Comedy Artists
Genre: Comedy
Decades: 3840
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The most groundbreaking and daring comic talent since the heyday of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor was also the most controversial. Like Dick Gregory before him, Pryor explored issues of racial inequity with great insight and depth, tackling taboo topics that mainstream white America would have preferred swept permanently under the rug. But while... [+] Read More
The most groundbreaking and daring comic talent since the heyday of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor was also the most controversial. Like Dick Gregory before him, Pryor explored issues of racial inequity with great insight and depth, tackling taboo topics that mainstream white America would have preferred swept permanently under the rug. But while Gregory used the standup stage as a pulpit to preach messages of peace, equality, and social change, Pryor seethed with bitterness and anger; his was the foul-mouthed voice of the growing Black Power movement, uncompromisingly decrying the continued oppression of the conservative establishment while reporting on the African-American experience -- warts and all -- with honesty and conviction.
Richard Pryor was born December 1, 1940, in Peoria, IL. His early life was confusing and difficult; raised in the brothel owned by his grandmother, Pryor's mother was herself a prostitute, and his father was a pimp. Living in the worst slum in the Peoria area, he often found himself the target of gang violence; his sense of humor was his only defense mechanism, and Pryor soon developed a reputation as a class cut-up. By the age of 14, he was performing with a local amateur dramatic group, and in 1964 he relocated to New York City to pursue a career in standup. At the outset of his career, Pryor struggled to find his own voice: on his self-titled 1968 debut, he slavishly imitated the rhythms and themes of Bill Cosby on routines like "Adam and Eve" and the nostalgic "Girls," and only a bit about a black superhero -- dubbed "Supernigger" -- offered any hint of things to come.
Pryor continued performing safe, toothless comedy for another couple of years, but during a 1970 Las Vegas appearance he snapped; in the middle of the routine, he rhetorically asked, "What am I doing here?" and walked offstage, effectively going underground and playing only small black clubs for much of the early part of the decade. This period, along with his late-'60s work, served as the basis for an onslaught of LPs issued by the Laff label throughout the 1970s; while a part of his official discography, the material found on albums like 1977's Are You Serious???, 1978's Black Ben the Blacksmith, and 1980's Insane was already many years old by the time of the records' release. Not surprisingly, Pryor later disowned the albums.
By the time Pryor resurfaced in 1974 with the Top 40 hit That Nigger's Crazy, he was a changed man; no longer did mainstream concerns force him to suppress his bitterness toward the white establishment -- now he took on issues of racism with fire-breathing intensity, regardless of the consequences. Much to the surprise of many pundits, however, Pryor's career soared -- black audiences adored him, of course, but liberal white audiences lined up for his concert appearances as well. 1975's Is It Something I Said? fell just shy of the Top Ten on the strength of routines like "When Your Woman Leaves You," a poignant assessment of Pryor's well-publicized series of marriages and divorces, while the centerpiece of 1976's Bicentennial Nigger explored two centuries of white oppression with incendiary fury. Major roles in a pair of 1977 features, Silver Streak and Greased Lightning, preceded the debut of The Richard Pryor Show, a variety series for NBC; from the program's inception, he and the network battled constantly over the show's perceived "bad taste," and its run lasted only five weeks.
Pryor's life was spinning rapidly out of control; while still smarting from the NBC debacle, he made headlines that New Year's Eve for drunkenly shooting up his wife's car. The incident became the basis of his opening routine for 1978's Wanted: Live in Concert, an ambitious two-record set that led to the 1979 feature Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, a highly successful film document of his stage act. As his career again looked on the upswing, however, tragedy struck: in June 1980 Pryor nearly burned to death, a mishap variously attributed to a freebasing accident and a misguided attempt at suicide. A long recovery period followed, as he struggled both to kick his longtime drug habit and rediscover his creative energies; a trip to Africa ultimately renewed him spiritually, and he returned to America a new man, one who declared he would never use the word "nigger" again.
It was a wiser, more mature Pryor who resurfaced in 1982 with the film and album Live on the Sunset Strip, in which he discussed both his brush with death and his odyssey to Africa. His humor turned gentler and more introspective, and while his standup retained its edge, his career as a film actor suffered through lightweight, pedestrian comedies like The Toy, Brewster's Millions, and Critical Condition. 1983's Here and Now was his final concert film and album; three years later, Pryor was struck with multiple sclerosis, effectively ending his career as a standup performer. He appeared in a few more film roles before the disease began to cripple him; following 1991's dismal Another You, he largely disappeared from sight. Finally, in 1997 a wheelchair-bound Pryor made a brief appearance in David Lynch's Lost Highway. An autobiography, Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences, was published in 1995. Five years later, Rhino addressed the sad state of Pryor's back catalog with the release of ...And It's Deep, Too!: The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992). The critical and commercial success of the box set later prompted Rhino to release The Richard Pryor Anthology: 1968-1992 (a two-CD compilation of highlights from ...And It's Deep, Too!), and Evolution/Revolution: The Early Years (1966-1974) (another double-disc set that gathered much of the stray material used to compile the albums released by Laff).
Pryor passed away on December 10, 2005, finally succumbing to his long bout with multiple sclerosis. He suffered a heart attack and died in a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 65. He was widely commemorated as an iconoclastic comedian who transcended barriers of race and opened the door for such followers as Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Bernie Mac, and Dave Chappelle. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 384
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In the wake of Shelly Berman's successful sit-down-on-a-stool vignettes, it was inevitable that a male/female duo would emerge from the pack mining similar turf and the team of Nichols and May embodied it perfectly. Eventually splitting up by the early '60s, Elaine May became involved with the Broadway theatre crowd while Nichols has carved out... [+] Read More
In the wake of Shelly Berman's successful sit-down-on-a-stool vignettes, it was inevitable that a male/female duo would emerge from the pack mining similar turf and the team of Nichols and May embodied it perfectly. Eventually splitting up by the early '60s, Elaine May became involved with the Broadway theatre crowd while Nichols has carved out a successful career as a motion picture director. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide [-] Hide
Genre: Comedy
Decades: 384
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When once asked to describe jazz, trumpet legend Miles Davis sarcastically-but saliently-replied, "You can sweat it down to four words: Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker." Applying that same old school-new school trailblazer to comedy is somewhat more problematic. A number of great early comics could stand in for the Armstrong entry, among them... [+] Read More
When once asked to describe jazz, trumpet legend Miles Davis sarcastically-but saliently-replied, "You can sweat it down to four words: Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker." Applying that same old school-new school trailblazer to comedy is somewhat more problematic. A number of great early comics could stand in for the Armstrong entry, among them Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, and George Burns. But in choosing the 'Charlie Parker of comedy'-by that, meaning the one who blazed the modern day trail, influencing all that came after him, the answer is simple and irrefutable: Lenny Bruce. He was the genre's reckless visionary, the one who defied conventions, the law, and the system, and-like most visionaries-was taken down by it all in the end. Lenny changed the whole ballgame; no longer would comics have to come out in a cute little suit and tell cute little mother-in-law jokes or feel like they were 'working dirty' if they talked openly about sex and other taboo subjects. The shoot from the hip and tell the truth work of Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Richard Lewis and myriad other modern day comics could never have existed without Lenny first storming the citadel and tearing down the conventional walls of comedy presentation back in the 50s. He was the original rebel in this marvelous amalgam he invented, taking his Borsch Belt and strip joint background and spot welding it to a hipster enlightenment. A style that took previously taboo subjects and not only dumped them all in the audiences' lap, but did it with a creative verve that made him the wildest, the hippest, the most controversial, and simply the best comic trotting the boards. Those lucky enough to have caught Lenny on an inspired night said it was like a roller coaster ride inside a person's head, free association ramblings streaming out in a virtual torrent of ideas. Jumping from 50s jazz hipster slang to a liberal dosage of Yiddish vernacular that sounded like code to the uninitiated to sometimes impish little boy charm letting you in on a big, dark secret, no comic created intimacy with an audience in almost any environment-conclusively proven in his amazing performance at Carnegie Hall-than Lenny Bruce.
Although he rode in on the crest of that late 50s wave known as the "sick comics," Bruce distanced himself from the pack-both in ideas, outlook, and demeanor-quickly proving that he had much more to offer philosophically than some tasteless one liners whose comedic value was usually based on shock value alone. Not that the early days Lenny wasn't above drawing on items in the news to pull a 'quickie sickie' observation to get a fast laugh, but the simple fact that Bruce quickly outgrew the medium that launched him was already apparent by the live recorded performances he was laying down that were appearing on albums by 1959 and 1960. While aMort Sahl (the most popular and digestible of the new comics) would take aim at political sacred cows, Lenny came from a hipster's background and-fueled by endless nights of honing his craft in California strip joints where the audience couldn't have cared less what he said or did-was out to violate the night club taboos by dealing with sex, race, religion, using words that had seldom been uttered on cabaret stages up to that point.
