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Speaker 1: Ephemeral is a production of my Heart three D audio

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Speaker 1: for full exposure. Listen, what's that phones? So I believe

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Speaker 1: that you told me that this was your favorite record, right.

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Speaker 1: I believe, and I've said many times, and I stiffened

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Speaker 1: my back whenever I do that. The Okay Laughing Record

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Speaker 1: is the greatest record ever made period. That's that's my

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Speaker 1: own personal feeling about it. This is Iannagaski, a guy

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Speaker 1: who has heard a lot of records. Ian's label, Canary Records,

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Speaker 1: puts out all kinds of ephemeral material, most of which

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Speaker 1: he has personally researched. In Season one, our episode Diaspora

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Speaker 1: covered his work preserving the music and stories of Ottoman

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Speaker 1: Empire refugees working in the early recording industry of the

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Speaker 1: United States in Canary. Rereleased the subject of today's program,

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Speaker 1: the Okay Laughing Record. If you were going to explain

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Speaker 1: to somebody very quickly what the Okay Laughing Record is,

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Speaker 1: It's a side of a record where people laugh for

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Speaker 1: three minutes, and that's it. Basically. I've listened to it

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Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of times. There isn't that shock of

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Speaker 1: the novel that happens the first time you listen to

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Speaker 1: it for me anymore. But you play it for other people,

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Speaker 1: and some people will immediately get it and laugh along

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Speaker 1: and just love it with all their hearts. Other people,

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Speaker 1: and it's not at all uncommon we'll get freaked out

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Speaker 1: and go, yeah, no, I don't like that at all, Like,

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Speaker 1: please don't make me listen to that again. That was

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Speaker 1: uncomfortable for me. We will play the Okay laughing record

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Speaker 1: and you can make up your own mind about it.

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Speaker 1: But first, some thoughts on the nature of laughter, something

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Speaker 1: about it being disembodied. I think not having people to

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Speaker 1: look at when you're hearing them laugh can be disconcerting.

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Speaker 1: We have this idea of maniacal laughter, the laugh that

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Speaker 1: comes from somewhere that isn't spontaneous, the villain's evil laugh,

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Speaker 1: and movie everybody recognizes that sound as being menacing, scary,

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Speaker 1: the sense of like, I don't know why you're laughing now,

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Speaker 1: I'm not laughing, This isn't funny. There is also such

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Speaker 1: a thing as laughing yoga. People will get up at

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Speaker 1: dawn and go outside and look into the sky and

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Speaker 1: just laugh for you know, ten or fifteen or twenty

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Speaker 1: minutes or something. That creeps me out. Because it seems

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Speaker 1: really inauthentic. You know, they're they're making themselves laugh, and

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Speaker 1: you kind of go, that doesn't sound like a real

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Speaker 1: laugh to me. What is that? This tie between uncanniness

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Speaker 1: and disembodied sound has a basis in biology. People have

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Speaker 1: been programmed for thousands and thousands of years that if

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Speaker 1: there's a sound, that sound has got to be coming

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Speaker 1: from something. That's what our ears and our brains are

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Speaker 1: wired to understand. The point of listening is to know

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Speaker 1: that if there's a bear coming up behind you, that

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Speaker 1: sound means bear and you should run. I must be

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Speaker 1: going now. It's not coincidental that the other purpose of

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Speaker 1: the ears is to keep your balance. My voice should

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Speaker 1: be in your right ear at this moment. If not,

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Speaker 1: turn your headphones around so that you are hearing my

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Speaker 1: voice in your right ear. Your ears are there spatially

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Speaker 1: and know what's going on in the atmosphere. So it

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Speaker 1: was a brand new thing at the end of the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century for people to experience disembodied sound. Early sound

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Speaker 1: recording was a little disconcerting to people, but it was

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Speaker 1: also magical. It was like, can you believe that there's

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Speaker 1: the sound of a person singing in your house when

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Speaker 1: clearly there is no one there. Blew people's minds, and

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Speaker 1: the world was still kind of in that state when

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Speaker 1: this record came out the way Ian tells it, the

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Speaker 1: okay laughing record, this little seventy eight put out is

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Speaker 1: the stuff of legend. Crazy thing is it was a huge, huge, runaway,

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Speaker 1: monster hit, and it's stayed in print off and on,

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Speaker 1: but more or less continuously for like thirty years. It

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Speaker 1: was a really ubiquitous record. Everybody had one. The way

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Speaker 1: that I first encountered it is just digging around in

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Speaker 1: boxes of seventy eight. You just run into it over

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Speaker 1: and over again. I wound up buying like five or

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Speaker 1: six copies over the course of a couple of years.

