WEBVTT - Stand-Up Comedy Pt I 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:05.020 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.180 --> 0:00:14.240 Waka waka and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and 0:00:14.260 --> 0:00:17.919 there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And I just made 0:00:17.940 --> 0:00:21.720 sure to kick this two-part episode on stand-up comedy off 0:00:21.780 --> 0:00:23.140 in the worst way possible. 0:00:24.980 --> 0:00:27.650 You know what? This one has some COAs, unfortunately. 0:00:30.020 --> 0:00:33.120 Well, yeah. I mean, we're talking about genuine stand-up comedy and, 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:35.480 you know, they're edgy. They push the envelope. 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:35.979 Yeah. 0:00:36.020 --> 0:00:38.090 I mean, we're going to, there are people throughout this, 0:00:38.150 --> 0:00:41.210 peppered throughout this episode that, you know, some of them, 0:00:41.250 --> 0:00:42.510 they're like bad people. 0:00:42.790 --> 0:00:44.130 Some of them have done bad things. 0:00:45.390 --> 0:00:47.250 But you can't talk about the history of stand-up comedy 0:00:47.290 --> 0:00:48.830 without talking about some bad. 0:00:48.690 --> 0:00:49.690 People, as it turns out. 0:00:50.350 --> 0:00:52.170 Are you talking about Frank Fay? 0:00:53.190 --> 0:00:54.970 I mean, there's a bunch of people throughout here. 0:00:54.990 --> 0:00:57.710 Oh, okay. Well, I'm not familiar with a lot of 0:00:57.770 --> 0:01:00.810 the badness here, so. Let's just avoid it. 0:01:02.970 --> 0:01:04.770 That and, you know, this is the thing on stand 0:01:04.810 --> 0:01:09.990 up comedy. So we're seeing our own a because like 0:01:10.670 --> 0:01:13.130 you can't do justice even in a two parter. Like 0:01:13.230 --> 0:01:16.670 after we got all this together, I was like, oh, well, 0:01:16.690 --> 0:01:19.480 we're not even talking about truly weird stand up like 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:21.380 Andy Kaufman and Zach Galifianakis. 0:01:21.459 --> 0:01:23.000 And we're not talking about this and this. 0:01:23.100 --> 0:01:25.880 And you just have to stop at a certain point 0:01:26.660 --> 0:01:31.149 and realize you can't cover something that's completely that's so 0:01:31.209 --> 0:01:33.070 deep and vast like this, you know? 0:01:33.490 --> 0:01:35.660 For sure. Every once in a while we record an 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:38.160 episode and then like the next day I'm like, oh, 0:01:38.180 --> 0:01:40.320 I should have said this. I think that's going to 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:41.959 happen 15 or 20 times. 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:42.740 Yeah. 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:45.220 But we got to let ourselves up because I know 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:46.900 we're going to get emails. How could you not talk 0:01:46.940 --> 0:01:47.540 about blank? 0:01:48.780 --> 0:01:49.020 Right. 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:51.360 It's just the deal. You know, it's too much to cover. 0:01:51.830 --> 0:01:54.730 No, but shoot us those emails, especially ones we didn't 0:01:55.030 --> 0:01:56.610 bring up because we might not have heard of them. 0:01:56.710 --> 0:01:59.490 And not only... Name check them. Send us your favorite 0:01:59.510 --> 0:02:00.470 joke of theirs, too. 0:02:00.970 --> 0:02:03.970 And I pledge to do a full episode on Andy Kaufman. 0:02:04.710 --> 0:02:05.010 Okay. 0:02:05.950 --> 0:02:06.230 All right. 0:02:07.030 --> 0:02:09.650 Okay. Well, I pledge to do a full episode on 0:02:09.690 --> 0:02:10.650 Zach Galifianakis. 0:02:10.710 --> 0:02:13.090 Hey, I'd do one on Zach in a second. 0:02:14.070 --> 0:02:16.210 And one other COA, too, just to throw in. Some 0:02:16.250 --> 0:02:19.070 of these jokes are maybe slightly edgier than stuff we 0:02:19.090 --> 0:02:22.889 would normally say, but that's, you know, we're covering stand-up comedy, 0:02:22.950 --> 0:02:27.049 which is inherently edgier than what we normally do. All right. 