Rich Little- Rich Little’s Broadway

dscn5546This was one dollar.  For that price, I thought I would give it a try.  I have been sitting on it for about a year, however. I want to say this is the first comedy album I have posted. 78b800b8bbbe3003a393e8b94ed043c5

Before I bought this record, I did not known Rich Little was Canadian.  Well, he is.  Born in Ottawa in 1938. Little started in his teens with impressions of Canadian politicians. But moving away from miming John Diefenbaker and Charlotte Whitton, Little honed his trade with better known subjects and found himself in nightclubs by age 17. He soon found fame in the US performing shows and appearing on television.  He is a master of many voices but his material has never really gone blue, for better or for worse. In 2007, Little was invited to speak at the White House Press Corespondents Dinner. This was the year after the Stephen Colbert debacle.  Although George Bush Jr was amused, Little’s act was panned as being outdated and mostly of dead people (which is the same critique of this album).

When I think of Little, I think of the somewhat awful HBO special he did that used to run constantly when I was a kid.  (Yes, this and Dream On are what HBO had before The Soprano’s and Game Of Thrones.  Seriously).  And look children, a laugh track. On a side note, one of the funniest things I saw was on the old Dana Carvey Show in the 1990’s.  He did a sketch of Rich Little’s Easter Special, where Carvey imitated Little imitating Little’s standard routines.  Kind of meta-impressions if you will. There were some videos of this floating around Youtube but they are all gone. The show was really ahead of its time until it wasn’t. I would not say in launched careers but quite a few people started on the show including Colbert and Steve Carell.

As far as this album, it was his first release in the US.  It should tell you something that I do now know 45% of the people spoofed on this album (and I watch Turner Classic Movies for crying out loud).  But here they are, an early take on some of Little’s classic impressions from John Wayne and Liberace talking about manhood to Humphrey Bogart belting out Broadway tunes.  As Broadway is the theme, there are a number of show tunes on the album as well.dscn5547

For a sample, I went with Little’s impression of Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster singing “Anything You Can Do” from Annie Get Your Gun. Again, not to belabor a point, and I guess that was comedy back then, but I feel there is so much more you can do.  Looking back again at Dana Carvey, his impression of the duo is funny because it tells a story (abet an adult one).

Anyway, here this is.  Meh. Sorry. I really wanted to so more with this post but I am short timing it this month due to upcoming vacation. Where will I be?  I could be in your part of the hemisphere.

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