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Speaker 1: The question becomes not just what is it and how

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Speaker 1: did it become such a big hit, but why do

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Speaker 1: we know so little about it? At this juncture, it's

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Speaker 1: worth asking a question that seems deceptively simple. What is

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Speaker 1: the function of laughter? What? What's new? Boutland? I thought

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Speaker 1: you might need some new jokes to a program. Well,

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Speaker 1: don't tell me that you have contrived some specimens of waggery.

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Speaker 1: How far back do you want to go? Because laughing

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Speaker 1: is so human. Did you hear about the soldiers who

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Speaker 1: ate five dozen oysters and got the judge from the

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Speaker 1: army a five dozen oysters and got this jodge from

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Speaker 1: the army. Yes, he had sixteen points. There aren't any

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Speaker 1: human beings on earth that don't laugh. Fine, it wouldn't

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Speaker 1: work with their claims, would it. Although according to legend,

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Speaker 1: there are a few characters of note that were so

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Speaker 1: called agel lasts, individuals who never or almost never laugh.

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Speaker 1: Scientists have a name for this thing. They call it inertia.

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Speaker 1: It's been claimed that Sir Isaac Newton laughed only once

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Speaker 1: in his life on the subject of geometry. Sir Isaac

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Speaker 1: Newton figured all that out a long time ago, so

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Speaker 1: that leaves us reader see for ourselves what it all means.

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Speaker 1: It's a natural human animal sound. It's just something that

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Speaker 1: evolutionarily we do. And there's this idea that laughing is contagious.

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Speaker 1: There are even stories of laughter and cutting mass hystereo,

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Speaker 1: like the Tank and Yeka laughter epidemic, in which uncontrollable

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Speaker 1: laughter spread through the student body at a Tanzania boarding

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Speaker 1: school then into the neighboring villagers, infecting an estimated one

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Speaker 1: thousand people. Purportedly some laughed as long as sixteen days.

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Speaker 1: Our brains are wired so that when we hear somebody laughing,

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Speaker 1: we tend to laugh along. There are many examples of

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Speaker 1: songs going way back that include bits of laughing in them.

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Speaker 1: Laughing song. The end of one of William Blake's songs

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Speaker 1: of Innocence end of the eighteenth century includes a bit

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Speaker 1: where it goes, ha ha he at the end to

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Speaker 1: move and be merry and join with me to sing

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Speaker 1: the sweet chorus of ha ha he that all Strouse's

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Speaker 1: deflator Mouse in the end of the nineteenth century has

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Speaker 1: a laughing song in it, So excuse me. There's an

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Speaker 1: American Prairie composers song from a book in eight nine

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Speaker 1: that has a laughing song with a ha ha ha

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Speaker 1: refrain in it, sung in four parts. Fast forward to

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Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century, around the advent of

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Speaker 1: recorded sound, when the record business starts. What happens very

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Speaker 1: quickly is that there's a VHS Beta Max format. War

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Speaker 1: The first recording format that's marketed to people is the

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Speaker 1: wax cylinder that Edison is putting out, and the machines

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Speaker 1: are really nice and they're expensive. Within about five ten

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Speaker 1: years a German immigrant named Emil Berliner in Washington, d C.

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Speaker 1: Comes out with a different technology that records owned on discs.

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Speaker 1: Berlinard's invention was called the gramophone. They're cheaper and anybody

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Speaker 1: can afford one. Relative to the cylinder machines. What happens

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Speaker 1: is the same thing that happens in the VHS Betamax war.

