Comedy

Lenny Bruce - American Fantasy Records 7011. Selections recorded in 1960 during nightclub performances in San Francisco.

Liner Notes by Ralph J. Gleason:

If there is one single theme running through the New Comedy of Dissent, it is that an agonizing reappraisal of the priorities of our society is overdue. Artists are on the picket point of all social movements and the jazz men and the satirical creative comics have been the picket points in this country ofthe great social upheaval that has shaken the entire world in the decade following World War II.

Let us not confuse the jazz musicians of the interregnum between the World Wars with the jazz musician now; the attitudes and assumptions are entirely different. The jazzmen of the 30’s, no matter how iconoclastic and no matter how rebellious, accepted as a working base the stereotype his audiences wanted.

The comedians were no less bound by ritual and by rote. World War II broke this and freed the colonial peoples of the world from their concept of subservience and this has been reflected in the jazz musician and it also shook up The Establishment sufficently so that parts slintered off and a reassessment began. Today’s dissent is not based on revising the same order of things but upon a complete re-examination and a completely new approach which abandons the pose and the pretense that had become traditional.

Comedy - especially improvised, creative comedy - bears a strong resemblance to jazz. It is rooted in the same dissent, nurtured in the same rebellion and articulated in the same language in which the priorities of the Establishment have no standing at all.

There is no better example available on record of this entire attitude than Lenny Bruce’s bit on “How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties” on this LP.

Done before a mixed audience, the reaction is mixed. Some non-Negroes are outraged either because they think the attitude is outrageous or because they are ashamed to have the truth so bluntly put. Others are momentarily shocked but then, as they see themselves in past moments portrayed on stage they laugh embarrassedly. Others - those few who have escaped from the chains of race to some degree - fall out.

The same spectrum of reaction is followed by the Negroes in the audience. The more courageous and the freer dig it immediately and respond. Then there are those who fear it will rock the boat inhibits them.

Thus it is with Bruce’s humor in many areas. Comedians divide in their reactions. Any of them, from the bland Bob Newhart to the salty Mort Sahl who are themselves based on the same assumptions of paradox and pretense, go down the line with him. Like Charlie Parker, Bruce’s humor is the seminal influence of his generation and a decade from now its effects will be so widespread that those influenced by it may not even be aware of it.

Bruce has already opened up new areas for other comics to explore and it is a testament to the artistic density of the structure of his art that it is so rewarding line by line and concept by concept. Any Bruce show disgorges countless asides and inferences and quick bits that can be expanded (and are being expanded) by others. Bruce has opened the door to a reconsideration of everything in our society except the basic truths of love and beauty and honesty and truth itself. He is, in essence, attacking the whole of our society from the point of view of a street-wise primitive Christian preacher. In other words, he is the child who says the Emperor has no clothes.

There are several other points which are useful to keep in mind when listening to Bruce. He, like the jazz musician, gets bored with the same routines and this has led him to improvisation and leads him now away from things which have become associated with him, making his nightly shows a different experience than his records. He may very possibly do none of the bits on this album any longer. He may probably be bored with them.

The relationship between Bruce and the jazz musicians extends into something else, too. The jazz audience is the basic audience for Bruce because jazz listening postulates familiarity with the feeling of improvisation and this is essential to understanding and appreciating Lenny Bruce. He “wails” like a jazz man, “get in the groove” or whatever he may use to describe the jazz musician’s equivalent of being “on.” You throw away the openings sometimes because he’s just getting started. And when he is in the groove, wailing and on, the whole thing swings in a jazz sense.

One other point. The New Comics, Bruce in particular, establish a very personal relationship with their audience by the simple process of extending their own intimate circle to include the audience. The audience are all personal friends. “I have to read newspapers and see TV shows so I can come back and tell YOU about them,” Bruce remarks to the audience. His entire attitude is that of the gifted commentator in the personal circle telling all his friendsabout the incredible examples of life and social behaviour he has encountered in the recent past. He does not tell jokes. He does bits and he does routines, but he also tells them directly to YOU. This is both the secret of the successand the failure of this form of the comic art. But at its best, it is somethingmore vital and alive than anything except the very best in art. Some excerpts of that order are included here.