0:02:27.430 --> 0:02:27.810 You ready? 0:02:28.730 --> 0:02:29.089 I'm ready. 0:02:29.930 --> 0:02:35.070 We're talking about stand-up comedy, as we've said. And Livia 0:02:35.090 --> 0:02:37.010 helped us with this, and she points out that basically, 0:02:37.310 --> 0:02:39.810 if you're talking about being funny in front of an audience, 0:02:39.850 --> 0:02:43.710 stand-up comedy is pretty much as old as humans are. 0:02:45.110 --> 0:02:47.050 As old as human speech is, I would guess. 0:02:47.430 --> 0:02:47.630 Yeah. 0:02:47.790 --> 0:02:50.440 Well, you could have made gestures that were funny. But 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:53.140 to really just kind of shore it up, you want 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:54.940 to just zero in on vaudeville. 0:02:55.710 --> 0:02:57.890 Yeah. I mean, a lot of this stuff we've covered 0:02:57.950 --> 0:03:00.650 in other episodes. It's funny. This is another one of 0:03:00.669 --> 0:03:01.750 those we've danced around. 0:03:02.510 --> 0:03:10.750 Like we've done shows on specific comedians, The Science of Funny, and. 0:03:09.260 --> 0:03:11.480 Like two or three other ones. And then, of course, vaudeville. 0:03:12.340 --> 0:03:13.489 But here we are with stand up. 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.399 But you have to start at vaudeville because, you know, 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:19.540 vaudeville had a lot of skits and stuff like that. 0:03:19.620 --> 0:03:22.669 But it wasn't too long before there were people. all 0:03:22.690 --> 0:03:25.570 of a sudden, whether they were hosting the night or something, 0:03:26.450 --> 0:03:30.910 did something that resembled stand-up. And Charlie Case is one 0:03:30.970 --> 0:03:33.329 of those people that people say like, hey, maybe he 0:03:33.370 --> 0:03:34.510 was the first person doing this. 0:03:35.090 --> 0:03:38.170 Yeah, he was the son of a freeborn black man 0:03:38.690 --> 0:03:43.730 and an Irish mother. And he was educated and became 0:03:43.770 --> 0:03:46.089 a lawyer and a salesman, but he also was known 0:03:46.130 --> 0:03:49.570 as a great storyteller. And so starting in, I think, 0:03:49.650 --> 0:03:54.339 actually 1880, He joined vaudeville and being a vaudeville performer 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:59.119 of any race. He whenever he talked about black culture, 0:03:59.180 --> 0:04:01.420 it was in a mocking way. He had to wear blackface, 0:04:01.460 --> 0:04:03.680 all that stuff. And eventually he was like, I'm not 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.940 really down with this. This is trite. So he moved 0:04:07.020 --> 0:04:10.420 on around 1900 to doing essentially what's a stand up act. 0:04:10.980 --> 0:04:14.440 Yeah, he, you know, a tried and true thing. He 0:04:14.460 --> 0:04:16.730 talked about his family a lot. And I found this 0:04:16.790 --> 0:04:20.940 part hysterical at one point. His performance was on the 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.419 billing was billed as the man who talks about his father, 0:04:25.060 --> 0:04:27.500 which could, you know, it's about talking about parents is 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:31.700 probably 90 percent of stand up since then. But, yeah, 0:04:31.860 --> 0:04:34.200 it was, you know, the 20th century had rolled around. 0:04:34.790 --> 0:04:37.909 And like I mentioned, being an emcee kind of led, 0:04:38.190 --> 0:04:41.770 you know, at vaudeville kind of led to, you know, 0:04:41.970 --> 0:04:45.210 hosting the night and telling jokes in between other acts. 0:04:45.870 --> 0:04:48.070 And that kind of morphed into what we would know 0:04:48.150 --> 0:04:48.680 as stand up. 0:04:49.750 --> 0:04:52.830 Yeah, there's a guy, I already mentioned him because you 0:04:52.870 --> 0:04:56.850 mentioned terrible people. His name is Frank Fay. He was 0:04:56.930 --> 0:05:00.650 the first one to really kind of take stand-up comedy 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:02.840 out of the realm of like a pie in your 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:09.280 face or wearing baggy pants and suspenders or making yourself 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:10.720 the butt of the jokes at all. He was an 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:14.789 acerbic wit and he was very refined. And he gave 0:05:14.830 --> 0:05:18.750 us those kind of like the type of– the type 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.940 of comedian like that David Letterman was in the vein of. 