Lenny Bruce CD Set Shows Comedian Can Still Sting
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Lenny Bruce CD Set Shows Comedian Can Still Sting
Thu Sep 23, 2004 08:50 AM ET
By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lenny Bruce was broke when he died of a drug overdose
in 1966, but the incendiary, profane comedian left a rich legacy that
included a string of obscenity arrests, a durable comedic influence and a
vast archive of tapes.
Later comedians from Richard Pryor to George Carlin and Bill Maher have been
cited as beneficiaries of Bruce's style, which shocked the public not only
with blue humor that may seem mainstream today but with social satire that
can sting four decades later.
"The trouble is, I picked on the wrong God," Bruce said in a routine in
1962, a year of mounting legal troubles he attributed to his social and
religious satire.
Highlights of his recordings were released this month on a carefully
packaged and well-documented 6-CD set called "Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer
Beware." The set includes rare versions of nightclub routines, such as "How
to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties," and a recording of a police
warning to the comedian.
"What we're trying to do here is tell a story of a man through his own
words, but ultimately show what a great artist he was ... and then what
happened to him as a result of his work," said Hal Willner, who produced the
CD collection for the Shout! Factory label.
"I wanted this to be a box set of dignity," said Bruce's daughter, Kitty,
who co-produced the set after years of seeking an outlet for the boxes of
tapes she inherited and assembled.
"My father had a lot of style, and I wanted it to portray the type of man
that he was ... It's a happy record; it's a sad record; it makes you think."
FREE SPEECH
The set also serves a reminder of the history of free speech in the United
States, at a time when performers from Janet Jackson to Howard Stern have
come under fire from guardians of public decency.
"It's amazing how in the last six months, this story has become so totally
relevant," Willner said. "You're not going to see someone getting arrested
for saying a four-letter word," but other forms of censure were a growing
possibility, he said.
Bruce was an improvisational comedian, an impressionist, a character actor,
a linguist and a methedrine-fueled jazzman.
One of his routines, a sexual riff called "To is a Preposition, Come is a
Verb," Bruce accompanies himself with a drum that evokes the hep-cat
atmosphere of his nightclub acts.
Targets of his social and political humor included his Jewish heritage, race
relations and the Roman Catholic Church.
John Kennedy, the first Catholic U.S. president, was a frequent target. One
routine focused on Jackie Kennedy's attempt to crawl out of the presidential
convertible carrying her fatally wounded husband.
Although he described Mrs. Kennedy's actions in crude terms, Bruce defended
her against a perception that she tried to flee the scene. "It's a lie to
tell the people that if you're good, you'll stay," he said.
BURLESQUE HOUSES
After starting in burlesque houses, Bruce was at the peak of his career when
he was arrested in 1961 for using a 10-letter slang term for 'sodomite' in a
San Francisco nightclub. He had recorded several albums, performed at New
York's Carnegie Hall and won critical praise as a comic genius.
Bruce was acquitted of the San Francisco count, but arrests in Los Angeles
and Chicago followed in 1962, and he also battled narcotics charges. He was
banned in Detroit, Australia and England, and nightclubs fearing legal
crackdowns shut their doors to him.
Bruce filed an FBI complaint that the New York and California courts were
conspiring to violate his rights, and he blamed his arrests on his religious
views. "There was an all-out, rah-rah, 100 percent effort to make sure that
he was not able to work," Kitty Bruce said.
A 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a separate case helped him prevail in
Chicago and the Los Angeles charges were dropped or dismissed, but a New Yor
k obscenity conviction stuck until Gov. George Pataki posthumously pardoned
Bruce in 2003.
As result of his legal battles, Bruce habitually taped his performances. He
chafed at police officers recounting his act from the witness stand, and in
turn used trial transcripts as material for his routines.
But the struggle wore him down. Kitty Bruce said her father spent long hours
at home typing up cases, and researching law and language in a vast library.
"Anything possible that a person can do to a word, he had information on,"
she said.
He became increasingly agitated and unbalanced. In August 1966 he made his
final recording, which began as a microphone test and descended into mad
gibberish punctuated by vulgarities. On Aug. 3, 1966, he was found dead of a
drug overdose -- reports vary over whether the drug was heroin or morphine.
He was 40.
"His physical deterioration, and his stress and the financial pressure of
everything, that was killing him regardless, drugs or no drugs," Kitty Bruce
said. "The man just wanted to do his act, and he wanted to exercise his
right of free speech."