Comedy Tonight

Here's an article on favorite comedy albums. They hit a lot of good ones--Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Bob Newhart, Richard Pryor, The Firesign Theatre. I own quite a few of these, but the whole concept is odd. Songs you can listen to forever, but how many times can you hear the same jokes?

Comedy albums became big around 1960, with a new generation of comics, like Shelley Berman, Newhart, Nichols and May, and soon after Cosby, presenting new voices, and not just doing straight jokes, like Henny Youngman or Myron Cohen (not that there's anything wrong with that). Perhaps these albums were a chance not just to laugh, but to feel smart--it was like going to a nightclub in New York, and once you paid the cover charge, you could return as often as you liked.