Bruce was a brilliant satirist and the object of his early pieces was quite often show business itself, clearly a signal that he was more than willing to bite the hand that was feeding him. Exposing the seediness, pomposity, and insensitivity that existed then-as now-in show business via brilliant routines like "The Palladium," "Hitler and the M.C.A.," "The Tribunal," and "Religions, Inc.," it was obvious that Lenny was going places that no comic had dared to go in front of an audience. Exposing racism and bigotry in routines like "White Collar Drunks," "How To Relax Your Colored Friends At Parties" and his brilliant satire of the movie "The Defiant Ones" was another bold step, paving the way for message comedians like Dick Gregory (and later, Richard Pryor) to find their voice and audience. His work went through three basic phases of development, starting with the bits and routines that lampooned show business conventions and often caused audiences to walk out. Tiring of the sheer drudgery of regurgitating the same material on a nightly basis, Lenny entered his second phase, abandoning all format onstage, free forming his entire performance. His final phase at the end of his career were slow moving, obsessive shows centered around the contradictions in the American legal system. As Lenny kept testing the boundaries of what could be talked about on a stage, other comics heard his basic message and rethought their entire game plan. In effect, he invented modern day comedy as we know it. The concept of a comedy concert back then was unthinkable. Up to that time, comics worked in clubs (bars, saloons, and strip joints) or as part of a stage show. Putting a comedian in a theater all by their lonesome for an entire evening seemed like a crazy idea until Lenny's work justified such a gamble, now a presentation format common to any comedian popular enough to fill a large building.
But with the trailblazing came the heat. The police busted him at the Jazz Workshop in 1961 for violating the California Obscenity Code. As Paul Krassner said, "Lenny fought for the right to say on a nightclub stage what he felt free to say in his own living room." Bruce's drug use was widely known throughout the business, and after his acquittal on obscenity charges, he was deported from Britain, barred from performing in Australia, busted for either narcotics possession or obscenity in Los Angeles, Chicago, Hollywood, New York, and San Francisco. In 1964 he had himself declared a legally bankrupt pauper, virtually unable to work anywhere (hence the move into 'concerts'). By this time, the lone benefactor keeping him afloat was rock'n'roll producer Phil Spector, who was the last person to record him for public consumption. In August of 1966, with his career and finances in tatters, Lenny Bruce died of a heroin overdose at the age of 40. His life story became a movie starring Dustin Hoffman. And his visionary work changed the world of comedy forever. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 0
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 7168
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The foremost song parodist of the MTV era, "Weird Al" Yankovic carried the torch of musical humor more proudly and more successfully than any performer since Allan Sherman. In the world of novelty records -- a genre noted for its extensive back catalog of flashes-in-the-pan and one-hit wonders -- Yankovic was king, scoring smash after smash over... [+] Read More
The foremost song parodist of the MTV era, "Weird Al" Yankovic carried the torch of musical humor more proudly and more successfully than any performer since Allan Sherman. In the world of novelty records -- a genre noted for its extensive back catalog of flashes-in-the-pan and one-hit wonders -- Yankovic was king, scoring smash after smash over the course of an enduring career which found him topically mocking everything from new wave to gangsta rap.
Alfred Matthew Yankovic was born October 23, 1959, in Lynwood, CA. An only child, he began playing the accordion at age seven, following in the tradition of polka star Frank Yankovic (no relation); in his early teens he became an avid fan of the Dr. Demento show, drawing inspiration from the parodies of Allan Sherman as well as the musical comedy of Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, and Stan Freberg. In 1973 Demento spoke at Yankovic's school, where the 13 year old passed the radio host a demo tape of home recordings; three years later, Demento played Yankovic's "Belvedere Cruising" -- an accordion-driven pop song written about the family's Plymouth -- on the air, and his career was launched.
Yankovic quickly emerged as a staple of the Demento play list, recording a prodigious amount of tongue-in-cheek material throughout his high-school career. After graduation, he studied architecture; while attending California Polytechnic State University, he also joined the staff of the campus radio station, first adopting the nickname "Weird Al" and spinning a mixture of novelty and new wave hits. In 1979, the success of the Knack's monster hit "My Sharona" inspired Yankovic to record a parody dubbed "My Bologna"; not only was the song a smash with Demento fans, but it even found favor with the Knack themselves, who convinced their label, Capitol, to issue the satire as a single.
After graduating in 1980, Yankovic cut "Another One Rides the Bus," a parody of Queen's chart-topping "Another One Bites the Dust" recorded live in Dr. Demento's studios; the song became an underground hit, and Yankovic followed it up with "I Love Rocky Road," a satire of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts' "I Love Rock 'n Roll." After hooking up with noted session guitarist and producer Rick Derringer, he signed to Scotti Bros., which issued his debut LP, "Weird Al" Yankovic, in 1983. The album featured the song "Ricky," a tune inspired equally by Toni Basil's hit "Mickey" and the I Love Lucy television series; issued as a single, it hit the Top 100 charts, and its accompanying video became a staple of the fledgling MTV network.
Ultimately, much of Yankovic's success resulted from his skilled use of music video, a medium not available in the era of Spike Jones or Allan Sherman; suddenly, not only could records themselves serve as parody fodder, but their video clips were ripe for satire as well. Additionally, MTV firmly established Yankovic's public persona; sporting garish Hawaiian shirts, frizzy hair, and an arsenal of goofy mannerisms, he cut a distinctly bizarre figure which he consistently exploited to maximum comic effect. After Michael Jackson's "Beat It" became the most acclaimed video in the medium's brief history, Yankovic recorded "Eat It" for his sophomore effort, 1984's "Weird" Al Yankovic in 3-D; the "Eat It" video, which mocked the "Beat It" clip scene-for-scene, became an MTV smash, and the Grammy-winning single reached the Top 15.
In addition to "Eat It," In 3-D also launched the minor hits "King of Suede" (a rewrite of the Police's "King of Pain") and "I Lost on Jeopardy" (a send-up of the Greg Kihn Band's "Jeopardy"), as well as "Polkas on 45," the first in a series of medleys of pop hits recast as polka numbers. Dare to Be Stupid, the first comedy record ever released in the new compact disc format, followed in 1985, and featured "Like a Surgeon," a takeoff of the Madonna hit "Like a Virgin." Like its predecessor, Dare to Be Stupid went gold, but 1986's Polka Party! fared poorly and charted only briefly, prompting many to write off Yankovic's career.
However, in 1988, Yankovic returned with the platinum-selling Even Worse, its title and album cover a reference to Michael Jackson's recent Bad LP. "I'm Fat," the first single and video, also parodied the lavish Martin Scorsese-directed clip for Jackson's hit "Bad"; shot on the same subway set used by Jackson, the video -- which portrayed Yankovic as a grotesquely obese tough guy -- won him his second Grammy. The next year, he starred in the feature film UHF, which he also co-wrote; a soundtrack appeared as well.
After an extended period of silence, he returned in 1992 with Off the Deep End, which featured the Top 40 hit "Smells Like Nirvana," a send-up of Nirvana's landmark single "Smells Like Teen Spirit." After 1993's Alapalooza, he resurfaced in 1996 with Bad Hair Day, his highest-charting record to date thanks to the success of the single "Amish Paradise," a takeoff of the Coolio hit "Gangsta's Paradise." The follow-up, Running With Scissors, appeared in 1999. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 7680
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The multipurpose standup comic/actor first rose to fame as the delightful Mork from Ork on the TV show Mork and Mindy, and he rode that show to fame on cable TV specials and several films, including The World According to Garp, Good Morning, Vietnam, Hook and Mrs. Doubtfire. Using a wide assemblage of voices and movements, Williams is one of the... [+] Read More
The multipurpose standup comic/actor first rose to fame as the delightful Mork from Ork on the TV show Mork and Mindy, and he rode that show to fame on cable TV specials and several films, including The World According to Garp, Good Morning, Vietnam, Hook and Mrs. Doubtfire. Using a wide assemblage of voices and movements, Williams is one of the most popular and visible comics around, and his releases highlight him. ~ Larry Lapka, All Music Guide [-] Hide
Genre: Comedy
Decades: 480
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My father saw them at the Michigan Theater in Detroit back in 1943. "They were crazy, he started off the show with his regular big band, you know, just playing straight stuff. Then, after intermission, the stage went black and all these sirens and gun shots started going off. Then the stage lit up and it was Spike Jones and his City Slickers,... [+] Read More
My father saw them at the Michigan Theater in Detroit back in 1943. "They were crazy, he started off the show with his regular big band, you know, just playing straight stuff. Then, after intermission, the stage went black and all these sirens and gun shots started going off. Then the stage lit up and it was Spike Jones and his City Slickers, the same band only dressed up crazy. They had a guy playing a toilet seat with strings on it, people on stage wearing wigs and crazy outfits, oh geez, they were nuts. Nobody was doing anything like that back in those days."
