This week on the blog, a podcast interview with comedian and USC Professor Wayne Federman on the history and impact of stand-up comedy albums.
LINKS
A Free Film Book for You: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12
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Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/
Wayne Federman Website: http://www.waynefederman.com/Wayne_Federmans_Official_Web_Site/Welcome.html
The History of Standup Podcast: https://www.thehistoryofstandup.com/
Eli Marks Website: https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/
Albert’s Bridge Books Website: https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcast
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John: I want to just kind of start at the beginning, if you have any idea who performed or produced or released the very first quote, unquote stand-up comedy album?
Wayne: The first album recorded, there's some controversy about it, but it's going to be either Redd Foxx’s Laugh of the Party, Volume 1, 1956. But in 1955, there was an album of Mort Sahl recorded, but it wasn't released until 1960, which was after he had already released another album. And it's a very tough question and a terrible answer but it would be probably those two guys, I would say, are in the running for the first comedy album would be Redd Foxx, and Mort Sahl.
John: Okay and the genre that Redd would slip into would be a genre that I didn't really follow that much, which was the party album.
Wayne: Correct. The party album concept was that these were albums that exactly as described, would be listened to, at a party, usually an adult party. So, it tended to have more what we would call baudy humor, it wouldn't be explicit, the way people speak now on comedy albums and in life. But at that time, it was something and these are usually all on minor labels. That because people could still get in trouble for swearing because of something called Community Standards back then. So, a lot of times in the record store—when there were record stores—you would have to ask for it specifically, it wouldn't be like up in the counter. It wouldn't be in this displayed, it would be like, do you have the new, let's say Rusty Warren album. Yes, she was like a singer who also did sort of baudy songs and told sort of jokes about, you know, breasts and guys getting laid and things like that. There was a number of them.
John: Knockers Up being the one I've ran across the most.
Wayne: Sold millions of copies, millions of copies.
[Music]
John: Just hard to imagine, these days, a party where the entertainment was you all sat around and listened to a record album. It’s quaint.
Wayne: Exactly. But if you think about it, the power of the comedy album was in the fact that for the first time you were transported to these adult nightclubs, or coffee houses, or theaters, where stand-up comedy was being performed. Before then you would never hear anything like that. You heard, there was obviously comedy records, but they were usually produced in a studio. So, this was all something very new.
John: And this was an outgrowth of the sort of explosion of nightclubs?
Wayne: It was a convergence of a number of things. Because if you think of those first big breakout albums, which was of course, the Redd Foxx, and then Mort Saul, and then Shelley Berman, and then a guy named Bob Newhart, those were kind of like the first ones. So, those were all comedians still trying to break through. This wasn't like big Jimmy Durrante, or Milton Berle or Bob Hope, or any of the big nightclub headliners weren't putting out their records. As a matter of fact, there was a big divide between the older generation, or let me put it this way, maybe the less established generation, and the established guys because they were making you know, this is when Vegas started hitting, so these guys, it's like, yeah, Alan King was making, whatever, 15 grand a week or 20 grand a week and he was like, “why should I put my act out for $1.98?” It just didn't make any sense, not realizing the transformative power of like, oh, my God, we get to go to a nightclub here in our living room in Des Moines, but also the promotional value of those albums. So, there was a real divide about whether to put this stuff out or not.
John: So, would the analog be comedians today doing podcasts in order to build up their audience so when they do go on the...
Wayne: Very similar. Yes, that's a great analogy. Great analogy about stand ups and technology.
John: It's just a way to get your brand out there so that there is an audience when you show up in town.
Wayne: 100%. Yes. You got that.
John: At that point with Mort Sahl, he is a contemporary at that point with Lenny Bruce. They're running kind of on the same track, right?
