J.P Teaches You To Rock!! (Columbia Records)

Step 1.  The overexcited greeting

Step 2.  A little air guitar

Step 3.  Laugh at a joke

Step 4.  Lay your cards on the table

Step 5.  “I’m totally broke!”

Step 6:  Always finish with Jazz Hands…

“Hear How To Play Better Baseball”  Listen to the fine points of America’s national game taught by Ralph Houk, Manager of the New York Yankees!  Carlton Records “Hear How” Series  (It’s game two of the World Series – 7th inning and the Yanks lead 3-1)

“Let’s Make Music”  A Child’s Introduction to Rhythm and Melody with Ann Callender and Margaret Harmsworth  Wonderland Records

“Law, You and NARCOTICS”   Walter E. Hurst  One of a series of do-it-yourself legal topics on Law-U Records.

“Sexual I.Q. Test”  (1972) Score YOURSELF.  Recommended for GROUP PARTICIPATION as well as individual (editor’s note: !).  “100 intimate questions to PROBE your sex life.” “Asks you about: Your Sexual Attitudes – Your Sexual Technique – Lovemaking, Intercourse, THE ORGASM and You – ORAL Sex, Erotica and Fantasy”  “Learn … whether you are sexually superior, sexually average or sexually below average.  Learn about your loved ones and friends as well” (editor’s note: !)  Sample question:  “It arouses me sexually to see my sex partner naked”  True or False  (editor’s note: !)

“You Be A Disc Jockey”  Cameo Records  “Commercials – Interviews – Jingles – Weather Report – Time Check – Script”   U B A DJ!  Learn how to put the record on!  Drop the needle!  Use the mic!

(And you’ll hear the truth behind the secret world of real-life, pay-to-play DJs!   Here’s your chance to make extra money, coke, gifts, tickets, and hookers from record promoters peddling their sides.)

‘A Stay-At-Home-Do-It-Yourself Pilgrimage to Lourdes”  The Rev. Dr. Frederic J. Nelson, Tour Guide.  For armchair, er, wheel chair, travelers.   Courtesy of Lp cover lover,  Art Scott.

“Music to Massage Your Mate By”   With this “explicitly illustrated” “instruction” booklet!  Thinly discussed soft porn, smuggled into the house in a record sleeve.  (Funny, I used to have to smuggle records in!)  Doesn’t she looked thrilled.

“Picking Up Girls Made Easy” (1975)  Check out the liner notes!

“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.

Check out more at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog here.