“Verdaguer…” (?)  Solo Para Adultos.  Prohibido en T.V.  Tropical Records.

STAG PARTY RECORD #6 “Spice After Hours” Featuring Wild Party Songs. FAX Records

“The Playboy Farmer” Lonnie “Pap” Wilson on Starday. “Jokes, Laffs, Songs & Gags about the Funny Side of Life Or How to Have Fun - Even if You’re Married“

George Jessel “Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups” Riot Records. Jessel was born in Harlem and was once a bat boy for the New York Giants. Once the vaudeville partner of Eddie Cantor and Walter Winchell, he appeared often on the Johnny Carson and Jack Parr show and this album is an answer to the many requests from around the country to finish the stories he could not tell on TV in their entirety. George was given the title of “Toast Master General of the United States” toast mastering functions for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Cover Art Work by : Burt Portnoy & Bob Ghiraldini

Liz Lyons “Up Your Ass”  Live at the Club Monacco  (1975)  This one is signed on the front:  “To Debbie and Vaughn, Enjoy me. - Liz Lyons”  From the liner notes above (yes, I thought you should see the rear):  The critics rave:  “When this kitten lays one on you, you know you’ve been laid…on” and “I laughed so hard I fell off my wife and broke my arm.”

Jewish Comedy Songs by the Barton Brothers.  “Joe and Paul meet Cockeye Jenny” on Apollo Records.  Another one for Jennifer.

“The Reluctant Golf Pupil” “Professional Golf Instruction in Sophisticated Humor” Starring Reginald Owen and Joe Novak. On Rex. With Jeanne Carmen (”as Felicity Comfort”)

Ronnie Hollyman recorded live at the exclusive Key Room.  “The Quiet Man” - “Shhh!”  King Records

“Come sit a spell” Joe Pelham’s Outhouse II (Sequel to “That Wonderful Old Two Holer”).

This was unearthed at a salvation army up in Maine. $.59 later here it is courtesy of Calvin, another lp cover lover: “Here is a cover called OUTHOUSE II. “The Shack is Back” more tales, poems, and songs about a classic rural-Maine subject.“

“Cuzzin Eth Eatin’ Peas & Honey”  It looks like the honey also helps keep the peas on the knife.  I guess if you can’t afford a spoon or a fork this is pretty resourceful.

The Uncensored Humor of The Rebel Playboys “Laugh Out #1″ A stag party record.

“The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce” Fantasy Records (1958) Thanks to Steve Talley for sending this in!

The Liner Notes: We are living in a culture of conformity, the sociologists keep telling us as they pore over statistics that indicate college students are conservative this year. That may be. But sometimes it seems as if the sociologists miss a few points such as Bob and Ray, jazz musicians and the well-honed wit that is bringing the Comedy of Dissent these nights to various clubs in the person of Lenny Bruce.Lenny Bruce is an example of something new in our society. He’s a comic right out of the jazz world. Unlike Mort Sahl, himself a razor wit flavored with a liberal dose of jazz orientation but self-confined to a political and national affairs horizon with forays into a limited social strata bounded on one side by hi-fi and on the other by the psychiatrist’s couch, Lenny Bruce ranges throughout our society. Armed with the anarchistic wit and salty speech of the jazz musician, Bruce does his satirical bits in a multitude of voices as contrasted to Sahl who is a stark, stand-up comic monologist.

Bruce’s whole orientation is that of the jazz musician and knowing this is fundamental to understanding and appreciating Bruce’s humor. Like the jazz musician’s view, Bruce’s comedy isa dissent from a world gone mad. To him nothing is sacred except the ultimate truths of love and beauty and moral goodness - all equating honesty. And like a jazz musician he expects to see these things about him in the world in a pure form. He takes people literally and what they say literally and by the use of his searing imagination and tongue of fire, he contrasts what they say with what they do. And he does this with the sardonic shoulder-shrug of the jazz man.

He is colossally irreverant - like a jazz musician. His stock in trade is to violate the taboos out loud and to say things on stage (and on this LP) which would get your nose bashed in at a party. But his outrage at society is not represented by shrill screams or loud protests. He does not pose. His is a moral outrage and has about it the air of a jazz man. It is strong stuff - like jazz, and it is akin to the point of view of Nelson Algren and Lawerence Ferlinghetti as well as to Charlie Parker and Lester Young.

