Comedy Albums
11.29.07 By Derek Dahlsad
Stephen Wright, the deadpan absurd comedian, has been honing his skills for a few years, preparing to release a new comedy album. I Still Have A Pony, his new album, comes twenty-two years after his first - and only - album, I Have A Pony. While the new album is very well received (and with the inactive Wright, an ideal medium for his comedy), in that 22 year gap comedy seems to have fallen away from the comedy album. Stand-up shows on cable TV, Video releases, and HBO specials have become the prime way for comedians to share their wares with the world, unabashed and unedited.
Radio, TV, and movies, of course, had a huge impact on getting a comedian’s name out, but those three mediums were restricted by their ‘public’ nature, and between FCC oversight and the Code, they were limited in what could be included. Movies and TV presented a white-bread view of 
comedy — not that there’s anything wrong with that — but recordings were treated more as a publication, like books and magazines, and thus allowed a wider variety of comedy to flourish.
“Party” albums were those raunchy records played when entertaining guests, bringing the likes of Rusty Warren, Woody Woodbury, Nipsey Russell, Flip Wilson, and others into the public eye. The type of comedy most popular for these albums, relying on not-too-subtle sexual innuendo, lampooning of alcohol and drug abuse, and focus on racism, was a bit too much for mainstream record labels at first. Smaller labels, like Rusty’s Jubilee, Woodbury’s Stereoddities, and Nipsey’s Borderline, were willing to take the risk and made names out of these night club shows. While I don’t plan on playing any of these albums for the kids any time soon, these records actually appear quite enlightened compared to the bland sexism, racism, and empty optimism of the generic, unoffensive comedy seen in entertainment at the time. In the 1960s, Rusty’s albums talked openly about the realities of sex, Woody Woodbury’s “Booze Is The Only Answer” albums showed the dark side of drinking, and Nipsey Russell’s 
humor highlighted racial stereotypes. Comedy made the issues more palatable — not enough for TV, but enough to enter society’s peripheral vision at a time when speaking positively about sex and decrying racism could turn bad quickly.
Naughty albums weren’t the only funny albums, though. Albums were also a vehicle for more everyday forms of comedy, from stand-up to song parodies. The earliest stand-up-style comedy album I own is Reginald Gardiner’s Trains, a 2-disk “comic monologue” (script here) originally released in the 1940s. As extensions of comedy radio programs and movie soundtracks, records were released to expand the range of influence beyond the horizon. Variety shows, both on TV and radio, mixed comedy with their main program, showcasing performers like Spike Jones and the City Slickers. These musical 
comedians spawned a genre — the parody song — that has been the mainstay of Dr Demento’s show for decades. “Weird” Al Yankovic, Stan Boreson, and Alan Sherman made names for themselves creating entire albums of witty, funny songs, both set to the tune of popular songs and to original tunes. Whether the top on your Christmas list is your two front teeth or a hippopotamus, the songs themselves were originally released on 78rpm albums and have been played over and over this time of year on radio stations for the past fifty years.
In recent years, starting in the late sixties and progressing along with the spread of other media, the wide variety of comedy that once dominated records had come to TV, film, and radio. The censorship that had restricted the more public media was becoming less prevalent, and Flip Wilson got his own TV shows, Rusty Warren did her comedy on daytime talkshows, and The Smothers Brothers stood up to their network over censorship.
While it might have looked like comedy albums died out about the time VHS took root, this isn’t the case. Modern comedians like David Cross and John Leguizamo have made their mark with new albums, and the ‘blue collar comedy‘ movement owes its roots to comedy albums released as a first stepping-stone. As those small labels noted in the 1950s, recording a stand-up act is a lower-cost, lower-risk prospect than producing and mixing a musical album, giving comedians a way to reach an audience without having to secure a high-price TV special, or fit their show into 8 minutes on an Evening At The Improv type show. From funny songs to stand-up acts to political satire, the comedy album is around and kicking. Stephen Wright still has his horse, and he remembers how to get his comedy to the world.
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Article Tags: Borderline, David Cross, Jubilee, Nipsey Russell, Pony, Reginald Gardiner, Rusty Warren, Stephen Wright, Trains================
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November 29th, 2007 at 9:47 am
I have that ‘The First Family’ record - I tried listening to it, and I just DID NOT get it. I mean, I think it was supposed to be comedy, right? But it was so topical that it made little sense to me.
Also a fan of Belle Barth records!
November 29th, 2007 at 10:45 am
I love Steven Wright! His new CD is on my Christmas list!
November 29th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
You don’t realize how time-sensitive comedy is until too much time passes…like, look back at That’s My Bush! — funny at the time (well, that’s debatable), but the events since then color its humor. I picked up an Elaine Boosler video at a rummage sale, on the faint memory that she was kinda funny…but at least half her show was very late-80s-themed. I’m sure that The First Family record was entertaining at the time — but the events of Kennedy’s life since the record were made, well, kinda changes our view of him from what they saw in the summer of ‘62 …a few months before the Cuban missile crisis, a year after a pie-in-the-sky promise of a moon landing, and a year before his assassination.
One thing I found amusing about these similar albums: Nixon appears in both The First Family and the Washington Hillbillies…portrayed essentially the same way. Some kinds of funny are funny forever!
November 29th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Stephen Wright, on the other hand, is funny no matter how you cut it — his 1985 album holds up really well today, only marred by the fact I’ve heard the jokes so many times in the last two decades. That’s part of why people are so interested in his new album — if Eddie Murphy’s last album was Raw, would people be so interested in hearing from him again?
November 29th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Probably dating myself (oh, that is questionable), but I definitely recall sitting around with friends, sipping cheap wine and Schlitz beer and laughing to the ‘very-raw’ Ms. Rusty Warren and her Knockers Up! Bet they are not so “up” any more. That humor would be considered incredibly mild today, but back then you could not say ‘damn it’ on TV! Times do change - not sure if it’s for the better. I still prefer subtlety. (My family may question that comment.) Fun article once again!