, Jonathan Winters, Shelley Berman, Bob Newhart, Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer), but some of interest to me, such as Sahl, Steve Allen, and Dick Gregory have not been well-represented on CD reissues for whatever reason.  

[mjazzg]

Probably not the time to say I've never heard of him but the Guardian are running the Press Assoc. piece 

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/oct/27/funniest-of-them-all-tributes-paid-to-mort-sahl-after-death-aged-94

[felser]

11 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

Probably not the time to say I've never heard of him but the Guardian are running the Press Assoc. piece 

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/oct/27/funniest-of-them-all-tributes-paid-to-mort-sahl-after-death-aged-94

Comedians often don't translate well across countries, and Sahl's heyday was 60 years ago, so understandable.

[JSngry]

7 minutes ago, felser said:

Brilliant line.  Sahl was 94.  I've never actually really heard him.  I've made a point of picking up collections of comedians from that era (Lenny Bruce before he melted down, Jonathan Winters, Shelley Berman, Bob Newhart, Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer), but some of interest to me, such as Sahl, Steve Allen, and Dick Gregory have not been well-represented on CD reissues for whatever reason.  

Sahl had a reissue of some (maybe not all?) of his Verve stuff by an outfit called Laugh.com No idea what's still available. They have a website, but I can't get anything to do there.

A "problem" with Sahl is that he was always "topical, so if you don't get the references/names/situations involved in the joke, it could well go over your head today. But the jokes are REALLY well-structured, even the rants, often enough.

Dick Gregory is do-able on CD though, although not always cheaply. But the product is out there.: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=divk+gregory&i=popular&ref=nb_sb_noss