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Speaker 1: The cheaper one wins out. Part of the reason for

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Speaker 1: that is that there's a broader catalog of material for

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Speaker 1: the cheaper device. Edison had social requirements for the music

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Speaker 1: that he was releasing. He was functionally deaf and literally

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Speaker 1: had kind of no ear from music. He wasn't the

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Speaker 1: music guy. But the Berliner format starts releasing tons of

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Speaker 1: stuff that people just like, normal around the house kind

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Speaker 1: of music, and he takes a bunch of chances on interesting,

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Speaker 1: odd other kinds of performances. The very early on the

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Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century, he puts out a disk

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Speaker 1: of people imitating barnyard sounds. You know, there's no bird

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Speaker 1: in the room, and yet you hear the sound of

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Speaker 1: a bird, and it's novel and exciting, and it kind

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Speaker 1: of puts you in a different space. Auditorially. One of

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Speaker 1: the first big hit records in the history of records

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Speaker 1: is a laughing Song. It also happens to be the

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Speaker 1: first record ever made by an African American person. The

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Speaker 1: guy named George W. Johnson, who was actually born enslaved

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Speaker 1: in first records, called the Laughing Song. The deal was

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Speaker 1: with the technology at the time. You would go in

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Speaker 1: and cut the disc, and the material that is used

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Speaker 1: to stamp multiple copies of it would wear out pretty quick.

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Speaker 1: So if you had a big hit record, after you'd

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Speaker 1: pressed a few hundred copies, the stamper would wear out

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Speaker 1: and you'd have to have the artist come back in

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Speaker 1: and re record the piece over again. So George W.

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Speaker 1: Johnson winds up going in and recording the Laughing Song

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Speaker 1: a dozen times or more over a decade, and it's

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Speaker 1: such a big hit that, surprise, surprise, some white guy

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Speaker 1: comes along, takes the song, re records it, and that

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Speaker 1: becomes an even bigger hit. Bert Shepherd records a Laughing

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Speaker 1: Song for the gramophone company Berlinard's Company, and that record

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Speaker 1: sells like millions of copies all over the world. It

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Speaker 1: was clear right away in the recording business, laughing songs

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Speaker 1: are working from a marketing standpoint. In the first two

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Speaker 1: decades of the twentieth century, the laughing song motif was

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Speaker 1: translated into the most popular musical forms of the day.

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Speaker 1: In the United States, there are a gazillion instances of

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Speaker 1: recordings that either include laughing or imitate laughing. For instance,

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Speaker 1: there's an English music hall song that's a rip off

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Speaker 1: of the George W. Johnson Laughing record, with new lyrics

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Speaker 1: written into a couple laughing Policeman an old late three

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Speaker 1: and that's a huge runaway hit on its own. Two.

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Speaker 1: There's a skit in nineteen ten called the Laughing Spectator, Mac,

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Speaker 1: where's your partner? Why he's not here? But tapert that

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Speaker 1: after I get through eleven minutes litten, Hello, Mike, how

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Speaker 1: are you really? What's the matter? Mac? You look upset?

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Speaker 1: I am upset me bank buston, and I lost me balance.

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Speaker 1: There's a record called laughs you have Known. It's also

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Speaker 1: like a vaudeville type skit. First of all, there's the

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Speaker 1: laugh hella you're dear laugh now this laugh needs no

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Speaker 1: introduction at all. The Plantation Jazz Orchestra and Henry Raderman

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Speaker 1: both record a song called make that Trombone laugh between

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Speaker 1: the Louisiana Five, Powell's Jazz Monarchs and hound Head. Henry

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Speaker 1: All records songs called Laughing Blues. Guitarist named Sam Moore

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Speaker 1: records a laughing rag in Boys Smick covers. And then

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Speaker 1: in the sheet music ragtime era, you've got Laughing Hyena.

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Speaker 1: Chilly Wilmorton records the Hyena, Stump, Laughing Lucas, the horse laugh,

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Speaker 1: the hilarity rag. You get the idea. It was a

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Speaker 1: genre and it was popular. It was part of the

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Speaker 1: mood of the time in America in the nineteen twenties.

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Speaker 1: It's in that context that the Okay Laughing Record is

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Speaker 1: released in the United States in about August two, it

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Speaker 1: comes out. It was recorded for a record company in Berlin,

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Speaker 1: Germany called Becca Records, early mid ninety. When the record starts,

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Speaker 1: there is a horn player, there's a cornet playing a song.