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.780 But I really hesitate to even associate Letterman with Faye 0:05:25.820 --> 0:05:29.570 because he was a Nazi and a virulent racist too. 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:34.380 He really was a terrible person, but his form really 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.919 created a certain type of stand-up comedian. And he was 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:40.919 also one of the first stand-up comedians of any kind. 0:05:41.380 --> 0:05:44.700 Yeah, for sure. And that's early 1900s. 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:46.300 And then, you know, by the time you get to 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:49.880 the 30s, You had something called the Borscht Belt, which 0:05:49.980 --> 0:05:53.110 were these Jewish resort communities up in the mountains in 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:57.030 the northeast, the Catskills and the Adirondacks. And, you know, 0:05:57.510 --> 0:05:59.730 I'm sure people who know anything about the history of 0:05:59.770 --> 0:06:03.010 stand up know about the Borscht Belt. You know, comics 0:06:03.070 --> 0:06:06.330 would basically go and like summer there. They would do 0:06:06.350 --> 0:06:07.730 shows in New York City and stuff, but they would 0:06:07.770 --> 0:06:11.330 summer in the Catskills and the Adirondacks, just going sometimes residencies, 0:06:11.370 --> 0:06:15.860 but going from resort to resort. You know, it was 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:17.900 kind of a Jewish medium at the time. A lot 0:06:17.940 --> 0:06:21.159 of jokes about Jewish life and Jewish culture and Jewish food. 0:06:21.900 --> 0:06:23.339 Lots of self-deprecation. 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:27.380 And this is where stand-up kind of took its form 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:28.120 that we know today. 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:31.779 Yes. And one of the kings of the borscht belt 0:06:32.020 --> 0:06:35.040 who really broke out as a legendary stand-up comedian was 0:06:35.060 --> 0:06:38.840 Henny Youngman. He was known as king of the one-liners. 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.620 And he's best known for the line, take my wife, please. 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:47.260 It's actually funnier than that. The full line is women 0:06:47.300 --> 0:06:50.220 today are crazy. I mean, take my wife, please. 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:55.140 Yeah, he was a social director at a resort, something 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:57.220 called a Tumbler. And this is where a lot of 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.960 the standups would get their start is like social chairs 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:02.540 and social directors of these resorts. 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:03.739 Yeah. 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:05.020 And he was a big one. 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.060 Like this was a time where standup was like very 0:07:08.120 --> 0:07:12.480 much joke, joke writing and It didn't you know, we'll 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:14.160 talk about the changes of stand up over the years 0:07:14.180 --> 0:07:17.520 where it morphed into like storytelling and then alt comedy 0:07:17.540 --> 0:07:19.880 and all that stuff. But early stand up and you 0:07:19.900 --> 0:07:24.210 don't see a lot of that stuff anymore. Brian Kiley, 0:07:24.230 --> 0:07:26.270 a pal of mine and a friend of the show 0:07:26.310 --> 0:07:29.410 that was the with along with a couple other guys, 0:07:29.450 --> 0:07:33.180 a monologue writer for Conan O'Brien for the entire run 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:33.940 and has written for. 0:07:33.860 --> 0:07:34.920 The Academy Awards and. 0:07:35.490 --> 0:07:39.100 Just like a great throwback, like joke writing comedian that 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:40.160 you don't see much anymore. 