In 1965 our family moved to Majestik Township south of Akron. It was a small bedroom community: a typical suburb of the period. Split-levels and ranches were all the rage. We lived in a brick ranch. And, aside from the well-tanned Johnstons (who vacationed 6 months out of the year in Florida) and the intermittent foreign exchange student from Thailand, we were an all white community.
During those years, Bill Cosby was the only black man I knew. Sure, I had seen Sammy Davis Jr sing on the Dean Martin Show and watched Jim Brown play football. But I knew Bill Cosby. I heard his voice in my front room.
Yes, he spoke to me.
He spoke to me through his comedy albums. His major opus, Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow, RIGHT, is, perhaps, the greatest comedy album ever recorded. No, it was not ground breaking. And it certainly wasn’t cutting edge. If anything, it was strictly G rated material. Yet I loved it for the sheer niceness of it all. His recollections of his childhood, his parody of Noah (“what’s a cubit”), and his hyperactive manner of expressing himself (“little tiny hairs, GROWING on my face!”) were pure genius.
I fell in love with Bill Cosby, and became a fan of the comedy album.
Having memorized Bill Cosby’s routine, I moved on to Bob Newhart. I missed his classic album, The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, but made up for it with his composite album, The Best of Bob Newhart. His routines on Lincoln, a retirement party and the discovery of tobacco in the New World put me in stitches. More than a decade later when the Bob Newhart Show aired on television, I was already a fan.
At this point in our family history my older brother, Allen, was into folk music. Looking back, I can see how this might fit into the labyrinth that was his mind. After all, Allen did have a kind of rugged-loner-out-in-the-woods mentality akin to, say, a Euell Gibbons or perhaps the Unabomber. At any rate, Allen would play his Peter, Paul and Mary records over and over and over again.
(You would have thought that with this apparent love of folk music Allen would have played the guitar, but no. Allen’s instrument of choice was the tuba.)
Since my bedroom was next to Allen's, I got stuck listening to the same lousy Peter, Paul and Mary record over and over and over. I couldn’t figure out their appeal. I mean, Puff the Magic Dragon? What was that all about? For me, I was on to my next comedic discovery: George Carlin.
George Carlin’s album lasted a total of five minutes in my house. Once he started into his Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television rift, it was all over. My dad sailed the record out the back door like it was a Frisbee (he looked a little like Odd Job decapitating a statue with that razor sharp derby of his.) Yet in that short space of time I had heard enough of Carlin to know that, yes, I loved him, too.
Other albums followed in quick succession: The Smothers Brothers, Allen Sherman (the Al Yankovich of the 60’s), Cheech & Chong, Richard Pryor.
When I was in college I became an avid listener to the National Lampoon Radio Hour. It was an early, audio version of Saturday Night Live featuring the not-yet-famous voices of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner and Chevy Chase. The National Lampoon Radio Hour (which lasted a half hour) was broadcast sporadically and I missed quite a few shows, but when they republished the material in album form, I bought them all.
A short time later I discovered The Firesign Theater. This was avant-garde comedy, but a digestible form of avant-garde. My favorite album was I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus. This was political satire featuring a fantasy amusement park, a robotic Nixon, and a bus full of Bozos. What it actually meant was hard to tell. But whatever it was, it certainly had its funny moments.
Today the comedy album is practically comatose. Cable television has pretty much decimated the audio only comedy format by making visual comedy accessible. This increased accessibility has encouraged comedians to try to out do each other. More often than not, this has made their brand of humor a raunchier, more adults-only fare.
Cosby and Newhart seem to be quaint throwbacks to an earlier, more gentle era by comparison.
In my mind’s eye I can still see my family huddled around the hi-fi, safe in our ranch style home in Majestik Township listening to our friend, Mr. Bill Cosby tell us about Fat Albert, old time radio and volley balls. True, there were wars and riots and crime in the streets. Manson was still on the loose. The world was not a warm and fuzzy place.
But for a time, Cosby made it seem that way.
Next: Robert Sheckley and the Future That Never Was
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