Wayne: They're at the same time. Lenny Bruce is not as successful as Mort Sahl was at this time. Like you said, Mort Sahl started touring with a jazz band, the Dave Brubeck Trio or whatever that was and then he also got fame for kind of doing comedy in this new style, where as Lenny Bruce was still, he was playing strip clubs in Los Angeles. So, Lenny Bruce was primarily a Los Angeles act. It's a little later, while Mort Sahl was a little more famous. And Mort Sahl was really championed by local San Francisco writers at the papers and he just became a thing. It just became like, oh, you don't have to be in a tuxedo. You don't have to be doing mother-in-law jokes. You don't have to be doing any of these things that people would see in Vegas, like, oh, this is powerful, very powerful.
[Skit Audio]
John: That's a real shift from the Catskill comic where they were all named Jackie and they kind of trade routines .
Wayne: Yes, there was. There was a number. There were some Mortys. There was some Buddys. It wasn't all Jackie's. But they all had that vibe, too. Yes.
John: I know at the beginning of Broadway Danny Rose when the comics are sitting in The Carnegie Deli and one of my favorite comics, Corbett Monica, talking and he's telling about a joke that he tells that died the other night.
[Skit Audio]
John: And there was this understanding, I thought, that the jokes were kind of interchangeable and you would—like a magician nowadays, if the two magicians are on the same show, they'll talk beforehand about we don't want to overlap tricks—and comics, I thought they used to have that same sort of discussion. They're both on the bill, so I'm going to do this some of you that you're not going to do this. Was it true that they just sort of traded stuff back and forth and it wasn't that personal comedy that Mort Sahl sort of...
Wayne: First, I get that as a general rule that is absolutely correct. That is absolutely correct. There were a number of Catskill comedians that did share material and it was all kind of the same persona. Like, I don't know if it was Morty Gunty or was that different than Corbett Monica, or Freddie Roman or all of those guys.
Yeah, but looking back, I feel like that's a little bit of a generalization, because certainly, there were comedians that were very creative. Like, there was a radio comedian called Fred Allen, who had a very popular show, and his act was not at all interchangeable with what Jack Benny was doing on stage, or even with Bob Hope was doing, or even what there was a comedian named Jean Carroll, who worked in New York City, even what she was doing or what Moms Mabley was doing. So, I think it's a little bit of a misnomer that every comedian before Mort Sahl an interchangeable act, wore a jacket and did mother-in-law jokes. But that did exist.
John: Getting back to Bob Newhart, I remember you talking on the podcast, that when he recorded his first album, that was the first time he had worked in a nightclub, is that right?
Wayne: That is correct.
John: But up until that point, he had just been, I mean, he must have been doing it.
Wayne: He was doing it but it was more he was doing it with his radio buddies. So, these were like little radio skits they would do or he would do when it's friend’s local radio show in Chicago. So, there were recordings of it that that guy sent to, I think it was Warner Brothers Records and they were like, yeah, oh, look, Mort Sahl has this hit album recorded at this little room. And then Shelley Berman based on Mort Sahl's recommendation, he has this crazy hit album also. You know, those are both on Verve Records, which was kind of a jazz label and Warner Brothers like, “we're a big company, let's get on this. Let's jump on this bandwagon.”
And so it was just a perfect timing and they sent him down to Houston, Texas to a place called The Tidelands and it's incredible, because he wasn't even, he wasn't the headliner. He was like opening for a singer or something. It's almost, it's mind blowing, because the whole thing about stand-up comedy, at least when I was starting was, “oh, it's gonna take you five years just to find your voice or find your own point of view or your own rhythm,” and now here was this guy right out of the gate recording an album that dominates the charts in such a powerful way that album wins the Record of the Year, beating out like Frank Sinatra, beating out the music acts, that's how big that album was.
[Skit Audio]
Wayne: Can I also tell you a little bit of trivia? I mean, I know you know it from the podcast but not only does that album win the Record of the year and Bob Newhart wins Best New Artist. But the album was so popular that he rushed out another album, The Buttoned-Down Mind Strikes Back, and that album won Best Comedy Album the same year. There's been nothing close to it. The only thing close was like when Chappelle put out four Netflix specials in one year, like there would have been nothing like that.
John: And that's the second album is pretty darn good.
Wayne: It is good. It is pretty good.
John: Maybe another one that I'm gonna pull up that I know Harry would have opened for would be a guy named Woody Woodbury.