0:07:40.240 --> 0:07:41.860 So I love Brian's stuff. 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:47.260 Awesome. Shout out, Brian. There's a guy, there's a comedian 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.470 named Jimmy Carr, who's British, who basically carries on the 0:07:50.510 --> 0:07:55.610 Henny Youngman mantle. But it's way darker than anything Henny 0:07:55.650 --> 0:07:58.210 Youngman said. I turned up one that he was saying 0:07:58.250 --> 0:08:02.410 that he saw an ad for charity. And it said, 0:08:02.490 --> 0:08:05.150 little Zuki has to walk 13 miles a day just 0:08:05.190 --> 0:08:08.410 to fetch water. And I couldn't help thinking, she should move. 0:08:10.550 --> 0:08:11.910 Yeah, that's dark. 0:08:12.930 --> 0:08:15.180 It is pretty dark. But it's a one-liner and that's 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:17.680 all he does. Just like Henny Youngman did. Henny Youngman 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:20.040 was known for doing like 50 jokes in eight minutes, 0:08:20.100 --> 0:08:24.180 which is less than 10 seconds a joke. You just 0:08:24.220 --> 0:08:26.960 can keep people in stitches if you do that, right? Yeah. Yeah. 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:29.000 And, you know, the Borscht Belt lasted way longer than 0:08:29.020 --> 0:08:29.460 I thought. 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:32.400 Like it was a thing kind of through the 1970s 0:08:32.540 --> 0:08:34.840 and a lot of big comics got their start here. 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.000 People like Mel Brooks and Jackie Mason and Sid Caesar. 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:42.900 But Jerry Seinfeld even got his start in the Borscht 0:08:42.940 --> 0:08:45.900 Belt in the 70s at a venue, kind of one 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.790 of the last Borscht Belt venues called Kutcher's Country Club 0:08:50.610 --> 0:08:51.430 right there in the Catskills. 0:08:52.090 --> 0:08:52.250 Yeah. 0:08:53.150 --> 0:08:56.920 And so the start of the of. stand-up comedy, especially 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:58.119 as it came out of the Borscht Belt. It was 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:03.010 very clubby, very Jewish, very male. But women were kind of, 0:09:03.410 --> 0:09:06.830 they kind of emerged a little later, I guess mid-Borscht Belt, 0:09:06.870 --> 0:09:09.510 if it went into the 70s. Joan Rivers is a 0:09:09.550 --> 0:09:13.460 good example. And so is Jean Carroll. Both of them 0:09:13.890 --> 0:09:16.780 just basically, they broke a glass ceiling that was very 0:09:16.820 --> 0:09:21.060 much in place. And I think that, isn't Joan Rivers, 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:24.739 her biography is what The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is based on? 0:09:25.230 --> 0:09:28.229 Yeah, I think comedy-wise, and I know sort of the 0:09:28.290 --> 0:09:30.310 look was based a little bit on Gene Carroll, so 0:09:30.330 --> 0:09:33.750 it was a bit of a mashup. But I think 0:09:34.110 --> 0:09:35.980 I watched the first couple of seasons of that show 0:09:36.030 --> 0:09:36.770 and quite enjoyed it. 0:09:37.410 --> 0:09:39.540 Yeah, well, Kevin Pollack's on it, friend of the show, 0:09:39.580 --> 0:09:40.240 Kevin Pollack. 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:41.430 That's right. Pollack's great on it. 0:09:41.900 --> 0:09:44.239 He started out as a stand-up, too, didn't he? Oh, yeah. 0:09:44.940 --> 0:09:47.220 I just think of him as an actor almost through 0:09:47.260 --> 0:09:49.140 and through. But, yeah, he was a funny stand-up. 