1950s Stand-up

[MortSahlFan]

Your favorites? Any great videos out there of social commentary? I don't know that many, and like to see how it has changed.

[garnish]

There's some bad audio of Lenny Bruce on YouTube talking about Jesus coming back from heaven to visit a church.

[Sin Agog]

Listening to Tom Lehrer's live albums, he did a ton of talking in between his songs about incest and pigeon poisoning, so I think he should qualify.  Can't believe the same people who found a soft-serve take on race relations like Imitation of Life controversial didn't go apoplectic over Lehrer's material.  Guess delivering it with a nebbishy good old boy visage really softened the blow.

[zomgmouse]

Nichols and May!! I mean it's sketch comedy really but gosh they were good.

[Autopsy Turvey]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJqSfG-VuIc

I love this: Bill Kerr, Hancock's dopy Aussie chum, creating a lugubrious, reflective sort of observational outsider humour about what's in the stuff you lick on stamps and envelopes, grandpa's lumbago and eating horses. 1951, and his second line eerily resonates with our times (as I suppose does his first), some things never change eh.

[Captain Z]

I say! Do any of you chaps remember Jiffy Mix flour? What the devil was all that about?

[Astronaut Omens]

This Lenny Bruce routine about a low quality stand-up comedian getting a gig at the London Palladium is great. Absolutley no concessions required about it being influential or historically interesting (which I have to make to listen to The Goon Show for example), Bruce's delivery is totally contemporary, as is his ability to sustain a story for 20 minutes and act out a whole cast of characters. Of course, the world has changed, but he sells the story so well that I find myself forgetting that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo750ByNnc8

I heard this routine on a compilation CD where Bruce's stuff was alongside Beat writers like Allen Ginsberg, but whereas (I reckon) most of that stuff is easier for people approaching middle-age to sneer at as being naive/misguided/adolescent, Bruce is a bit harder to grow out of. There's an authority about him that's not there in the Beats.

[MortSahlFan]

Considered the first live stand-up comedy album (was secretly recorded and distributed illegally, and years later, released on vinyl in the mid/late 50s).. Mort Sahl - Sunset - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEwStx22hBc

Favorite Bits
"Every time the Russian put an American in jail, WE put an American in jail" (this was during the blacklist, and Mort was the only one who attacked Joe McCarthy, and later, Edward R. Murrow).

He then talks about being stationed in Okinawa, in charge of an area of 4-5 natives who had no language, lived in trees, ate leaves, had no drive, or incentive, "And my job was to save them from Communism!"

(and the last line of the story)... "We sent our report to The Pentagon, and in 12 short months, we had showed these people how to live off each other instead of the land"

If you like Bill Hicks, and know a bit about American society, history, politics, you'd love this.. My friends who love stand-up give up, because Mort is tough to follow, and I think they were too lazy to simply research a few names.

[Better Midlands]

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[Phil_A]

Does Gerard Hoffnung's 1958 address to the Oxford Union count as stand-up?

"The Bricklayer's Lament" is a bit of a classic. It's all in the delivery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZUJLO6lMhI

[MortSahlFan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJqSfG-VuIc

I love this: Bill Kerr, Hancock's dopy Aussie chum, creating a lugubrious, reflective sort of observational outsider humour about what's in the stuff you lick on stamps and envelopes, grandpa's lumbago and eating horses. 1951, and his second line eerily resonates with our times (as I suppose does his first), some things never change eh.

LOL @ "I don't believe in letters"

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Where's me washboard?

[MortSahlFan]

This Lenny Bruce routine about a low quality stand-up comedian getting a gig at the London Palladium is great. Absolutley no concessions required about it being influential or historically interesting (which I have to make to listen to The Goon Show for example), Bruce's delivery is totally contemporary, as is his ability to sustain a story for 20 minutes and act out a whole cast of characters. Of course, the world has changed, but he sells the story so well that I find myself forgetting that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo750ByNnc8

I heard this routine on a compilation CD where Bruce's stuff was alongside Beat writers like Allen Ginsberg, but whereas (I reckon) most of that stuff is easier for people approaching middle-age to sneer at as being naive/misguided/adolescent, Bruce is a bit harder to grow out of. There's an authority about him that's not there in the Beats.

I've heard this before.. Is there anyone else out there who loves Mort Sahl, Bill Hicks, George Carlin, but NOT like Lenny Bruce?

[McChesney Duntz]

I've heard this before.. Is there anyone else out there who loves Mort Sahl, Bill Hicks, George Carlin, but NOT like Lenny Bruce?

I'm sure there are many. Me, I love the man (and "The Palladium" is his masterpiece, so if you get nothing out of that, there's really no need to explore further), but, oddly enough, not chiefly for the comedy - he's pure verbal jazz to me, blatting and bopping and scatting into frequent blind alleys and intermittent flights of genius. Quite fascinating, really.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Yeah I appreciate Bruce as more of a sort of scattergun verbal performance artist. More interesting than funny, but often very rewarding and entertaining in his idiosyncratic way

[MortSahlFan]

I'm sure there are many. Me, I love the man (and "The Palladium" is his masterpiece, so if you get nothing out of that, there's really no need to explore further), but, oddly enough, not chiefly for the comedy - he's pure verbal jazz to me, blatting and bopping and scatting into frequent blind alleys and intermittent flights of genius. Quite fascinating, really.

You basically described Mort Sahl for me (but I've have/heard every Lenny audio/video, along with others).. As for Mort, I have to say, it took YEARS to fully "get it". Half of it were the names, references, lingo of the day, but also the way his mind worked.. Improvisational, the digressions, asides, free association, stream of consciousness that always made a full circle.

[petril]

really impressive that this thread had gone three days without a big picture of Mark Lamarr

[MortSahlFan]

really impressive that this thread had gone three days without a big picture of Mark Lamarr

A guy who wasn't even alive in the 50s?