Stan Freberg, one of the greatest satirists and founding member of modern pop culture humor, has died at the age of 88.
Freberg is a largely forgotten character in the world of comedy, primarily because he spent much of his career in the world of letters and radio, and secondly because he preferred to use his voice to provide voice effects for numerous cartoons, which was his introduction to voice work upon arriving in Hollywood in 1944. He worked alongside Mel Blanc as an often-uncredited voice actor playing second banana to the dominant characters played by Blanc. Their good working relationship would later lead to a career in replacing Blanc's friend Jack Benny when the latter stepped down from his immortal radio show for television in 1957.
Pete Puma, the most popular, and undoubtedly stoned Looney Tunes characters in Freberg's repertoire.
But being ahead of one's time in the 1950s was not a viable career option for longevity. Unlike Harold Lloyd, whose stardom waned by refusing to license his films for television (Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, however, were not so short sighted), Freberg's refusal to allow crass commercialization of his work stunted his progress into the worldwide mainstream. He refused to associate with cigarette companies--despite Benny's longtime association with them for CBS--and without their support, his excoriating political satires, many of which openly mocked advertising in general, failed to attract sponsorship that could have kept his show afloat and the show was canceled after 15 episodes. He was openly critical of the HUAC committee and of Senator McCarthy in a segment known as "Point of Order", a reference to McCarthy's frequent objection. When brought in to an executive meeting at Capitol record's legal department, his response to being asked if he belonged to a "disloyal" group was:
And his satires of the period are the stuff of comedy legend.
Freberg predated the confrontational style of moral hypocrisy later favored by Lenny Bruce and the Smothers Brothers that flavored the 1960s, so his style was to illustrate the insanity of his targets by placing their power dynamics in ridiculous scenarios that were patently silly. One of his first major breakthroughs was the 1951 "John and Marcia" album routine, a vicious parody of histrionic soap operas of the period that featured the two main characters of John and Marsha repeating each others' names over and over with differing inflections, essentially telling a story without dialogue. The sketch is responsible for the popularity of the names "John and Marsha" as a deliberate mockery of soaps.
He frequently used friend and master musicians Speedy West and Billy May to collaborate with him to parody famous songs of the day, including The Platters' "The Great Pretender", Harry Belafonte's "Day-O" and Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel." So good was Freberg's parodying of period music that his legendary mockery of Lawrence Welk with "Wun'erful, Wun'erful" that Lawrence Welk himself used the song's title for the title of his autobiography.
But his short-lived radio series is perhaps the greatest testament to his genius. Recorded before a live audience that was often completely unprepared for the sheer power of his sketches, Freberg, in tandem with equally legendary voice actors Daws Butler (Huckleberry Hound) and June Foray (Rocky the Flying Squirrel; Witch Hazel), they completely trounced the pop culture and the political world with sketches so far ahead of their time it's difficult to doubt if Monty Python and the Goon Show stole from them.
Two of the strongest of all were the sketches "Elderly Man River" and "All About Werewolves". "River" is known for predicting the emergence of Political Correctness almost 40 years before it actually appeared, with Freberg attempting--and failing--to sing the traditional song "Old Man River" while an officious censorship committee agent named Tweedly (played to the hilt by Butler) continually interrupts him with a loud buzzer to correct his grammar and substitute epithets with neutral terms ('Elderly' instead of 'Old').
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLlTlYfqQV4
"All About Werewolves" is a practically Pythonesque show-long sketch about a teenage werewolf who, when the moon is full, transforms into..."AN ADVERTISING MAN!!!!" From there on, he tries to balance his dual lives, one as a conflicted murderous lycanthrope, and the other a vapid and insincere ad man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4vlJX5RwL4
Freberg's constant quarrels with the encroaching interference by the increasingly nervous legal department at CBS often influenced his subject matter. Perhaps the greatest example of this is his must-have album Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America Vol. 1: The Early Years (1961), often considered as one of the greatest comedy albums of all time.
A second album was planned for 1976, but wasn't released until 1996.
His influence in advertising introduced satire into the otherwise bald-faced hokum of the medium and, despite taking several decades, is responsible for the self-referential absurdism popular in today's TV commercials; the best part of the Super Bowl literally wouldn't exist without him.
Freberg was ultimately eclipsed by later comedians who dominated the groundwork that he laid: Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Rowan & Martin, Monty Python and Saturday Night Live all took the type of style he created and took it to the next level, effectively leaving him in the dust and stealing his thunder. But his heirs are numerous and still dependent on the templates he established over 50 years ago. Weird Al Yankovich acknowledges that his career probably wouldn't have happened without him.
Without Freberg, we wouldn't have this. You ungrateful bastards.
I grew up listening to Old Time Radio, and was well-versed in the brilliance of Jack Benny, Benny Goodman, and Stan Freberg courtesy of my parent's copious cassette tapes of their released material and consumed them as ravenously as I did Beavis & Butt-Head and Ren & Stimpy in my tween years. I am grateful for the opportunity to have experienced Freberg organically at an impressionable age when my peers had long since abandoned his type of humor and would never have considered him.
I strongly advise you who read this to explore the YouTubes and the remaining music stores to find this vital and miraculously poignant catalog of masterworks by a true and underappreciated comedy genius.