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Speaker 1: Turns out the song is called alstare yogen Zite. In

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Speaker 1: my younger days, it's like a middle of the nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century kind of sweet, nostalgic, kind of schlocky song. And

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Speaker 1: then a woman starts laughing, and then another guy starts laughing,

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Speaker 1: and then the cornet player is trying to get through

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Speaker 1: this performance, but can't keep his lips on the horn,

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Speaker 1: and he starts laughing too while he's playing. That makes

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Speaker 1: them laugh more. And then the whole thing is this

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Speaker 1: breakdown of hilarity of laughter where all of them are

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Speaker 1: laughing and the trumpet players trying to make it through

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Speaker 1: the performance, and it's really it just falls apart. So

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Speaker 1: to summarize, the performer is interrupted by rising laughter until

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Speaker 1: he can't go on. That's the original. And in order

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Speaker 1: to understand the Okay Laughing Record, Number one is that

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Speaker 1: when it became a huge hit in the US, there

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Speaker 1: were a bunch of knockoffs. There were a bunch of imitations.

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Speaker 1: All of those knockoffs included one significant change in every

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Speaker 1: American version of that basic structure. The trumpet player makes

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Speaker 1: a mistake. He starts playing and then breaks a note,

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Speaker 1: and that causes the woman to begin laughing. That doesn't

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Speaker 1: happen on the Okay Laughing Record. There is no thing

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Speaker 1: that she begins laughing at, and it has driven people

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Speaker 1: crazy for a long time. Why does she start laughing? Well,

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Speaker 1: you gotta look at Germany. Between nineteen fourteen and two

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Speaker 1: million Germans were killed in World War One, five million

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Speaker 1: more were wounded. Seven million people for casualties of World

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Speaker 1: War one, fully percent of the total population. And then

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Speaker 1: end of nineteen eighteen through all of nineteen nine there's

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Speaker 1: a revolution. They overthrow the monarch and found the New Republic.

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Speaker 1: Six continuous years of war and upheaval and terrible suffering,

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Speaker 1: the entire country was grieving when that cornet player begins

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Speaker 1: playing aus their yogen site, this schlocky, sentimental, old war

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Speaker 1: horse song that everybody probably knew, this bit of nostalgia

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Speaker 1: for a world lost and more innocent time in my

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Speaker 1: younger days. It's in the context of a world that

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Speaker 1: had gone completely bonkers. And that's why she starts laughing,

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Speaker 1: because if somebody's playing this trite, nostalgic glibe bit of

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Speaker 1: nonsense in the context of actual pain and suffering, it's

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Speaker 1: crazy to play that stupid song. The conceit might seem absurd.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps that's the point right then, that particular moment in Germany,

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Speaker 1: end of the team's beginning of the twenties is when

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Speaker 1: data happens. Raoul Helsman had just come up with the

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Speaker 1: first sound poem F M S w B, which is

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Speaker 1: just a collection of sounds for formed as poetry. That

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Speaker 1: current that. Immediately after that, kirch Vitters does the ersat Baby,

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Speaker 1: the Baby, but he spents ten years on it, but

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Speaker 1: he starts and that's again sound poem, just a collection

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Speaker 1: of sounds. Glim blim blim bim bim blim blim blim

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Speaker 1: bim bim ua or look at the baby, or look

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Speaker 1: at the baby, or look at the baby like that

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Speaker 1: at the baby rom to. He said to the thing

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Speaker 1: with Data was that it was anti aesthetic, It's not pretty,

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Speaker 1: and it was a direct reaction to the craziness of

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Speaker 1: World War One, to the fact that everything was meaningless.

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Speaker 1: Valeska Girt was also a really brilliant performer around that time, dancer, actress,

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Speaker 1: performance artist does this piece Pause, where you know, she

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Speaker 1: gets up on stage and just stands there and that's

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Speaker 1: the dance. Also in the twenties, around that time, she

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Speaker 1: comes up with a piece called Baby, where she says

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Speaker 1: that she used her body to record the sounds of

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Speaker 1: babies and then gets up and sounds exactly like a baby.

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Speaker 1: That's what's going on in Berlin and at the Team's

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Speaker 1: speakinning of the twenties, people are reacting to all of

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Speaker 1: this just madness and the breakdown of humanity and civilization

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Speaker 1: in the world after six years of machine guns and

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Speaker 1: tanks and trench warfare and chemical weapons. Meanwhile, that August,

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Speaker 1: this Newish record company called Okay Records, run by a

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Speaker 1: German immigrant, releases this German recording without any credit. Doesn't

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Speaker 1: say who's on it, doesn't say who actually performs it.