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.439 Yeah, he famously got called to the couch with Carson. 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:55.040 That was one of the big signs of respect if 0:09:55.090 --> 0:09:57.870 you performed on The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson called 0:09:57.890 --> 0:09:59.969 you over to the couch afterward for a briefing. 0:10:00.020 --> 0:10:02.100 Interview, that means like he liked you. So you get 0:10:02.140 --> 0:10:03.000 that stamp of approval. 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:03.560 Nice. 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:07.679 I found a quick, funny Jean Carroll joke. She said 0:10:07.700 --> 0:10:09.280 that she had a cold and the woman said, why 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:11.210 don't you take something for it? And I said, make 0:10:11.250 --> 0:10:17.100 an offer. So we talked about the Borscht Belt in vaudeville. 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:19.660 We also talked about the Chitlin Circuit, which was essentially 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:23.820 the Borscht Belt for black comedians, a series of venues 0:10:23.860 --> 0:10:29.710 that black comedians played vaudeville-ish around the country, around the 0:10:29.770 --> 0:10:33.990 United States. And this is just like with the Borscht Belt. 0:10:34.030 --> 0:10:38.190 This is where black stand-up comedy started to emerge as well. Yeah. 0:10:39.070 --> 0:10:40.710 I mean, you can't get any better than Redd Foxx 0:10:40.970 --> 0:10:41.630 and Flip Wilson. 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:46.320 Those guys definitely played the chitlin circuit, as well as 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:50.230 a very funny woman who went by Moms Mabley on stage. 0:10:50.990 --> 0:10:53.390 And she had sort of a shtick, like she would 0:10:53.429 --> 0:10:57.210 dress up and had kind of an onstage persona. And 0:10:57.250 --> 0:10:59.309 as we'll see as we go, like there's lots of 0:10:59.350 --> 0:11:01.150 ways to skin a cat when it comes to stand up. 0:11:01.190 --> 0:11:05.110 But one way is to be up there or something 0:11:05.290 --> 0:11:07.290 other than yourself. And that's what Moms Mabley did. 0:11:07.730 --> 0:11:07.870 Yeah. 0:11:08.370 --> 0:11:11.239 One of the people who is usually pointed to is 0:11:11.300 --> 0:11:14.860 the guy who carried stand up out of the resorts 0:11:15.100 --> 0:11:18.780 and into mainstream is Bob Hope, who is British. I 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:19.960 did not know that. Did you? 0:11:19.980 --> 0:11:23.250 I think I knew he was born in Britain, but 0:11:23.530 --> 0:11:25.189 I don't know that he considered himself British. 0:11:25.710 --> 0:11:28.710 So he was a he was his one of his 0:11:28.809 --> 0:11:30.630 acts was about how rich he was and all that. 0:11:30.650 --> 0:11:36.520 It's very mid-century. But he he also kind of broke 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:39.929 tradition by. having a team of writers working for him. 0:11:40.490 --> 0:11:42.910 And he would talk about current events, things that were 0:11:42.950 --> 0:11:46.469 going on like that day, you know, stuff that like 0:11:46.510 --> 0:11:49.550 if you were looking through like Us Weekly today or 0:11:49.570 --> 0:11:51.690 something like that, you could get a bunch of jokes from. 0:11:51.710 --> 0:11:54.670 That was his act. And he was also really well 0:11:54.700 --> 0:11:59.700 known for touring military bases around the world and performing. 0:11:59.780 --> 0:12:02.160 So he was the one who was like, hey, there's 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:04.220 this thing called stand-up comedy and you guys should all 0:12:04.260 --> 0:12:05.839 start going to see it. 0:12:06.350 --> 0:12:06.670 Yeah. 0:12:06.770 --> 0:12:08.510 And I think Bob Hope is one of those guys 0:12:08.590 --> 0:12:11.790 where he he was one of the first real big 0:12:11.910 --> 0:12:17.400 influencers of the craft, because anyone that kind of followed 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:20.319 after those years, if you ask them, they'll say like 0:12:20.380 --> 0:12:22.040 like Bob Hope was kind of the guiding light. 