I remember seeing them on television back in the early '50s, on my grandmother's 8" round screen Zenith. The noise and visual mayhem spilling out of that dinky speaker and tiny screen seemed barely containable as I sat on the floor, absolutely mesmerized. Guns being fired, bicycle horns honking like crazy, midgets and people with no heads running all over the place, while the bandleader nonchalantly chewed gum seemingly quite content with all this dementia going on around him. They were the loudest band I had ever heard up to that time, and they were playing in such a fast and reckless manner, I could barely keep up with what they were doing. I had always been fascinated by music and show business, but this was a different ballgame altogether. This was my introduction to a world of insanity and noise in the name of entertainment and when rock & roll came along a few years later, it made perfect sense to me. But even Presley's gyrations and Little Richard's screams seemed like pretty tame stuff compared to these kind of monkey shines.
Lindley Armstrong Jones was a musical genius. In the wild and woolly days before MTV, digital tape and multi-track recording, Spike Jones put together a top-flight musical organization that the world has not seen the likes of since. Known as the City Slickers, the emphasis was on comedy, primarily doing dead-on satires of popular songs on the hit parade and taking the air out of pompous classical selections as well. Not merely content to do cornball renderings of standard material or trite novelty tunes for comedic effect, Jones' musical vision encompassed utilizing whistles, bells, gargling, broken glass, and gunshots perfectly timed and wedded to the most musical and unmusical of source points. His stage show was no less mind boggling, needing a full railroad car just to carry the props alone, all presented without electronic gimmickry of any kind, with visuals that would make your eyes pop out of your head. Though he often downplayed his musical achievements (all part of the master plan of selling the idea to the general public), the fact remains that Spike was a strict bandleader and taskmaker, making sure his musicians were precision tight, adept in a variety of musical styles from dixieland to classical, with a caliber of musicianship several notches higher than most big bands of the day who played so-called 'straight' music.
In other words, Spike was no dummy, he knew what he was doing when he put the whole concept together, checkerboard suits and all. It gave him top 10 hits on phonograph records (it became a badge of honor with pop musicians that you really hadn't tasted true success until Spike Jones & The City Slickers destroyed your song) and proved immensely popular as a stage show, in movies, and on television. A definite precursor to the video age, Jones didn't merely play the songs funny, he illustrated them as well, a total audio and visual assault to the senses.
Spike (the son of a railroad man, hence the nickname) had started as a jazz drummer and radio session player working with top-drawer stars like Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, among others. One of the more interesting bits of Spike trivia is that if you listen hard enough, that's him gently working his wire brushes in the background on Bing's "White Christmas." But in demand as he might have been, musician union restrictions only allowed so many radio dates to be worked by one drummer. To this end (and to distinguish himself from the pack), Spike added a full set of tuned cowbells, guns, whistles, sirens to his already existing drum set, thus insuring steady work as a both a drummer and small scale sound effects man. Although these additions made him unique in a field loaded with anonymous sidemen, Spike had bigger and crazier ideas. After putting together various after hours small groups that played 'corny just for fun' (including early recordings with the Penny-Funnies and Cinema-Fritzers bands for the short-lived Cinematone company), he formed the City Slickers in the early 40s. By 1942, his sixth record under the new band's name, "Der Fuehrer's Face," became not only a national hit but a national mania, and Spike's self-named 'musical depreciation revue' was off and running.
The bands assembled over the years under the City Slickers banner would feature everything from singers, midgets, acrobats, vaudeville comics to musicians who could just plain blow their brains out, all hand picked by Spike. From George Rock's braying, high register trumpet and kiddie voices to Freddie Morgan's incredible, rubber-faced pantomime banjo shenanigans, from Sir Frederick Gas' insane 'twig' bowing to Billy Barty's Liberace impressions, here was a band that truly defied description. Musicians who could play multiple instruments in a wide variety of styles were commonplace, making the City Slickers the crackerjack unit they were. But certain members of the troupe (like Gas or Barty) were hired because they did one thing extremely well, and would proceed to do it on a nightly basis, key players all. For years, the rumor persisted that Spike had a guy on the payroll who did nothing but gargle, I swear. Though bands that played 'corny' had been successful before he leapt to national fame (most notably Freddie Fisher & The Schnickelfritzers and The Hoosier Hot Shots), Spike's musical vision also encompassed a total assault against the conventions of general show business pomposity. Whatever the newest fad (current singing stars, radio, television and movie personalities), if Spike could figure a way to ridicule it for the 'this-month's-flavor' shallowness of it all, the City Slicker torch was duly applied. And once you heard Spike's version of the tune, you could never go back and take any of those idols of the moment quite as seriously as you might have before. This worldview of show biz elephant trash lives on today in the music video parodies on TV's In Living Color, and assorted like-minded skits on Saturday Night Live. Had Spike survived into the MTV age, true believers are sure he would have had a field day with Milli Vanilli and the gang on Entertainment Tonight. Although parodies of pop music continue to proliferate (Weird Al Yankovic is probably the closest modern day equivalent, although he's closer in style to an Allan Sherman; he sings funny lyrics to normal songs, he doesn't play them funny), the simple fact remains that Spike Jones & The City Slickers did it better than anyone before or since. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 896
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On an international level, Peter Sellers is most famous as a screen comedian, starring in Dr. Strangelove, The Pink Panther, Being There, and other films. Actually, he was an all-around performer who was a household name in England long before Dr. Strangelove made him a big star overseas. Although his film career was well underway by the end of... [+] Read More
On an international level, Peter Sellers is most famous as a screen comedian, starring in Dr. Strangelove, The Pink Panther, Being There, and other films. Actually, he was an all-around performer who was a household name in England long before Dr. Strangelove made him a big star overseas. Although his film career was well underway by the end of the 1950s, he first rose to prominence as a radio performer on The Goon Show (collaborating with other comedians, especially Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan). His radio success almost immediately led to solo comedy recordings (many of the Goon Show broadcasts were eventually issued on record as well, especially on the BBC's own label).
Sellers' most active period as a recording artist was the late '50s and early '60s. These albums and singles represent a central foundation of British comedy, and a source for many of the ideas and approaches that were expounded upon in later years by Monty Python, the Bonzo Dog Band, and others. The unsurpassed master of accents, Sellers mimicked -- to accurate and hilarious effect -- all British classes (and regions), as well as a good many foreign tones. His sketches contain many of the situations that are taken for granted as staples of British comedy -- satires of stuffy BBC interviews, screeching frumpy women, Cockney bastards, and droll portraits of political crackpots. Like the best of Monty Python, the best of Sellers' work has proven surprisingly timeless -- the silliness is so droll, sophisticated, and brilliantly executed that the humor has dated barely or not at all.
Sellers often employed musical satire, and these again were prototypes for the sort of wackiness displayed by Monty Python, the Bonzos, and more specific send-ups like the Rutles and Spinal Tap. His early rock & roll, swing jazz, skiffle, and folk satires still rate among the best ever done. Although some topical references have dated these slightly, they remain basically hilarious. You don't need to be a pop scholar to appreciate the boozy anarchy of his Irish folk satire, or the overstuffed egos of the overnight rock & roll sensations he imitates. In the early '60s, he even had a couple of British hit singles via musical duets with Sophia Loren.
Sellers' early albums and singles were produced by George Martin, who was still several years away from meeting the Beatles when he began to work with the comedian. With their overlapping dialogue and sound effects, Sellers' sketches required (by the standards of the time) considerable production sophistication and ingenuity. Martin's experience with Sellers no doubt came in handy when the Beatles' arrangements and production techniques became increasingly sophisticated in the later part of the 1960s. In fact, one of the reasons that the Beatles and Martin hit it off so well from their very first meeting was that the Fab Four were big Goon Show fans, and consequently very impressed by Martin's credentials. Sellers, for his part, paid the Beatles back by recording some affectionate spoken-word parodies of Lennon-McCartney classics in the mid-'60s (produced, like the original versions, by Martin). One of these, a Shakespearean reading of "A Hard Day's Night," actually made the British Top 20 in the mid-'60s. Sellers became friendly with the Beatles themselves, resulting in Ringo Starr's co-starring role with Peter in the 1969 movie The Magic Christian.