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Speaker 1: A lot of people have looked, a lot of people

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Speaker 1: have tried to figure it out, and it's really still

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Speaker 1: not clear. The Library of Congress's National Registry inducted the

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Speaker 1: Okay Laughing Record is a significant recording that will be

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Speaker 1: preserved indefinitely by the American federal government. There was an

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Speaker 1: accompanying essay that was written by a guy named Carrie

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Speaker 1: O'Dell when it was inducted in two thousand three, and

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Speaker 1: in that he gives this one account of who might

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Speaker 1: have been the performers on it. He thinks that the

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Speaker 1: woman who's laughing is an opera singer named Luci Bernardo,

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Speaker 1: and that the other guy who's laughing is Auto rath Key.

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Speaker 1: I'm not really sure where he got that. It's just,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's just a story that circulates Felix Silber's

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Speaker 1: is apparently the cornet player. There's also the possibility that

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Speaker 1: the performers are two significant comedians of Germany in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen teens, twenties, thirties. Carl Valentine is a extraordinary person,

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Speaker 1: and it's possible that he was involved. It's sort of

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Speaker 1: in his style and of his time. What Carl Valentine

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Speaker 1: was a guy that had been born two in Munich.

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Speaker 1: He was a skeletally thin, long, absurdist performer who for

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Speaker 1: forty years was performing in cabarets and theaters and circuses

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Speaker 1: and stuff, along with his regular performing partner, who he

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Speaker 1: gave the name Lezel carl Stadt. Extraordinary people, really absurdist,

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Speaker 1: dark stuff that they were doing. They were actually banned

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Speaker 1: by the Nazis in the nineteen thirties for their comedy

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Speaker 1: having a quality of being defeatist, So it kind of

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Speaker 1: makes sense that it might have been them, but we

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Speaker 1: really just don't know. Two years after Becca released the

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Speaker 1: Laughing Record in Germany, it was reissued for an American audience.

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Speaker 1: The record comes out in the US on this little

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Speaker 1: independent record label, little upstart label in New York City

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Speaker 1: called Okay, and they just call it the Okay Laughing

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Speaker 1: Record with no credits Summer August thereabouts. Strange thing is

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Speaker 1: it takes off. There's a bunch of evidence that the

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Speaker 1: record just sold like hotcakes, particularly through that Christmas. It

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Speaker 1: was like a big n Christmas gift. Okay ran lots

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Speaker 1: of ads for it in newspapers and stuff, and individual

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Speaker 1: stores furniture stores mostly also ran ads encouraging people to

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Speaker 1: buy it. End of twenty two, beginning of twenty three.

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Speaker 1: I'll read to some of the ad copy from some

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Speaker 1: of these. A riot of fun, laughs, gurgles, chuckles at

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Speaker 1: every turn of the disk, a riot of laughter five

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Speaker 1: turns of the disc, and the most doleful undertaker grims

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Speaker 1: like a young bride. The bill collector scowls. Turn on

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Speaker 1: the Okay Laughing Record. He'll try to lend you money.

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Speaker 1: Already it's saying that it's gonna like cure heartache and

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Speaker 1: cure financial trouble, cure with a laugh. We just received

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Speaker 1: our second order of Okay Laughing Records, good for grouchiness, blues, headaches,

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Speaker 1: cramps or gouts each. That's one of the other things

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Speaker 1: about the Okay Laughing Record. Records were a dollar across

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Speaker 1: the board generally speaking, Okay Laughing records. It's a bargain.

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Speaker 1: All right, here's my favorite one. Are you sad? Are

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Speaker 1: you blue? Are you downhearted? Are you despondent? Are you

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Speaker 1: in trouble? Are you melancholy? Are you peeved? Are you gloomy?

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Speaker 1: Are you married? Here the Okay Laughing Record, and you

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Speaker 1: will recover it plays on any phonograph. Are You married?

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Speaker 1: That was not official Okay Records copy, by the way,

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Speaker 1: that was just a little local ad put in a

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Speaker 1: newspaper by a furniture store. What if the steak is cold,

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Speaker 1: what if the coffee just isn't Turn on the Okay

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Speaker 1: Laughing Record. It's a better cure than Manion ever had.