0:12:23.059 --> 0:12:27.080 Yeah. They actually based the soap opera guiding light on 0:12:27.179 --> 0:12:28.500 his life story. 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:31.900 You should do stand up. That's that's gold. 0:12:32.390 --> 0:12:34.449 Hey, we'll get to that about how being funny on 0:12:34.490 --> 0:12:37.630 a podcast doesn't necessarily make you a good stand-up. 0:12:38.429 --> 0:12:41.700 Well, I think you just spoiled that, didn't you? 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:45.900 Yeah. We'll edit in spoiler alert. 0:12:48.220 --> 0:12:50.079 Sick Comedians was sort of the next wave. 0:12:50.179 --> 0:12:53.400 In the 50s and 60s, there was a new style 0:12:53.450 --> 0:12:57.330 that kind of came around where it wasn't just like, hey, 0:12:57.750 --> 0:12:58.709 can you write a good joke? 0:12:58.790 --> 0:13:00.579 It was more like, hey, I've got. 0:13:00.540 --> 0:13:03.240 A unique point of view or I have a unique 0:13:03.300 --> 0:13:06.760 voice that's going to add to my act. And San 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.800 Francisco was one of the cities where a lot of 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:11.640 this is taking place, especially at a club called the 0:13:11.660 --> 0:13:15.110 Hungry Eye. And, you know, we'll go through a few 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:17.770 of these guys, but Mort Sahl was one of them. 0:13:18.510 --> 0:13:21.590 He started in 1953 and. 0:13:21.990 --> 0:13:23.150 He wasn't doing one liners. 0:13:23.170 --> 0:13:24.910 He was like he would sit down on stage with 0:13:24.929 --> 0:13:28.069 the newspaper sometimes and talk about like current events and 0:13:28.630 --> 0:13:29.770 politics and stuff like that. 0:13:31.050 --> 0:13:38.070 Yes. And he kind of kicked off that preachy, hip, insightful, 0:13:39.500 --> 0:13:44.199 kind of biting social commentary type of stand-up comedy. A 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:46.680 lot of people associate that with Lenny Bruce. Mort Sahl 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:51.420 came first. One thing I saw about Mort Sahl, though, 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:55.230 is he was, I guess, canceled in an early way. 0:13:55.490 --> 0:13:59.569 He called it getting blacklisted. He said that the right 0:13:59.730 --> 0:14:02.890 never came after him. But that it was the liberals 0:14:03.090 --> 0:14:05.699 who supported Kennedy who kind of got him pushed to 0:14:05.740 --> 0:14:09.739 the side because they didn't like him attacking Kennedy. And 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:13.380 his whole jam was going after whoever was in charge. 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:17.660 That's who you attack. That's who you criticize because just 0:14:17.750 --> 0:14:19.790 by default, they were in charge. So they were probably 0:14:19.830 --> 0:14:24.430 doing something horrible, too. But after it became cool to 0:14:24.630 --> 0:14:28.020 attack the establishment again after JFK was dead and America 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:31.000 was mired in Vietnam or it's all came back into fashion. 0:14:31.060 --> 0:14:32.260 But I thought that was interesting. 0:14:32.580 --> 0:14:33.200 Yeah, totally. 0:14:33.940 --> 0:14:37.920 Shelly Berman is noteworthy because he had a kind of 0:14:37.940 --> 0:14:41.730 the first big comedy album that hit. It was in 0:14:41.730 --> 0:14:44.330 1959 and the record was Inside Shelly Berman. And it 0:14:44.370 --> 0:14:48.130 was the first comedy record to go gold. And then 0:14:48.190 --> 0:14:52.650 the first Grammy award winning, like non-music Grammy award winner 0:14:52.670 --> 0:14:53.350 was Shelly Berman. 