Freberg is a largely forgotten character in the world of comedy, primarily because he spent much of his career in the world of letters and radio, and secondly because he preferred to use his voice to provide voice effects for numerous cartoons, which was his introduction to voice work upon arriving in Hollywood in 1944. He worked alongside Mel Blanc as an often-uncredited voice actor playing second banana to the dominant characters played by Blanc. Their good working relationship would later lead to a career in replacing Blanc's friend Jack Benny when the latter stepped down from his immortal radio show for television in 1957.
Pete Puma, the most popular, and undoubtedly stoned Looney Tunes characters in Freberg's repertoire.
But being ahead of one's time in the 1950s was not a viable career option for longevity. Unlike Harold Lloyd, whose stardom waned by refusing to license his films for television (Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, however, were not so short sighted), Freberg's refusal to allow crass commercialization of his work stunted his progress into the worldwide mainstream. He refused to associate with cigarette companies--despite Benny's longtime association with them for CBS--and without their support, his excoriating political satires, many of which openly mocked advertising in general, failed to attract sponsorship that could have kept his show afloat and the show was canceled after 15 episodes. He was openly critical of the HUAC committee and of Senator McCarthy in a segment known as "Point of Order", a reference to McCarthy's frequent objection. When brought in to an executive meeting at Capitol record's legal department, his response to being asked if he belonged to a "disloyal" group was:
And his satires of the period are the stuff of comedy legend.
Freberg predated the confrontational style of moral hypocrisy later favored by Lenny Bruce and the Smothers Brothers that flavored the 1960s, so his style was to illustrate the insanity of his targets by placing their power dynamics in ridiculous scenarios that were patently silly. One of his first major breakthroughs was the 1951 "John and Marcia" album routine, a vicious parody of histrionic soap operas of the period that featured the two main characters of John and Marsha repeating each others' names over and over with differing inflections, essentially telling a story without dialogue. The sketch is responsible for the popularity of the names "John and Marsha" as a deliberate mockery of soaps.
He frequently used friend and master musicians Speedy West and Billy May to collaborate with him to parody famous songs of the day, including The Platters' "The Great Pretender", Harry Belafonte's "Day-O" and Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel." So good was Freberg's parodying of period music that his legendary mockery of Lawrence Welk with "Wun'erful, Wun'erful" that Lawrence Welk himself used the song's title for the title of his autobiography.
But his short-lived radio series is perhaps the greatest testament to his genius. Recorded before a live audience that was often completely unprepared for the sheer power of his sketches, Freberg, in tandem with equally legendary voice actors Daws Butler (Huckleberry Hound) and June Foray (Rocky the Flying Squirrel; Witch Hazel), they completely trounced the pop culture and the political world with sketches so far ahead of their time it's difficult to doubt if Monty Python and the Goon Show stole from them.
Two of the strongest of all were the sketches "Elderly Man River" and "All About Werewolves". "River" is known for predicting the emergence of Political Correctness almost 40 years before it actually appeared, with Freberg attempting--and failing--to sing the traditional song "Old Man River" while an officious censorship committee agent named Tweedly (played to the hilt by Butler) continually interrupts him with a loud buzzer to correct his grammar and substitute epithets with neutral terms ('Elderly' instead of 'Old').
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLlTlYfqQV4
"All About Werewolves" is a practically Pythonesque show-long sketch about a teenage werewolf who, when the moon is full, transforms into..."AN ADVERTISING MAN!!!!" From there on, he tries to balance his dual lives, one as a conflicted murderous lycanthrope, and the other a vapid and insincere ad man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4vlJX5RwL4
Freberg's constant quarrels with the encroaching interference by the increasingly nervous legal department at CBS often influenced his subject matter. Perhaps the greatest example of this is his must-have album Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America Vol. 1: The Early Years (1961), often considered as one of the greatest comedy albums of all time.
A second album was planned for 1976, but wasn't released until 1996.
His influence in advertising introduced satire into the otherwise bald-faced hokum of the medium and, despite taking several decades, is responsible for the self-referential absurdism popular in today's TV commercials; the best part of the Super Bowl literally wouldn't exist without him.
Freberg was ultimately eclipsed by later comedians who dominated the groundwork that he laid: Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Rowan & Martin, Monty Python and Saturday Night Live all took the type of style he created and took it to the next level, effectively leaving him in the dust and stealing his thunder. But his heirs are numerous and still dependent on the templates he established over 50 years ago. Weird Al Yankovich acknowledges that his career probably wouldn't have happened without him.
Without Freberg, we wouldn't have this. You ungrateful bastards.
I grew up listening to Old Time Radio, and was well-versed in the brilliance of Jack Benny, Benny Goodman, and Stan Freberg courtesy of my parent's copious cassette tapes of their released material and consumed them as ravenously as I did Beavis & Butt-Head and Ren & Stimpy in my tween years. I am grateful for the opportunity to have experienced Freberg organically at an impressionable age when my peers had long since abandoned his type of humor and would never have considered him.
I strongly advise you who read this to explore the YouTubes and the remaining music stores to find this vital and miraculously poignant catalog of masterworks by a true and underappreciated comedy genius.