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Speaker 1: I had to look up Minion and it turns out

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Speaker 1: Manions is a brand of patent medicine that was mostly

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Speaker 1: alcohol or prohibition. So basically, that's the equivalent of somebody

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Speaker 1: putting out a record now and saying, listen to this record.

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Speaker 1: It's better than medical marijuana. Yeah, it will actually cure you.

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Speaker 1: It's a better cure. The Okay's release was a big

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Speaker 1: success in late the succeeding years would cement the records legacy.

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Speaker 1: What happens when you have a runaway hit record or

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Speaker 1: a hit movie or something. Number one sequels. A one

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Speaker 1: proud civilization now had to place its trust and hope

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Speaker 1: in Godzilla and it's power Robot Man. We've got this formula,

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Speaker 1: we think works, people want it. We need to put

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Speaker 1: on another. Giants against Giants and the Most November four two,

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Speaker 1: there's a record by the Riga Orchestra recorded for Okay

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Speaker 1: and they released that as the Okay Laughing Dance Record

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Speaker 1: right away, and then by Januar they come up with

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Speaker 1: a catalog number for the Okay Laughing Record number two,

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Speaker 1: and then after sales start dwindling, April, they put out

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Speaker 1: the Okay Crying Record. Now, like most sequels, each one

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Speaker 1: was less of a hit than the previous one. But

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Speaker 1: the Okay Crying Record, I mean, that's insane. It is

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Speaker 1: what it says. It is. It's three minutes of people crying.

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Speaker 1: It was not a hit. I spent ten years trying

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Speaker 1: to get my hands on one. It was number one

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Speaker 1: on my wish list for a decade. Finally got one

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Speaker 1: on eBay, paid through the nose Man thirty bucks. I

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Speaker 1: paid for the Okay Crying Record because I mean, it's crazy.

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Speaker 1: Can you imagine going over someone's house and they're sitting

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Speaker 1: there listening to three minutes of people crying? I mean,

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Speaker 1: did the people at the record company not get that

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Speaker 1: the reason the Okay Laughing record worked was because it

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Speaker 1: made you feel good? What were they thinking? And then

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Speaker 1: what's even crazier than that is exactly the same time

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Speaker 1: Okay comes out with a crying record, another knockoff company

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Speaker 1: puts out their own crying record. There are two crying

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Speaker 1: records that come out in the United States. Nobody wanted them.

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Speaker 1: And on the flip side of the knockoff crying record,

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Speaker 1: there's a performance called contagious coughs. So they get that

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Speaker 1: there's a structure you can do where you've got a

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Speaker 1: musical performance and somebody starts doing something and it's infectious,

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Speaker 1: and then people will buy that record that does that, right,

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Speaker 1: So they try to achieve that success with coughing. I

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Speaker 1: would describe coughing as emotionally neutral or kind of annoying.

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Speaker 1: It's not a fun record, and it's not a good idea,

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Speaker 1: but that's how you know they had caught lightning in

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Speaker 1: a bottle and they're trying to put out something else

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Speaker 1: that people might want, and they're casting around in the

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Speaker 1: dark and just guessing about it. In a sea of

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Speaker 1: laughing records, Okay remains the gold standard. At least six

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Speaker 1: other American versions of the Okay Laughing Record come out,

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Speaker 1: made by different performers. They all followed the same story. Sure,

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Speaker 1: there's a musical performance, almost always a horn at the beginning,

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Speaker 1: then they insert the broken note to cause her to

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Speaker 1: start laughing, and then a man and woman laugh for

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Speaker 1: the rest of the side. I have listened to them all,

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Speaker 1: and I can tell you none of them are as

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Speaker 1: good as the Okay Laughing Record. The Okay Laughing Record.

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Speaker 1: There's something about the way those two laugh that feels authentic.

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Speaker 1: It feels good. And all of the other laughing records

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Speaker 1: that follow that structure that come out, yeah, I don't

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Speaker 1: buy it. I just don't really think those people are laughing.