0:14:54.010 --> 0:14:54.150 Yeah. 0:14:54.460 --> 0:14:57.600 It's cute. It was cute stuff. Nothing like Mort Sahl's stuff, 0:14:57.660 --> 0:15:00.020 but it was based on his personality, right? Not his 0:15:00.100 --> 0:15:06.090 ability to remember tired jokes. Dick Craig, who's another one 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:09.690 of this era too, he was really well known as 0:15:09.750 --> 0:15:13.050 being like a huge civil rights activist. He's come up 0:15:13.110 --> 0:15:18.170 several times in other non-comedy related episodes we've done. But 0:15:18.210 --> 0:15:20.090 he was also super funny too. And he started out 0:15:20.150 --> 0:15:23.080 as a standup. Apparently he started out because Hugh Hefner 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:28.120 discovered him In 1961 and gave him time at his 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:30.450 Playboy Club in Chicago. Yeah. 0:15:30.990 --> 0:15:32.570 Did you know Atlanta used to have a Playboy Club? 0:15:33.650 --> 0:15:37.930 I didn't. I know pretty much every decent-sized city did. 0:15:37.950 --> 0:15:38.730 Oh, did they? 0:15:39.310 --> 0:15:42.390 I think so. I could be wrong. If Atlanta had 0:15:42.510 --> 0:15:45.630 one back in the 60s, surely. You know? There was 0:15:45.650 --> 0:15:47.470 like a Kansas City one, too, or something. 0:15:47.770 --> 0:15:48.250 Yeah, probably. 0:15:49.070 --> 0:15:51.310 So Jonathan Winters is another that we should mention from 0:15:51.390 --> 0:15:54.360 early on. He did a lot of kind of character 0:15:54.380 --> 0:15:56.680 work that I don't think a lot of people were 0:15:56.700 --> 0:15:59.320 doing at the time. And he was one of the 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:03.800 early people to kind of talk about the tragedies of 0:16:03.860 --> 0:16:06.400 his life in a funny way on stage because he 0:16:06.420 --> 0:16:09.940 he would later on to be known as bipolar disorder. 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:12.760 But he spent time in mental hospitals and he would 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:15.060 take that stuff to the stage. And not many people 0:16:15.100 --> 0:16:16.260 were doing that kind of thing at the time. 0:16:16.790 --> 0:16:20.250 No, and he was just totally making wacky fun of it. 0:16:20.830 --> 0:16:24.010 He called those places funny farms. Like, it was not any, 0:16:24.630 --> 0:16:28.940 you know, tear-jerking or gripping comedy from it, but just 0:16:29.060 --> 0:16:32.480 even making fun of it for himself going through it 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:36.220 was something. Another big name of this era who was 0:16:36.260 --> 0:16:40.860 really different-ish, he definitely had one foot solidly planted in 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:42.630 the borscht belt still, is Don Rickles. 0:16:43.070 --> 0:16:43.190 Mm-hmm. 0:16:44.050 --> 0:16:46.530 I think the funniest thing Don Rickles ever did was 0:16:46.590 --> 0:16:53.120 an inadvertent, unintentional facial expression where he got up to 0:16:53.140 --> 0:16:57.880 get the shotgun in Casino. I'm pretty sure it was Casino. 0:16:57.940 --> 0:17:00.980 When De Niro thinks that they're coming for him, Don 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:03.000 Rickles gets up and goes and gets the shotgun. And 0:17:03.060 --> 0:17:05.530 just the look on his face is hilarious. 0:17:06.290 --> 0:17:08.570 You think that's the funniest thing Don Rickles ever did? Mm-hmm. 0:17:10.290 --> 0:17:11.570 I loved Rickles. I was a huge fan. 0:17:11.970 --> 0:17:12.210 Really? 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:14.040 Oh yeah, man. He was, he was great. 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:16.740 Like I remember growing up watching him on the tonight 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:19.919 show and he would just send, uh, Carson into like stitches. 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:22.380 Yeah. That, that made it fun to watch Carson just 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:23.080 lose it too. 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:23.740 Yeah. 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:26.520 That was good stuff. Uh, and then you mentioned Lenny Bruce. 