Sellers' activities in recording studios began to decline during the mid-'60s, when filming commitments took up the bulk of his time. He did continue to record sporadically right up until his death in 1980, as both a solo artist and a guest, making unexpected cameos on records by the Hollies and Steeleye Span. His best records were very hard to come by in North America, but that situation was rectified in 1993 with the release of EMI's A Celebration of Sellers box set. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 7936
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Famed for his landmark "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine, George Carlin filled the void created by the death of Lenny Bruce, honing a provocative, scathing comic style that bravely explored the limits of free speech and good taste. George Dennis Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, in the Bronx, New York. While serving a stint in... [+] Read More
Famed for his landmark "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine, George Carlin filled the void created by the death of Lenny Bruce, honing a provocative, scathing comic style that bravely explored the limits of free speech and good taste. George Dennis Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, in the Bronx, New York. While serving a stint in the military, he was stationed in Shreveport, LA, where he began working as a disc jockey; after working with fellow radio personality Jack Burns on a Shreveport morning show, in 1955 the duo began performing in clubs as a comedy team. Burns & Carlin made their recorded debut in 1960 with a live show consisting of their rendition of Lenny Bruce's "Dijinni in the Candy Store" routine (Bruce was an early supporter of the duo as well as a major influence), along with a spot-on impersonation of Mort Sahl and the sketch "Captain Jack and Jolly George," a spoof of children's shows inviting young girls to "send for your Lolita kit."
By and large, the Burns & Carlin team found little success, and eventually broke up; their album was released on the tiny Era Records label under the name Burns & Carlin at the Playboy Club Tonight (despite having been recorded at Hollywood's Cosmo Alley), but failed to generate much attention. Meanwhile, Burns split to begin working with Avery Schreiber. Striking out on his own, Carlin initially worked in roles that cast him as a clean-cut, straight-laced performer; his proper solo debut, 1967's Take Offs and Put Ons (recorded at The Roostertail in Detroit, MI) offered clever if mild-mannered routines like "Wonderful WINO," about a mindless disc jockey. That year he was also tapped to co-star in Away We Go, a summer replacement series for The Jackie Gleason Show; still, despite his success, Carlin found his suit-and-tie image stifling, and began gravitating toward the image and ideals of the counterculture.
Re-emerging as a long-haired, bearded, denim-clad hippie, he lost many of his high-paying gigs, but his riffs on sex, drugs, and politics quickly gained an avid following among the fringe culture. While 1972's FM & AM offered an even split between the safer material of his past work and the more incendiary routines of the "new" Carlin, 1972's Class Clown and the following year's Occupation Foole marked his full evolution into a counterculture icon. Most notably, Class Clown featured the recorded debut of the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" bit, the subject of a Supreme Court ruling after the FCC nearly stripped Pacifica Radio of its FM license for playing the routine on the air. At the same time, Carlin himself was arrested after a Milwaukee concert appearance for violating local obscenity laws.
The controversy only made him a bigger star, and in 1975 he was tapped to host the debut episode of the NBC sketch comedy showcase Saturday Night Live. The same year also saw the release of the LP An Evening with Wally Londo Featuring Bill Slaszo, highlighted by an early performance of what soon evolved into his popular "Baseball -- Football" routine. In 1976 Carlin appeared in the film Car Wash, and in 1977 he issued On the Road. However, as a new breed of way-out comedians like Steve Martin, Robin Williams, and Andy Kaufman began to emerge, Carlin's brand of incisive sociopolitical commentary began to fall from favor; plagued by substance abuse problems, he did not record again until 1981's A Place for My Stuff, and gained a reputation for unpredictable, often abusive on-stage behavior.
By the middle of the decade, he resurfaced clean and sober for 1985's Carlin on Campus and 1986's Playin' with Your Head, which reprised material from recent cable TV and home video performances. After 1988's What Am I Doing in New Jersey?, he found a new following among teens thanks to his appearances in the popular Bill and Ted screen comedies; in the early '90s, he courted an even younger audience by assuming the lead role on the PBS children's series Shining Time Station. Still, Carlin did not neglect his core audience; 1990's Parental Advisory, Explicit Lyrics and 1992's Jammin' in New York found him as feisty as ever, and in 1994 he starred as an abrasive cabdriver in the short-lived Fox television sitcom The George Carlin Show. Additionally, he continued to tour constantly, and in 1997 issued the album Back in Town. Like many of his '90s recordings, 1999's You Are All Diseased was issued as a complement to an hourlong HBO special. Carlin continues to perform throughout the country on an intensive basis, and issued his politically fueled Complaints and Grievances shortly after the September 11th tragedy as well as 2006's Life Is Worth Losing, which featured some of his bleakest material to date.~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 1536
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At their peak in the 1970s, Cheech and Chong represented the mainstream embodiment of the attitudes and lifestyles of the underground drug culture. Much as W.C. Fields shot to fame by making alcohol the focus of his act, the duo of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong emerged from a cloud of pot smoke, simultaneously championing and lampooning the... [+] Read More
At their peak in the 1970s, Cheech and Chong represented the mainstream embodiment of the attitudes and lifestyles of the underground drug culture. Much as W.C. Fields shot to fame by making alcohol the focus of his act, the duo of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong emerged from a cloud of pot smoke, simultaneously championing and lampooning the stoner community which became the team's most ardent supporters; although derided by critics and dismissed by the general populace, the team's stature as counterculture heroes was unquestioned, and for both aging hippies and dazed-and-confused teens, their comedy defined an era.
The team began to take shape in the late 1960s when, after entering show business as a guitarist in a rock band, Chong established City Works, a wild improvisational troupe later joined by Richard "Cheech" Marin. When City Works dissolved, Cheech and Chong continued as a duo, formulating a musical comedy act. The music proved short-lived, however, when audiences began reacting favorably to the team's spacy pothead raps; after establishing their comic persona, the duo rarely deviated from the course -- for record after record and film after film, they remained blissed-out stoners, their humor locked in the druggy stasis of the doper mentality.
Cheech and Chong debuted in 1971 with an eponymous LP featuring studio sketches like "Waiting for Dave" (a circular routine owing a debt to Bob and Ray), "Cruisin' with Pedro" (about drug-deal paranoia) and "Trippin' in Court." The album was a tremendous success, and its 1972 follow-up Big Bambu -- a record packaged in a giant rolling paper -- reached the number two spot on the Billboard charts. The following year's Grammy-winning Los Cochinos duplicated the feat, and included the novelty hit "Basketball Jones."
After 1974's Wedding Album (which featured the hit "Earache My Eye") and 1976's Sleeping Beauty, Cheech and Chong had built enough of a cult following to make the leap into films. Their 1978 feature debut Up in Smoke established the formula followed by all of their subsquent movies, quickly dispensing with plot in order to focus on surreal narrative detours and long, meandering conversations between the principal characters. With the exception of 1980's Let's Make a New Dope Deal, the duo spent the next several years working exclusively on films, releasing a rapid-fire string of comedies like 1980's Cheech and Chong's Next Movie, 1981's Nice Dreams and 1983's Still Smokin.
As the hedonism of the 1970s gave way to the "just say no" conservatism of the Reagan era, Cheech and Chong found little response to their trademark brand of humor; after 1984's The Corsican Brothers, their film career ended, and in 1985 they returned to the recording studio for their swan song LP, Get Out of My Room. After dissolving their partnership, both spent the remainder of the decade appearing in low-budget films; by 1993, Marin even recorded a children's album, My Name Is Cheech, The School Bus Driver.
While Chong largely drifted into obscurity, Marin enjoyed a renaissance in the middle of the 1990s, appearing in the Robert Rodriguez films Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn; a prominent supporting role in Ron Shelton's romantic comedy Tin Cup led to a co-starring role opposite Don Johnson in the CBS detective series Nash Bridges. In 1997 Chong made a guest appearance on the program, marking the duo's first public reunion in a number of years. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 384
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Tom Lehrer was one of comedy's great paradoxes -- a respected Harvard mathematics professor by day, he also ranked among the foremost song satirists of the postwar era, recording vicious, twisted parodies of popular musical trends which proved highly influential on the "sick comedy" revolution of the 1960s. Despite an aversion to the press and a... [+] Read More
Tom Lehrer was one of comedy's great paradoxes -- a respected Harvard mathematics professor by day, he also ranked among the foremost song satirists of the postwar era, recording vicious, twisted parodies of popular musical trends which proved highly influential on the "sick comedy" revolution of the 1960s. Despite an aversion to the press and a relatively small recorded output, Lehrer became a star, although he remained an enigma to even his most ardent fans; he rarely toured, never allowed his photo to adorn album jackets, and essentially retired from performing in 1965, leaving behind a cult following which only continued to grow in his absence from the limelight.