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Speaker 1: I think they're doing ah. You know that it's not laughing,

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Speaker 1: And you can tell the difference. It's one of the

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Speaker 1: thing is about records. You can hear it in somebody's

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Speaker 1: voice when they're authentic, really good singer, You believe them.

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Speaker 1: It turns out it's the same thing with Laughing Records anyway,

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Speaker 1: So the Okay Laughing Records sells tons of copies, stays

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Speaker 1: in print through all the nineteen twenties into the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: and then by the time you get to the thirties

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Speaker 1: and well the depths of the depression, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: old hat. You know, people aren't really wanting laughing records

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Speaker 1: anymore by the middle of the nineteen thirties, and it

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Speaker 1: kind of just fades away, you know, just sits around

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Speaker 1: in people's houses. But then during after World War two,

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Speaker 1: generation of comedians comes up who had been little kids

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties and they remember the Okay Laughing

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Speaker 1: Record and how great it was. And so there are

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Speaker 1: two examples I can think of off the top of

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Speaker 1: my head where you've got brilliant, brilliant comedians who are

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Speaker 1: doing this like blown out, over the top, surreal, crazed humor,

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Speaker 1: and they do cover versions, they do new imaginings of

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Speaker 1: the Okay Laughing Record. The first example is Spike Jones

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Speaker 1: and his City Slickers, who were you know, enormously popular,

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Speaker 1: doing this um comic combination of like cornpone humor with

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00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:26,960
Speaker 1: this over the top, crazy surrealist, frenetic energy. So they

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Speaker 1: do the Jones Laughing Record. It follows basically the same

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Speaker 1: structure as the Okay Laughing Record. You get a horn

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Speaker 1: solo at the beginning, and then it breaks down and

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Speaker 1: people start laughing like crazy and keep laughing through the

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Speaker 1: rest of the side. But being Spike Jones, it's not

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Speaker 1: a sweet, sad, sentimental song. It's the flight of the Bumblebee.

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Speaker 1: It's really really great. Jones grew up then he remembered

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Speaker 1: the Okay Laughing Record and how well it worked. Same generation,

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Speaker 1: you got another guy who's a huge comedy star and

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Speaker 1: had a great career going who was a cartoon director.

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Speaker 1: Tex Avery. Avery is most associated with the Golden Age

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Speaker 1: of Mary Melody and Looney Tunes cartoons, and famous for,

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Speaker 1: alongside voice actor Mel Blaine, creating the characters of Bugs, Bunny, Daffyda,

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Speaker 1: timber Fun and Porky the Pig. Tex Avery makes a

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Speaker 1: cartoon called He invents a plot for this cartoon, which

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Speaker 1: is about a guy who's got like a a nervous condition.

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Speaker 1: Mr Triddle, you are very sick man. You have a

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Speaker 1: serious case of trombonnosis. He goes to a hotel where

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Speaker 1: he can just sit and be quiet for a while.

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00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:24,760
Speaker 1: And then in the next room there's a trumpet player,

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00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: a man and a woman in these gales of hilarity.

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00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:33,640
Speaker 1: And he actually uses the Okay Laughing Record in its

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00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:37,920
Speaker 1: entirety as the soundtrack to the second half of the cartoon.

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00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,200
Speaker 1: It's just the Okay Laughing Record plays it all the

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00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 1: way through. But but again you can hear he re

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00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:53,799
Speaker 1: recorded the first three seconds or so so that the

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00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 1: cornet player playing I'll stare jrgensite misses a note and

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00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:03,239
Speaker 1: gives her a reason to laugh. It's a new recording.

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00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 1: You can hear actually the surface noise of the old

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00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 1: seventy eight fade in. There's a cross fade or he

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00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:14,680
Speaker 1: brings in the original recording. But he had to give

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00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:23,000
Speaker 1: some reason for her to laugh. Will you please stop

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00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: blowing that more? Because Americans never got it. They never

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00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 1: understood the actual meaning of that first last. The result, though,

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00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:42,560
Speaker 1: is that this new generation in the es and fifties

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00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: of kind of a surrealist, over the top American humorists,

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00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:50,280
Speaker 1: mad magazine folks and whatever remember the Okay Laughing Record,

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00:36:50,360 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 1: and it gets reissued and comes out as a forty

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00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: five winds up staying in print for you know, a

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00:36:57,640 --> 00:36:59,800
Speaker 1: bunch more years. It was a bunch more copies to it,