Wayne: Yes, out of Florida.
John: I found a number of his albums.
Wayne : They were huge sellers. I feel like he straddled the world between the party record and the traditional comedy record. Would you agree with that?
John: I would totally agree that yes, absolutely agree. That was his market.
Wayne: He has his own television show as well. He had a talk show that was sort of based on The Tonight Show a little bit like that version. And, he was definitely a huge player in early 60s stand-up comedy album boom.
[Skit Audio]
John: In the early 60s, you got Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town, The Ed Sullivan Show, right? How did the Ed Sullivan show help stand-up comics, and did their albums get them on The Ed Sullivan Show? Was there any connection between the two?
Wayne: Ed Sullivan is really important in the history of the stand-up comedian because he had this very popular show on Sunday night at eight o'clock on CBS. There was this family show that was—despite his limitations as a host and as a personality—it was beloved by the United States. He loved stand-up comics and almost every show had at least one sometimes two, sometimes two comics and a ventriloquist. There there was a lot of work for stand-up comedians, and this was the first time like you really saw a stand-up kind of doing their act, even though it was in obviously this theater, so it's not quite in the nightclub. But you would see that and it definitely helped comedians gets bookings in like Miami Beach or the Catskill Mountains or in New York at these big theaters that were called presentation houses. That's like the Roxy or Lowe's or The Paramount. These are big multi thousand seat theaters.
Yeah, so Sullivan was the nightclub comic’s dream booking. And then when the album's came along, and he this is an interesting, like, again, there was a generational divide we talked about earlier. This is really where it hit because these new wave comedians, they call it, they despite them being a little more intellectual than the Catskill guys that they were still trying to get on Ed Sullivan Show. So, they would use an album to get there as opposed to a booking at let's say, the Latin Quarter or the Copa or so wherever, you know, Sullivan and his talent bookers would hang out in New York. So, yeah, he had all those guys all on. Now, I know a lot of comedians didn't like doing that show because right before they would go on, they would be like, oh, you can only do four tonight as opposed to the seven. It usually was a cutting situation. It's interesting.
John: What was the first comedy stand-up album that you ever got?
Wayne: It certainly wasn't The Bob Newhart. It wasn't any of those because I'm a little younger. I believe it was an album called Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fella, Right? Yes, Noah was his big breakout thing and I guess he had just done the Tonight Show and yes, I had that album as a kid. But it was more of the family had the album and I listened to it. But I do remember my uncle had an early Jackie Mason album that like, I'm the greatest comedian in the world or something like that, like, so I heard that as well. But Bill Cosby was very big in my house. So, it's hard to talk about him now because he's in jail.
John: So, a couple more personal questions...
Wayne: Anything! You got me. I'm here.
John: A favorite album or performer from that era of 60s and 70s.
Wayne: I really liked those George Carlin albums, but I have to say I felt there was a rerelease of Woody Allen's three Copix albums. I didn't have any of those that was just called The Nightclub Years. Yeah, that was I would say that was the main one that I was like, oh, this is insanely good. I really liked those Carlin albums. I even listened to those Richard Pryor ones that had the N word in the title. So thank you for asking. Yes, I would say those are the albums that I really fascinated me, but I listened to the you know, oh, let me give me another one. I thought the there was a Flip Wilson album that I also enjoyed very much that had the ugly baby routine on it.
John: Geraldine was on it, too?
Wayne: I think he'd be. I mean, he would always do a Geraldine type voice. There was a routine I remember used to do about Christopher Columbus and so Queen, the Queen of Spanish, Queen Isabel, that was in the Geraldine voice. It was that voice, but it was so great.
[Skit Audio]
Wayne: Can we go back really quickly?
John: Sure.
Wayne: Remember, I said that I love that Woody Allen album and that Shelley Berman album obviously albums were incredible. Those were all because those guys had seen more Mort Sahl perform and were like, “oh, I could do this is possible and stand up like this level of an intimate, not hyper performative style.” So, both of those guys were inspired to get into the stand-up game because of Mort Sahl.