Lehrer was born April 9, 1928; even as a child, he frequently parodied popular songs of the day, and also learned to play piano. In 1944, he left New York City to study math at Harvard, earning his master's degree within three years and remaining as a graduate student through 1953. During his student years Lehrer wrote The Physical Revue, a collection of academic song satires staged on campus in January, 1951; an updated performance followed in May of the next year. He also sang his parodies at coffeehouses and student gatherings throughout the Cambridge, Massachusetts area; as demand for an album of his songs increased, he spent $15 on studio time to cut Songs by Tom Lehrer, a ten-inch record privately pressed in an edition of 400 copies.
The record sold out its entire run, and as the Harvard student body dispersed across the country for Christmas vacation, the disc spread ("like herpes," Lehrer joked) far beyond its intended local audience. Soon Lehrer was inundated with requests for copies from across the nation; after several re-pressings, Songs by Tom Lehrer sold an astounding 350,000 copies on the strength of tracks like "I Hold Your Hand in Mine" (about a man who cut off his girlfriend's hand in order to nibble on her fingertips), "Irish Ballad" (a buoyant romp about a killing spree), and "My Home Town" (concerning a place where murderers teach school and old perverts operate the candy store).
In 1955, Lehrer was inducted to serve in the Army, and was honorably discharged two years later. Finally, in 1959 he recorded a follow-up, More of Tom Lehrer, featuring "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and "The Masochism Tango"; the same collection of songs were also recorded during a live performance at Harvard, and issued simultaneously as An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer. A tour of Europe followed, resulting in another concert collection, Tom Lehrer Revisited, which constituted live renditions of the tracks from the debut LP. However, controversial reactions to his "sick" comedy during a series of Australian performances prompted Lehrer to retire, and he returned full-time to his first love, teaching.
In early 1964, he resurfaced as a songwriter for the NBC news satire That Was the Week That Was. After the show's demise a year later, Lehrer recorded the material written for the program on an LP also titled That Was the Week That Was; the album, which featured his controversial "Vatican Rag," was the first in his contract with the Reprise label, which also agreed to reissue his earlier, self-released records. After re-recording Songs by Tom Lehrer to improve on the original master's poor fidelity, he again retired from show business to return to academia; however, his songs were played regularly on the Dr. Demento radio show beginning in the 1970s, and he became the program's second most requested artist of all time (behind Weird Al Yankovic). Lehrer's subsequent returns to show business were brief -- in 1972 he wrote a dozen tunes for the children's program The Electric Company, updated older material for a 1980 musical stage show dubbed Tomfoolery (produced by Cameron Mackintosh of Cats fame), and some years later agreed to write occasionally for Garrison Keillor. Lehrer continued to teach mathematics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and at age 72 witnessed Rhino Records' 2000 reissue of his complete recorded works in the form of a three-CD box set titled The Remains of Tom Lehrer. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 3584
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During the 1970s, Steve Martin was the most successful stand-up comedian in America, earning the level of commercial success -- sell-out arena performances, platinum records, hit singles and delirous fan adulatation -- usually reserved for rock stars. Although his career went on to encompass stints as an acclaimed dramatic actor and playwright,... [+] Read More
During the 1970s, Steve Martin was the most successful stand-up comedian in America, earning the level of commercial success -- sell-out arena performances, platinum records, hit singles and delirous fan adulatation -- usually reserved for rock stars. Although his career went on to encompass stints as an acclaimed dramatic actor and playwright, for many supporters the "Wild and Crazy Guy" persona defined on his comedy records remains Martin's true artistic legacy.
Although born August 14, 1945 in Waco, Texas, Martin spent the majority of his childhood in California, eventually working a concession booth at Disneyland as a teen. There he learned a variety of performing skills ranging from magic and juggling to playing the banjo and sculpting balloon animals. After graduating college, Martin began writing, and occasionally performing, comic material for television programs including The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Glen Campbell Hour and The Sonny and Cher Show. At the tail end of the 1960s he moved to Canada, where, in addition to appearing as a semi-regular on the syndicated series Half the George Kirby Comedy Hour, he also began working as a stand-up.
Soon, Martin graduated to opening for rock performers, where his long hair, scraggly beard and hippie wardrobe aligned him firmly with the counterculture movement of the era. However, while in his twenties his hair began to go white; gradually, Martin began adapting his onstage persona to fit the change, re-emerging as a clean-cut, immaculately dressed conservative. The contrast with his increasingly high-concept comic idenity was sharp: superficially silly and daft, Martin's act contemptuously mocked the inherent stupidity of the stand-up form, mining catch-phrases, props and schtick to create a unique brand of scathing anti-comedy.
After earning a following on the stand-up circuit, Martin rose to national prominence thanks to a series of guest appearances on the NBC network's sketch-comedy phenomenon Saturday Night Live, as well as a number of performances on The Tonight Show. With the release of his 1977 album debut Let's Get Small, Martin's career exploded; the record reached the Top Ten, his concerts became immediate sell-outs, and one-liners like "I am...one wild and crazy guy!" and "Well excuuuse me!" became hip catch phrases. After a cameo in the musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he made his proper film debut with 1978's The Jerk, which he also scripted; additionally, he wrote a best-selling book, Cruel Shoes.
1978 also marked the release of A Wild and Crazy Guy, Martin's most successful LP. Another platinum seller, it reached the number two slot on the charts on the strength of the hilarious hit single "King Tut," a pseudo-disco record mocking the then-current national obsession with the legendary Egyptian ruler. Nonetheless, Martin was clearly losing interest in the narrow parameters of the stand-up form; after his final two albums, 1979's Comedy Is Not Pretty and the following year's Steve Martin Brothers, he made the film musical Pennies From Heaven, a significant move away from his idiotic Jerk persona, and eventually retired from stand-up performance altogether.
After several underappreciated comedies in tandem with director Carl Reiner (including the clever Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid), Martin won acclaim for his superb slapstick performance in 1984's All of Me. With his sweet performance and stellar screenplay for 1987's Roxanne, a delicate comic spin on Cyrano de Bergerac, he won the critical success which long eluded him, and soon graduated into dramatic roles in films like Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon and the Silas Marner update A Simple Twist of Fate. Still, by the 1990s Martin seemed largely disenchanted with Hollywood filmmaking, virtually sleepwalking through bland, mainstream comedies like Father of the Bride and Sgt. Bilko; instead, he focused his energies on the stage, writing the acclaimed theatrical production Picasso at the Lapin Agile. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 3072
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Like Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor before him, Eddie Murphy was the preeminent African-American comic of his era; in fact, Murphy was arguably the preeminent comic of the 1980s, period -- at his peak, no other performer, regardless of race, was a bigger star or a more audacious talent. Combining Pryor's viciously acute observational gifts and... [+] Read More
Like Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor before him, Eddie Murphy was the preeminent African-American comic of his era; in fact, Murphy was arguably the preeminent comic of the 1980s, period -- at his peak, no other performer, regardless of race, was a bigger star or a more audacious talent. Combining Pryor's viciously acute observational gifts and love of obscenities with Cosby's undeniable mainstream appeal, Murphy quickly leaped from clubs to television to film -- even finding success as a serious pop singer -- on the way to establishing himself as the most wildly popular comedian since the heyday of Steve Martin.
Edward Regan Murphy was born April 3, 1961, in Hempstead, NY. By his mid-teens he was already working as a professional stand-up in Long Island clubs; by the age of 17, he was performing at Manhattan's famed Comic Strip and soon mounted a club tour of the East Coast. In 1980 his precocious talent won him a recurring gig as a featured performer on Saturday Night Live; at the moment, the comedy institution was suffering one of its frequent dry spells, and Murphy quickly established himself as its breakout star, graduating to full-time cast member status on the strength of memorable riffs on the Claymation hero Gumby and Our Gang character Buckwheat as well as creations like street pimp Velvet Jones and Mr. Robinson, a ghetto counterpart to Mr. Rogers.
In 1982, Murphy issued his debut comedy album, a self-titled live effort which drew fire for its controversial portrayal of the Asian community and misogynistic overtones as well as "Faggots," the first of many homophobic routines which ultimately resulted in a boycott call from the gay community. That same year he made his feature debut co-starring with Nick Nolte in the buddy comedy 48 Hrs.; the film was a major success, and at the age of just 21 Murphy was a Hollywood superstar, with a 15-million-dollar deal with Paramount Pictures as his reward.