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00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 1: totally new generation. So it's a it's a it's a

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00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 1: funny thing. It's it's a genre. But it's also one

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00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: of a kind. Considering how effective it was and for

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00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 1: some people still is, it is kind of extraordinary that

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00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:21,480
Speaker 1: there aren't more examples of it in circulation now. I mean,

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00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:25,600
Speaker 1: you really don't have laughing records anymore. Just kind of

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00:37:25,600 --> 00:37:30,919
Speaker 1: went away mhm. Partially, the whole business of sound being

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00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:37,319
Speaker 1: disembodied is not as novel anymore. Yeah, there's some kind

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00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:41,319
Speaker 1: of loss of innocence. I don't quite understand. But but

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00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:45,399
Speaker 1: it's a jewel. It's a jewel. When do you put

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00:37:45,480 --> 00:37:47,279
Speaker 1: on the laughing record? When are you like, oh, this

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00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:51,360
Speaker 1: is what I'm gonna go home and listen to. Oh jeez.

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00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 1: Always in groups. I never put it on by myself.

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00:37:57,239 --> 00:38:00,640
Speaker 1: It's always when I want to share something with someone

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00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:03,360
Speaker 1: and we can kind of look each other in the eye,

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00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:07,160
Speaker 1: and you know, that's when I really laugh out loud.

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00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:11,279
Speaker 1: Is you know, being with somebody and having them get

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00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: it and getting it with them and sharing that experience. Yeah, Yeah,

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00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: it's always with somebody. I've played it a lot at shows.

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00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:23,440
Speaker 1: I couldn't go around sometimes and give talks, And for

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00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: years it was my my closing piece. Can tell some

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00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:29,160
Speaker 1: of the story and then play it for the audience.

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00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:33,759
Speaker 1: And I've I've watched audiences many times. Um some sit dead,

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00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:38,920
Speaker 1: silent and just wait it out, really just look at

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00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:43,439
Speaker 1: me like why are you doing this? And then other

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00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:46,879
Speaker 1: times you have people who just feel better and are

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00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 1: ready to just go along with it, who have a

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00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:53,279
Speaker 1: I don't know, just an easier laugh. You know that's

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00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:57,160
Speaker 1: it's easier to trigger for them, are more absurd sense

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00:38:57,200 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 1: of you know how crazy it is? It depends m

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00:40:25,960 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 1: m m m hm oh ye. Ephemeral is written, assembled

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00:42:11,160 --> 00:42:15,880
Speaker 1: by Much, and produced by Matt Frederick, Trevor Young, and

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00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 1: Max Williams. Special thanks this episode to John Deveka. Today's

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00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:25,319
Speaker 1: conversation was based on the compilation A Better Cure, A

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00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:28,280
Speaker 1: Brief History of the Okay Laughing Record and It's progeny.

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00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:31,920
Speaker 1: Explore the collection and everything else. I Agsky is up

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00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:36,080
Speaker 1: to at Canary Dash Records dot bandcamp dot com, and

483
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:39,600
Speaker 1: check in with us too over at Ephemeral dot Show.

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00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 1: Next time on Ephemeral. We arrived at Harvard to go

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00:42:58,560 --> 00:43:03,640
Speaker 1: through Peter's our eyes. To Harvard's credit, they had at

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00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:08,120
Speaker 1: least put everything in boxes. Once opening those containers, though,

487
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 1: there was just no organization whatsoever. It was like Peter's

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00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:22,680
Speaker 1: brain overflowing. There was sheet music, magazine clippings, tapes, vhs, cassettes, stoodles, notebooks,

489
00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:27,919
Speaker 1: just a really random assortment of ephemera. The first couple

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00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 1: of days was more of a psychological gestation phase. What

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00:43:32,640 --> 00:43:35,959
Speaker 1: am I walking into? What am I contending with? Here?

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00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:46,280
Speaker 1: And take chances with me? Support Ephemeral by recommending an episode,

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00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:49,880
Speaker 1: leaving a review, or dropping this a line at Ephemeral

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00:43:49,960 --> 00:43:54,000
Speaker 1: Show more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart

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Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

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00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:02,759
Speaker 1: favorite shows, and learn more at Ephemeral dat Sha