A massive four-CD set, not only including oodles of material from all facets of his recorded work (largely from the 1950s and 1960s, although it goes all the way up to the late 1990s), but also a video of about twenty minutes length with his humorous television commercials. The first disc is... [+] Expand

A massive four-CD set, not only including oodles of material from all facets of his recorded work (largely from the 1950s and 1960s, although it goes all the way up to the late 1990s), but also a video of about twenty minutes length with his humorous television commercials. The first disc is devoted to his musical parodies from the 1950s, and on both an entertainment and significance level, it's the best of the four. Besides his debut hit "John & Marsha," there are fairly funny and expertly produced, if sometimes mean-spirited, spoofs of Mitch Miller, Les Paul, the Platters, "Rock Island Line," Harry Belafonte, Lawrence Welk, and most famously Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel," with its out-of-control echo chambers; there are even a couple of previously unissued 1953 takeoffs on popular TV hosts. The satire of rock'n'roll crosses the line to animosity sometimes, most infamously on "The Old Payola Roll Blues." Disc two gets more into satire of media stars and programs, including some of his radio shows and his controversial (to Capitol Records, anyway) take on Joseph McCarthy, "Point of Order." Disc three is mostly devoted to material from both volumes of his United States of America history, and also has his 1959 EP "Omaha!, " a composition that was also an extended-length commercial. Disc four wraps up with no less than 57 of his radio commercials, all previously unreleased. Of course you'd have to be kind of nuts to listen to all or much of this at once. It's funny, to varying degrees, and kind of a link between Mad magazine and Monty Python, but much closer to Mad magazine. The commercials in particular might have more value as cultural artifacts than as classics of recorded comedy. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide [-] Collapse

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