The Delirious concert tour followed in 1983; recorded at a sold-out August performance, the LP Eddie Murphy: Comedian reached the Top 40 while his second feature, Trading Places, emerged as the year's highest-grossing film. A small role in 1984's disastrous Best Defense was Murphy's first misstep, but a year later he returned with Beverly Hills Cop, one of the most successful pictures in box-office history. Also in 1985 he teamed with producer Rick James to record How Could It Be, a straightforward R&B album which spawned the mammoth hit single "Party All the Time."
Murphy was the hottest actor in Hollywood when he signed on for the 1986 quasi-mystical action comedy The Golden Child; the film was a commercial and critical bomb, and for the first time his star power was in question. While 1987's Beverly Hills Cop II stood as the year's biggest blockbuster and restored much of his career's luster, the aptly titled concert film Raw drew considerable heat for its abrasive, politically incorrect ranting. After 1988's Coming to America raked in the revenue, Murphy wrote, directed, and starred in 1989's Harlem Nights, a black gangster tale which performed miserably and took a massive critical drubbing.
Following the Harlem Nights debacle, he agreed to reunite in 1990 with Nick Nolte in Another 48 Hrs. When it too bombed, Murphy's career bottomed out; neither of his 1992 efforts, Boomerang and The Distinguished Gentleman, performed as well as his earlier hits, the 1993 LP Love's Alright failed to chart, and even 1994's seeming sure thing Beverly Hills Cop III tanked. After 1995's Vampire in Brooklyn, an ill-advised horror comedy, he starred in a hit remake of Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor in 1996, but in the early weeks of the following year the action-adventure fiasco Metro took a nosedive. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 2432
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Hip and irreverent, Stan Freberg was the last network radio comic, a trailblazing satirist whose work greatly expanded the vocabulary of the comedy form. While most postwar comedians used radio and records merely as a springboard for more lucrative film and television gigs, Freberg pushed the envelope in both mediums, creating high-concept... [+] Read More
Hip and irreverent, Stan Freberg was the last network radio comic, a trailblazing satirist whose work greatly expanded the vocabulary of the comedy form. While most postwar comedians used radio and records merely as a springboard for more lucrative film and television gigs, Freberg pushed the envelope in both mediums, creating high-concept musical comedies and sound collages which revolutionized the audio format while setting the stage for the hallucinatory sonic visions of the Firesign Theater and the National Lampoon troupe.
Born in Pasadena, California in 1926, Freberg broke into performing with work in children's puppet shows; while still in his teens, he hopped a bus to Los Angeles and won an audition at the famed Warner Bros. cartoon studios. In short time he was working (albeit uncredited) alongside voice-over genius Mel Blanc on characters like the Goofy Gophers and Pete Puma. Additionally, he contributed to Bob Clampett's puppet series Time for Beany, the precursor to the animated favorite Beany and Cecil.
By the age of 16, Freberg graduated to regular work as a radio, a path he continued for the remainder of the decade. In 1951 he signed to Capitol and released his first novelty single, "John and Marsha," a scathing satire of romantic treacle. After a handful of other releases, in 1953 he issued "St. George and the Dragonet," a painstakingly accurate and lavishly-produced parody of the Jack Webb series Dragnet; far more advanced than any similar other record to date, "St. George" became the era's fastest-selling single, eventually topping the charts.
In 1957, Freberg was tapped to take over Jack Benny's CBS radio program while Benny took the summer months off. Although radio comedy was in its death throes, Freberg made every conceivable attempt to resuscitate the form; his show was visionary, taking full advantage of the broadcast medium's capabilities to create elaborate comic pastiches which pushed the boundaries of vocal and sound effects use. The series, which ran for 13 weeks, won critical raves and immediate legendary status; due to the ascendancy of television, it was also the final original network radio comedy show ever broadcast.
After the 1958 single "Green Chri$tma$," a highly controversial swipe at holiday commercialization, Freberg moved to the LP format for 1961's United States of America, a full-length vaudeville-style musical comedy written especially for the recorded medium. A wildly ambitious satiric history of American life, the album won widespread acclaim, and remains a pivotal landmark in the evolution of recorded comedy. However, after the follow-up, Pay Radio, Freberg flirted with Broadway before shifting the majority of his energies to the lucrative advertising industry, a longtime sideline which became his primary focus as the 1960s wore on. Largely credited with introducing the concept of the "funny" commercial, he continued working in advertising for several decades; perhaps his most famous campaign -- and, sadly, his most abysmal -- was a series of cloying late-1980s TV spots hawking Encyclopaedia Britannica which featured his rather obnoxious son.
In 1988, Freberg published his autobiography, It Only Hurts When I Laugh. Two years later, he returned to broadcasting with Freberg Here, a long-running series of two-minute daily commentaries produced for National Public Radio. On Thanksgiving 1991, NPR aired The New Stan Freberg Show, a one-hour special which marked his first return to long-form comedy in decades; finally, in 1996 he released United States of America, Volume 2: The Middle Years, the long-awaited sequel to his most popular work. A four-disc box set, Tip of the Freberg: Collection 1951-1998, followed three years later. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 1984
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Long before Eddie Murphy, Andrew 'Dice' Clay or Howard Stern raised the ire of censors and threatened the delicate sensibilites of mainstream American good taste, there was Redd Foxx, arguably the most notorious "blue" comic of his day. Prior to finding fame in the 1970s as the star of the popular sitcom Sanford and Son, Foxx found little but... [+] Read More
Long before Eddie Murphy, Andrew 'Dice' Clay or Howard Stern raised the ire of censors and threatened the delicate sensibilites of mainstream American good taste, there was Redd Foxx, arguably the most notorious "blue" comic of his day. Prior to finding fame in the 1970s as the star of the popular sitcom Sanford and Son, Foxx found little but infamy throughout the first several decades of his performing career; salty and scatological, his material broke new ground with its point-blank riffs and brazen discussions of sex and color, and although his party albums were generally banned from white-owned record stores, the comedian's funky narrative style and raspy delivery proved highly influential on comic talents of all ethnic backgrounds.
Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis on December 9, 1922. While still in his teens, he became a professional performer, working as both a comedian and actor on the so-called "chitlin circuit" of black theaters and nightclubs; he formulated his stage name by combining an old nickname, "Red" (given because of his ruddy complexion), with the surname of baseball's Jimmie Foxx. After cutting a handful of explicit blues records in the mid-1940s, beginning in 1951 he often teamed with fellow comic Slappy White, a partnership which lasted through 1955.
Foxx was performing at Los Angeles' Club Oasis when a representative from the tiny Dooto label contacted him about cutting an album; the comedian agreed, and was paid $25 to record Laff of the Party, the first of over 50 albums of Foxx's racy anecdotes. An onslaught of Dooto releases followed, among them over half a dozen other Laff of the Party sets, The Sidesplitter, The New Race Track, Sly Sex and New Fugg. His records were poorly distributed, and offered primarily in black neighborhoods; when they did appear in white record stores, they were sold under the counter. In the 1960s, Foxx signed to the MF label; his routines became even more explicit, as evidenced by titles like Laff Your Ass Off, Huffin' and a Puffin', I'm Curious (Black), 3 or 4 Times a Day and Mr. Hot Pants. After a brief tenure on King, he signed to Loma, a division of Frank Sinatra's Reprise imprint; with records like Foxx A Delic and Live at Las Vegas, he became one of the very first performers to use four-letter words on major-label releases.
As the 1960s wore on and long-standing cultural barriers began to crumble, Foxx's audience expanded, and he made a number of television appearances. In 1970, he made his film debut in Ossie Davis' Cotton Comes to Harlem; when the film became a surprise hit, Foxx became a hot talent, and soon signed to star in Sanford and Son, a retooled sitcom version of the British television hit Steptoe and Son. The series, which starred Foxx as junk dealer Fred Sanford, premiered in 1972 and became a huge hit, running through 1977; he also continued recording, issuing You Gotta Wash Your Ass, a live set taped at the Apollo Theater, in 1976. The short-lived programs Sanford, The Redd Foxx Show and The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour followed; additionally, he starred in the 1976 feature Norman, Is That You?, and became a Las Vegas headliner.
