The Lenny Bruce Originals Volume 2

by Lenny Bruce

Product Description:

2 LPs on 1 CD: LENNY BRUCE, AMERICAN and TOGETHERNESS. Originally released on Fantasy (7007 and 7011 respectively).

Solo performer: Lenny Bruce (spoken vocals).

Recorded in San Francisco in 1958. Originally released on Fantasy (7001 and 7003 respectively). Includes liner notes by Grover Sales.

Digitally remastered by Kirk Felton (1991, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California).

THE LENNY BRUCE ORIGINALS: VOLUME 2 collects TOGETHERNESS and LENNY BRUCE-AMERICAN, two classic LPs from the Golden Age of stand-up comedy, along with some of the legendarily "sick" comic's most famous and funniest bits. If you weren't alive in the late '50s and early '60s, you may not realize just how shocking Bruce's naked honesty, wit, and language seemed at the time. As Grover Sales relates in his excellent liner notes, it's hard to believe that Bruce was actually arrested for using one particularly vulgar word. For the sake of perspective, Meryl Streep wound up with an Academy Award when she uttered the same word in 1982's "Sophie's Choice."

Sales provides a helpful glossary of Bruce's more dated topical references. But the bottom line is that funny is funny, and Bruce's material is no less hysterical today. Highlights include the envelope-pushing (still) "How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties," the hilarious "Airplane Glue" (in which a school kid becomes "the Louis Pasteur of junkiedom"), and "The Palladium," Bruce's 20-minute tour de force about an American comedian dying the death of all deaths during a performance in London.