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:28.850 You can't talk about this early generation without talking about 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:32.350 Lenny Bruce. Uh, he was, he was a guy that, uh, 0:17:32.590 --> 0:17:34.490 kind of became, I mean, his comedy was great, but 0:17:34.530 --> 0:17:37.889 he kind of became famous for, um, getting arrested. He 0:17:37.910 --> 0:17:41.790 would talk very frankly on stage, um, in the, you know, 0:17:41.830 --> 0:17:45.030 like late 50s and 60s about sex and about religion 0:17:45.130 --> 0:17:48.460 and racism and stuff that was pretty controversial to talk 0:17:48.500 --> 0:17:52.300 about on stage, such that he was arrested many times 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:56.880 on obscenity charges and was a huge, huge influence on 0:17:57.580 --> 0:17:58.619 the people that followed him. 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:03.750 Huge. He's also controversial in that, like, calling him a 0:18:03.790 --> 0:18:09.360 comedian is odd because he wasn't that funny. It was 0:18:09.410 --> 0:18:12.300 just he was a really important person in comedy and 0:18:12.359 --> 0:18:15.060 also in free speech in the United States, too. 0:18:15.580 --> 0:18:17.340 I think he was very funny. There were. 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:19.940 Yeah, he had some funny stuff. But yeah, I just 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.560 I mean, I guess I'm speaking for everybody from my opinion. 0:18:23.580 --> 0:18:26.120 Thanks for bringing me back down to earth, man. 0:18:26.619 --> 0:18:28.180 Well, I mean, comedy is one of those things. It's 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:31.380 it's so subjective on what people find funny. Like I've 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.379 had people say, you've got to watch this comedian special. 0:18:35.180 --> 0:18:38.650 that I just literally did not laugh once during. And 0:18:39.310 --> 0:18:41.209 there are other people that I know I love that 0:18:41.250 --> 0:18:43.750 other people can't stand. It's just, it's, I think even, 0:18:43.770 --> 0:18:46.190 I think it's one of the most subjective sort of 0:18:46.250 --> 0:18:48.630 art forms, you know, even more so than some others. 0:18:49.030 --> 0:18:52.129 Yeah, for sure. Wrapping this up, and then I say 0:18:52.150 --> 0:18:55.060 we take a break. This is the 50s. This was 0:18:55.100 --> 0:18:58.900 a huge shift in comedy, and Time Magazine noted it 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:02.260 in 1959. They labeled these kind of comedians that were 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:08.350 personality-based comedians sick comedians or sickness in a very kind 0:19:08.390 --> 0:19:11.250 of loving way, but also in like a what the 0:19:11.290 --> 0:19:13.870 heck is going on here way. It was pretty interesting. 0:19:13.910 --> 0:19:16.570 But I say we take a break and we're going 0:19:16.590 --> 0:19:18.750 to jump in. We're going to basically pass the 60s 0:19:19.010 --> 0:19:20.510 and really go into the 70s. 0:19:20.990 --> 0:19:22.710 Things are heating up, everybody. Oh, yeah. 0:19:23.030 --> 0:19:41.050 Oh, yeah. Thank you. 0:19:55.750 --> 0:19:58.330 All right. So we're out of the 50s. We're into 0:19:58.350 --> 0:19:59.030 the 60s. 0:19:59.350 --> 0:20:02.720 In the wake of Lenny Bruce, we get a bunch 0:20:02.740 --> 0:20:05.659 of people highly influenced by him, willing to take a 0:20:05.660 --> 0:20:07.500 little more chances and a little more risks, I think, 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:08.139 with their comedy. 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:09.180 Mm-hmm. 0:20:09.830 --> 0:20:13.750 They talk about sometimes the holy trinity of the counterculture 0:20:13.790 --> 0:20:17.109 comedians of the 70s and late 60s. 0:20:17.150 --> 0:20:20.040 And that would be George Carlin and Richard Pryor and 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:21.280 the great Robert Klein. 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:25.899 What? I don't even consider him counterculture. That was the 0:20:25.940 --> 0:20:28.880 only thing. He is funny, for sure. But he's much 0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:31.550