By the early 1980s, Foxx's career hit the skids; his difficult personality made him an unpopular commodity around Hollywood, and a number of divorces and ill-advised business decisions left him bankrupt. By the end of the decade, however, his influence on the new breed of African-American comedians was openly acknowledged, and in 1989 Eddie Murphy tapped him to co-star in his black-themed crime-noir film Harlem Nights. Although the film flopped, Foxx's career was renewed, and in 1991 he began work on a new sitcom, The Royal Family; tragically, he suffered a heart attack on the series' set and died on October 11, 1991. Still, even in death Foxx's name remained synonymous with off-color comments; on an episode of the hit show Seinfeld broadcast several years later, Jason Alexander's character George was chastised for the "curse toast" he delivered at a friend's wedding, prompting an exasperated Jerry to exclaim "You were like a Redd Foxx record up there!" ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 3840
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Although African-American comedians had long been a staple of the stand-up circuit prior to the emergence of Bill Cosby, none had come even remotely close to reaching the same heights of commercial success or universal acceptance. Before Cosby, black comics were largely relegated to the so-called "chitlin circuit" of black nightclubs and... [+] Read More
Although African-American comedians had long been a staple of the stand-up circuit prior to the emergence of Bill Cosby, none had come even remotely close to reaching the same heights of commercial success or universal acceptance. Before Cosby, black comics were largely relegated to the so-called "chitlin circuit" of black nightclubs and theaters, their albums banned from white-owned record stores; after Cosby, comedians of all racial and cultural backgrounds found a home in the mainstream, and were even given the opportunity to prove their talents in major film and television roles. Simply put, Cosby broke comedy's color barrier, and he set the stage for the widespread success of everyone from Richard Pryor to Eddie Murphy.
William H. Cosby, Jr. was born in Philadelphia on July 12, 1937. The son of a maid and an absentee father, he grew up in abject poverty, ultimately dropping out of high school to join the Navy. After earning his diploma through correspondence courses, he won a football scholarship to Temple University; while taking classes during the day, he tended bar in the evenings, where his easy ability to make customers laugh resulted in the decision to pursue a career in comedy.
Cosby quickly distinguished himself from his peers in a number of ways: not only did his relaxed, conversational style rely on warm, anecdotal childhood recollections instead of one-liners and gags, but unlike other black comedians, he refused to tell racial jokes or use profanities, establishing himself as a talent suitable for all ages and backgrounds. As a result, his success was immediate: his Grammy-nominated 1963 debut Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow...Right! established him as an overnight star as his breezy comic sensibility marked a significant shift away from the "sick" comedy of Lenny Bruce and Shelley Berman then so much in vogue.
1964's I Started Out as a Child -- the first of a record six consecutive Grammy-winning releases -- proved even more popular with audiences, and soon Cosby was contacted by television producer Sheldon Leonard to star with Robert Culp in the espionage series I Spy. Despite controversy -- a number of Southern affiliates threatened not to air the show -- Leonard stood firm, and Cosby became the first black ever to star in a dramatic program; ultimately, the show was a huge hit, and he even won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Agent Alexander Scott.
Even at the series' peak, he continued writing and performing stand-up, issuing the Top 20 hit Why Is There Air? in 1965. After 1966's Wonderfulness reached the Top Ten, Cosby hit his commercial peak the following year with Revenge, which rose to the number two spot. Significantly, the album also marked the debut of Fat Albert and his gang, a group of beloved Cosby characters which later formed the basis of a long-running animated series for children. A flurry of releases followed as Cosby fulfilled his Warner Bros. contract with 1968's To Russell, My Brother Whom I Slept With, and 200 M.P.H.; along with the following year's It's True! It's True!, the two-record 1969 set 8:15/12:15 appeared on Tetragrammatron, a short-lived label which the comedian co-owned.
After signing to Uni, he issued a self-titled 1969 effort, followed by the sitcom The Bill Cosby Show. With the program, Cosby suffered his first major artistic setback; although NBC committed to two seasons of the show, ratings were weak, and at the end of the two-year period NBC pulled the plug. Although albums like 1970's "Live" Madison Square Garden Center and When I Was a Kid were successful, the period following the series' cancellation marked a crossroads for Cosby; his well of childhood reminiscences was running dry, and he clearly needed to explore new ground.
Consequently, beginning with 1971's For Adults Only he made a concerted shift towards more mature material; while still not risque, his routines reflected a more grown-up attitude and sensibility. That same year he launched The New Bill Cosby Show, a disastrous variety program which lasted only one season. Not surprisingly, he took a subsequent hiatus from television; after recording 1972's Inside the Mind of Bill Cosby and the next year's Fat Albert, he shifted his focus to film, teaming with Sidney Poitier in 1974 for Uptown Saturday Night, the first in a successful series of crime comedies which also included 1975's Let's Do It Again and 1977's A Piece of the Action.
Regardless of his success in other media, Cosby continued his prolific recording output; with 1976's Bill Cosby Is Not Himself These Days (Rat Own, Rat Own, Rat Own) and 1977's Disco Bill, he satirized current trends in R&B. (In the late '60s and early '70s, he also recorded a number of "straight" music albums like Silver Throat Sings and At Last Bill Cosby Really Sings.) After another failed television attempt, 1976's children's prime-time variety program Cos, he came back to stand-up with a vengeance for 1977's My Father Confused Me, What Should I Do?, a return to the family-oriented vignettes which first won him an audience. 1978's Bill's Best Friend continued the trend as well as offering cautionary messages against alcohol and drug use, while the popularity of concert films -- primarily those of Richard Pryor -- sparked the 1982 feature and soundtrack Bill Cosby: Himself.
After keeping a low profile for several years, he resurfaced in 1984 with The Cosby Show, an NBC series inspired largely by his own family experiences. The show was an unparalleled success which brought new life to the sitcom format -- a vehicle pronounced dead by many onlookers -- and quickly shot to the number one slot in the Nielsen ratings, a position where it remained throughout the majority of its eight-season run. Although his popularity was never in question before the show's debut, The Cosby Show made its titular star even more of a success; not only was he the most popular and beloved talent on television, but he also became a successful author, and in 1986 he also returned to recording with the album Those of You With or Without Children, You'll Understand. Only film remained impenetrable, as both 1987's abysmal Leonard, Part 6 and 1990's similarly bad Ghost Dad bombed miserably.
After the 1991 LP Oh Baby, the comedian opted to end production of The Cosby Show to explore new endeavors. The first, a syndicated update of the old Groucho Marx quiz show You Bet Your Life, ended after only one season; the second, The Cosby Mysteries, fared no better. Clearly, his audience wanted to see the performer in his natural milieu; accordingly, the family sitcom Cosby debuted in 1996. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 3584
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For someone who claims that he doesn't get any respect, Rodney Dangerfield (born: Jacob Cohen) is one of the most respected entertainers. His résumé as an actor includes appearances in comedy flicks, including Caddyshack in 1980, Easy Money, which he co-wrote, in 1983, Back To School in 1986, and Ladybugs in 1992, and dramatic films, including... [+] Read More
For someone who claims that he doesn't get any respect, Rodney Dangerfield (born: Jacob Cohen) is one of the most respected entertainers. His résumé as an actor includes appearances in comedy flicks, including Caddyshack in 1980, Easy Money, which he co-wrote, in 1983, Back To School in 1986, and Ladybugs in 1992, and dramatic films, including Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers in 1994. He provided the voice of Mr. Burns' son on the Simpsons and provided the voice, wrote the screenplay, composed the songs, and served as executive producer of the animated film Rover Dangerfield. Additional films in which he appeared include The Projectionist in 1970 and Benny And Barney: Las Vegas Undercover in 1976. He appeared regularly on the television variety program, the Dean Martin Show, from 1972 to 1973. The recipient of a Lifetime Achievement award at the 1994 American Comedy Award ceremonies, Dangerfield was listed 36th in a list of the top 50 funniest people compiled by Entertainment Weekly.
Dangerfield has been equally successful as a recording artist. His debut album, No Respect, received a Grammy for "best comedy album" in 1980, as did his second album, Rappin' Rodney, in 1983. He appeared as himself in Billy Joel's "Tell Her About It" music video.
Born in Babylon, New York, Dangerfield began writing jokes at the age of 15. Performing at amateur night competitions from the age of 17, he became a singing waiter and comic two years later. Although he performed on the East coast comedy circuit for a decade, he grew increasingly frustrated by his inability to earn money as an entertainer. Leaving show business in the '40s, Dangerfield worked a variety of odd jobs including a stint as an aluminum siding salesman.
The turning point in Dangerfield's career came, shortly after his 40th birthday, when he returned to performing; working in his office during the day and performing at New York clubs at night.
Opening his own nightclub, Dangerfield's, on New York's First Avenue, Dangerfield hosted an HBO comedy show from the club. Among the many comedians that the show introduced to American viewers were Tim Allen, Roseanne Barr, Jim Carrey, Jeff Foxworthy, Sam Kinison, Jerry Seinfeld and Rita Rudner. Dangerfield also became a regular performer on television, appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show 16 times and Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, an unprecedented 70 times.