Bruce improvises the way a jazz musician does. His routines on this album, for instance, are never done the same way twice but move like a soloist improvising on a framework of chords and melody. He takes a hard look at middle-class America with its Babbitts, its Lodges, and its Elmer Gantrys. He stabs the motion picture business with brutal parody and he punctures the hypocrisy in religion, politics, and other areas with an arrowtipped with poison.

Lenny Bruce is a social commentator, as is the jazz musician. It is an interesting point for speculation as to why his comedy of dissent has flourished in the jazz clubs. He terrifies other comics - the usual ones - by his material, in the same way the jazz musician terrifies the hotel bands and the mickey mouse tenor men. He is a threat. If he is real, he gives them the lie by his very existence.

For almost two decades the night clubs have wallowed in a sea of sentimentality and pious corn and bathroom jokes. That’s why Joe E. Lewis is such a relief. He is real and so is Lenny Bruce.

The jazz musician is a rebel with humor, if with a cause, and there is no more effective putdown of the political speeches, the incongruities in the news, the fetuous posing of the tent show religious carnivals than that which goes on in the conversation of the jazz musician and the humor of Lenny Bruce.

It’s ribald. Yes, and even sometimes rough. But it’s real. You have to earn the respect of the jazz musician, he doesn’t give it because he’s told to. And this attitude, a modern manifestation of the original American “show me,” is Bruce’s strength. He’s a verbal Hieronymus Bosh in whose monologue there is the same urgency as in a Charlie Parker chorus and the same sardonic vitality in his comments as in Lester Young’s reflections on a syrupy pop tune.

The jazzman may be anti-verbal, as Kenneth Rexroth says, if so, he has Lenny Bruce to speak for him with power.

- Ralph Gleason

“How To Speak Hip” Mercury Records (1959) Brian Wilson reportedly was a fan of this record and listened to it during the recording of Pet Sounds. (This is born out in excerpts from the Pet Sounds session outtakes where he makes reference to the album.) Del Close also put out the very funny “Do It Yourself Psychoanalysis Kit” record.

Del was one of the founders of Second City, performing with folks like Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Barbara Harris and Joan Rivers in the early ‘60s, eventually leaving Chicago to do a stint with the Committee (and folks like Howard Hesseman) in San Francisco in the ’60s. While on the West Coast, Del was a regular on My Mother the Car and had a recurring role on Get Smart. And in his spare time, he used to do light shows for the Grateful Dead.

In the early ‘70s he directed Second City, and discovered John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis, Betty Thomas, George Wendt, Tim Kazurinsky and John Candy; most of them still consider Del their most important teacher.

The words creative genius may be bandied about far too frequently, but in Del’s case, they truly apply. Del remains an incredibly important figure in American comedy/improv, and his influence will long live on. He was undoubtedly the best (and most influential) improv teacher in the U.S., and traveled all over giving his workshops. He didn’t invent improv, but he is probably most responsible for making it into its own art form, particularly with the work he’s done in long-form improv in the past 20 years.

Del Close died March 4, 1999 at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago. He was 64. Del’s Will was fairly straightforward, but there was one odd provision. He bequeathed his own skull to the Goodman Theatre, to be used in their productions of Hamlet, with him getting a credit in the program.

“Folk Songs for the 21st Century” Sheldon Allman HIFI Records.  Sheldon’s first record was “Sing Along With Drac” in  1960 (see the “monsters” category), he went on to write many TV theme songs including Let’s Make a Deal and George of the Jungle and Superchicken.

“Monkeying Around ” With Bill Gallus.  “Gargatuan Gags for Big Town Jungle Dwellers”.  A StereoODDITIES Images in Sound Live Comedy Album.

Politically incorrect cover #12,356. “Yakety Saki Man in Orbit’ by the (not-so-) honorable Bill Fraser! On the Maestro Label. Super rare and absolutely crazy. Must be early sixties.

Shag Connors and the Carrot Crunchers “West Country Humour At Its Funniest” I’ll need someone else to explain this one and “Furzlin’” to me. (Courtesy Uncle Gil)