Although he became the first entertainer to have a website in February 1995, the event marked the apex of his career. Admitting to a lifelong bout with depression in 1997, he suffered a mild heart attack, following a six-night stint at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, and underwent double bypass heart surgery. While his health slowed him down, Dangerfield remains as durable as ever. He starred in The 4th Tenor, a slightly autobiographical film that premiered in November 2002.
Dangerfield's trademark white shirt and red tie can be seen at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. ~ Craig Harris, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 7680
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He was born Barret Hansen, being the proud owner of a master's degree in music from UCLA under that moniker, but he's far better known to millions of radio listeners as "Doctor Demento." In 1995, he celebrated his 25th anniversary of broadcasting the greatest novelty records of all time, both new and old. In that time, he's elevated the novelty... [+] Read More
He was born Barret Hansen, being the proud owner of a master's degree in music from UCLA under that moniker, but he's far better known to millions of radio listeners as "Doctor Demento." In 1995, he celebrated his 25th anniversary of broadcasting the greatest novelty records of all time, both new and old. In that time, he's elevated the novelty record -- in all its myriad styles -- to a high trash culture art form. He's made hits out of 40-year-old records that no one had ever played, and was singularly responsible for the success of "Weird Al" Yankovic, whose song parodies debuted on his show. Hansen's journey from record collector to national personality is the journey of the radio everyman, but one also grounded in a solid knowledge of American music in all its glorious forms.
At the age of 19, Hansen first started broadcasting at Reed College in Portland, OR. He went on the air at the tiny ten-watt campus station with a half-hour weekly blues show, working his way up through the ranks to eventually become the student station manager. An early forerunner of his present-day format was exhibited on a show he hosted at the station called Music Museum. Hansen's love of music's eclectic side led him to briefly edit the Little Sandy Review. The Review had been a hardcore folk music magazine -- one of the first to write about Dylan -- but Hansen's tenure found him writing about eclectic electric rockers like Frank Zappa instead, this literary bent leading him to do record reviews for Rolling Stone as well.
In the late '60s, Hansen found himself gainfully employed by Specialty Records in Hollywood. This was in the days before Specialty had become strictly a reissue label, and Hansen's behind-the-scenes duties included compiling and annotating numerous excellent vinyl releases (among them several fine Little Richard packages and Doo Wop, one of the Doctor's areas of true musical expertise), producing and issuing the decidedly demented Edard Nelson single "Pale Blues," and almost signing an embryonic version of the J. Geils Band to the label.
Sitting in as a guest on a '50s rock & roll oldies radio show on KPPC-FM in Pasadena, CA, in 1970 was the turning point in his broadcasting career, and where his radio character truly began in earnest. When his DJ friend Steven Siegal asked him to bring in some off-the-wall rock & roll singles for the upcoming week's show, the seeds of what would soon become the Doctor Demento Show were sown. He went from on-the-air guest to his own Sunday night shift and, as he quickly noticed, "everybody liked the obscure blues and doo wop records well enough, but every time I played 'Transfusion' by Nervous Norvus, the phones lit up like crazy." Knowing a good thing when it landed in his lap, the good Doctor started experimenting with tunes from an era that was beyond the rock & roll pale. A good example of this was 1947's "Pico and Sepulveda," which would become his show's theme song. The die was cast.
After resigning from Specialty to make a quick U-Haul trip up to San Francisco for a summer's shift at KPPC's sister station, Hansen found himself back at the Pasadena affiliate just long enough to watch himself and the rest of the staff get fired. In December of 1971, Siegal had landed on his radio feet, this time at Los Angeles' KMET-FM. Doing it all one more time, Demento guested on Siegal's show and soon had his own show on the station, broadcasting once again on Sunday nights. While working at Warner Bros. Records -- putting sampler albums of new material together -- he invited his first special guest on the program, his "teenage hero," Frank Zappa. With a solid time slot, interesting guests, the Doctor's upbeat personality, and an arsenal of audio goodies, the show became a huge success in no time flat, and Hansen stayed at KMET for the next 15 years as one of the jewels in its radio crown.
In 1973, Demento found himself with a manager who had an eye for syndicating his show for a national audience. The process was a slow one, starting in March of 1974 with station in Seattle, but by year's end the list of subscribers topped over 100. It was the Doctor's constant programming of a 30-year-old obscurity -- "Shaving Cream" by Brooklyn, NY, native Benny Bell -- that caught the attention of his New York City affiliate, catapulting him to network TV appearances, national media attention, and the upshot of even more stations signing up for syndication.
In 1975, his profile was high enough that Warner Bros. issued the first collection of selections from his radio show, Dr. Demento's Delights, paving the way for other likeminded compilations on Rhino Records. Hansen has also stayed active with liner note and comp work on such diverse projects as Rhino's John Fahey and Spike Jones collections and the "Weird Al" Yankovic box set on Capitol. With a new syndication company firmly in place and the 2000 release of the Dr. Demento 30th Anniversary Collection: Dementia 2000 set, he showed no sign of slowing down in his pursuit of recorded dementia. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide
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Genre: Comedy
Decades: 2304
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Bob Newhart was one of the most successful and beloved comedians of his era; famed for his remarkable deadpan delivery, Newhart's track record as a comic performer was unparalleled, encompassing a string of best-selling albums as well as two of the most acclaimed and long-running sitcoms in television history. While neither as groundbreaking nor... [+] Read More
Bob Newhart was one of the most successful and beloved comedians of his era; famed for his remarkable deadpan delivery, Newhart's track record as a comic performer was unparalleled, encompassing a string of best-selling albums as well as two of the most acclaimed and long-running sitcoms in television history. While neither as groundbreaking nor as controversial as contemporaries like Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl, Newhart raised the stand-up format to new levels of mainstream popularity; easily palatable but never pandering, his routines were smart and innovative, subtly bridging the gap between the edgy, confrontational satire of the late 1950s with the breezy comic narratives of the mid-'60s.
Born George Robert Newhart on September 5, 1929 in Oak Park, Illinois, he followed a stint in the Army by finding work as a Chicago accountant and advertising copywriter while also performing infrequently in a local theatrical stock company. At the ad agency, Newhart and co-worker Ed Gallagher often whiled away their time by placing long, bizarre phone calls to each other which they eventually began recording as audition tapes for comedy work. When Gallagher opted to begin taking the job more seriously, Newhart continued on alone, honing the one-man, two-way telephone call routines which became the hallmark of his stage act.
In 1959, a Chicago disc jockey introduced Newhart to Warner Bros. talent head George Avakian, who signed the aspiring performer to a contract solely on the basis of his home recordings; to date, Newhart had yet to perform his comedy before a live audience. After developing more phone-call monologues as well as playing off his natural stammer to establish a mild-mannered, even nervous, everyman persona, he began performing in nightclubs; his strongest routines, particularly "The Driving Instructor," skewered suburban sensibilities with a wry, modernist eye akin to a warmer, friendlier Shelley Berman.
His debut LP, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, appeared in early 1960; its success was unprecedented, becoming the first comedy record ever to top the Billboard album charts. Newhart became an overnight star, and quickly graduated from selling out nightclubs to selling out theaters. Later in the year, the follow-up, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, also proved phenomenally popular, and for over eight months the albums held down both the number one and number two spots on the charts.
After a third successful record, 1961's Behind the Button-Down Mind, Newhart made his first foray into television with an eponymously titled variety and sketch comedy program. Despite critical raves and both an Emmy and a Peabody award, the show fared poorly and was cancelled after only one season; 1962's LP The Button-Down Mind on TV reprised material first heard on the series. That year also marked Newhart's feature-film debut in a supporting role in the wartime drama Hell Is for Heroes, followed in 1963 by the conversational LP Bob Newhart Faces Bob Newhart.
After two more albums, 1965's Windmills Are Weakening and 1966's This Is It, he gradually receded from the nightclub stage; after accepting a string of supporting roles in films, including 1970's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and Catch-22, he returned to television in 1972 with another offering titled The Bob Newhart Show. This one, a sitcom featuring Newhart as Chicago psychologist Bob Hartley, proved remarkably successful; backed by a brilliant supporting cast including Suzanne Pleshette, Bill Daily and Peter Bonerz, the show was an instant hit and aired through 1978, at which point its star felt the series had run its course.
Newhart subsequently returned to the stage for a two-year comedy tour, although he did not record any of the material for live release. In 1982, he resurfaced with the series Newhart, another massively successful effort which ran until 1990. In 1991, Newhart toured for the first time in over a decade; another series, titled simply Bob, followed in 1994, but it lasted little more than a year. In 1997 he released his first album in over three decades: titled The Button-Down Concert, it featured all-new live recordings of the material first presented on the original 1960 Button-Down Mind LP. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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