So: 34 or 35 years after he'd recorded Volume One of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Stan Freberg began preparing to record Volume Two. I got to help…a little. Very little. I'll tell you in a moment how little.
One of the things I learned about Stan — and this is by no means a criticism — is that as a creative individual, he made up his mind how something should be and then he achieved it. When he produced advertising, his contracts often said something like, "Mr. Freberg shall be the sole judge of whether something is funny." If you hired Stan, he did what he did and you just had to accept it…or not.
I have worked with other people — some, very talented — who tried to create that kind of "my way or the highway" situation and it can be painful. It's bad enough to watch someone drive off the cliff but it's worse when there were people around who warned them…or still worse, were not allowed to. Somehow, doing it His Way, Stan managed to produce a stunning lifetime body of memorable work.
He was not insistent on His Way when he worked for others on their projects. When he came in to do voices on cartoon shows I voice-directed for example, he was totally cooperative and eager to please. He was also very good and his presence in the studio — and I am not kidding about this — made the other actors better. In the last few days since Stan left us, several of those actors have written to me to say how working with Stan Freberg was among the greatest thrills of their lives…and very, very educational.
However: On a Stan Freberg endeavor, everything had to be to the liking of Stan Freberg. I always thought one of the reasons he preferred radio to television was that he had more control in radio. With his gift for voices and ability to do multiple roles, it was easier to make things sound the way he wanted than to get them to look the way he wanted.
As I said above, I did very little, emphasis on the "very." This is a first-person narrative of my involvement because I was in a unique position to watch a master at work. If it sounds like I'm saying I deserve some credit for the resultant album, look closer. I did nothing that substantially affected the end-product. You couldn't. Stan Freberg making a Stan Freberg record was like Arnold Palmer playing golf. You could drive him to the golf course. You could carry his clubs. But he was the only one who was going to hit the ball.
His producer was his wife Donna, who had been the producer on just about everything he'd done for the past few decades. One of the reasons she was the ideal producer for him was that she made no attempt to interfere with content. I'll tell you in the next part some of the things she told me about what it was like to be Stan's producer but the main one was: "Stan has to make the record Stan wants to make the way he wants to make it."
Which is not to say he was not willing to question his own work, decide something wasn't right and change it…but he was going to be the one changing it. Most of the material for Volume Two of S.F.P.t.U.S.o.A. was written not long after he recorded Volume One. When it came time to at long last record it, Stan went back and rewrote a number of lines that seemed dated. With the hindsight of several decades, he also altered or discarded portions he no longer liked. The passing of time dictated other changes: He had tentatively cast all the roles with the same stock company he used on Volume One but some of those folks were no longer available.
The great Paul Frees had provided the super-authoritative voice of the Narrator. You may remember how he sounded…
Alas, the great Paul Frees was now the late Paul Frees. Stan wanted a sound-alike for consistency and was about 95% convinced no human being alive could properly replicate that voice. He said to me, "I may have to listen to Paul over and over and learn how to imitate that voice myself." In his youth, I'll bet Stan could have done it. He was an incredible mimic. But I told him I had The Guy.
When you go to Disneyland and ride Pirates of the Caribbean or visit The Haunted Mansion, you hear the original, ominous vocal stylings of Mr. Frees recorded way back when. But over the years as those attractions have changed, it was deemed necessary to change a few lines. The new lines were seamlessly inserted and they were done by Mr. Corey Burton.
At the time Stan asked me to help him make Volume Two happen, I was casting voices for a proposed (but ultimately unrealized) new cartoon show. I had already decided on Stan for one of the lead roles and had Corey in mind for another. I had to have them both come in and record audition material so that the Executive Producer could sign off on my selections so I scheduled them back-to-back. One afternoon, I recorded Stan and then asked to him to stick around as Corey arrived.
I think Stan was expecting that the guy I said could do a perfect Paul Frees would be older and scowling and would look like Orson Welles…or at least, Paul. Corey is a short, pleasant-looking younger fellow. When he arrived and I introduced him, Stan gave him a look of withering skepticism, then took me aside and said, "Are you sure he can sound like Paul?" I grinned like a guy with four aces: "Just listen!" (By the way, I am not claiming a lot of credit for this bit of casting. Anyone who knew anything about the current talent pool for voice actors would have known Corey was the go-to guy when you needed Paul Frees. It's just that Stan didn't.)
Corey went into the booth, got on the microphone and began warming up. I was on the other side of the glass, next to the audio engineer, and Stan was next to me. Over the speakers, we heard The Voice saying, "Stan Freberg…modestly presents…the United States of America." It sounded, of course, perfect and I turned to Stan, waiting for him to say, "My God, you were right!"
Instead, he said, "Okay, now I want to hear him." He thought he was listening to a reference recording of Paul Frees.
I said, "That is him." I pushed the button so Corey could hear me and asked him to do some different lines in the same voice. He said, still sounding exactly like Paul Frees, "Sure, Mark…what do you want me to say?"
That was when Stan said, "My God, you were right." In an interview later, he said, "When I realized it was him and not Paul, I got cold chills. I would have bet anything that was Paul." Here is Corey Burton on the final album…
See what I mean?
The three other major performers besides Stan on Volume One were Jesse White, Peter Leeds and Byron Kane. Back in 196whatever, Stan had designated major roles on Volume Two for all three of them but Byron had also died. Lorenzo Music filled his parts, and since I had voice-directed Lorenzo on Garfield cartoons — occasionally guest-starring Stan — everyone, including Lorenzo, assumed I had cast him. Nope. That was all Stan's doing.
Peter Leeds was alive and available. So was Jesse White but I'd worked with Jesse not long before on Garfield. I loved the guy so I will say this as politely as I can: He was not in good health and he was not up to the kind of performance Stan needed from him. Since I'd just been proven right about Corey, Stan trusted me on this. He gave Jesse a small cameo role on Volume Two and selected David Ogden Stiers to play the other parts for which Jesse had been penciled in.
It was very sad the day Jesse recorded. He was failing and it took many takes to get anything even remotely useable. One of our engineers said to Stan, "Guess you're going to have to have someone else redo that part."
Stan said, "No. Jesse was a big reason why Volume One was so successful. I want him to be a part of this one and besides, that may be Jesse's last performance and I'd never forgive myself if I threw away his last performance." It may indeed have been Jesse's last because he passed away not long after Volume Two was released and so did Peter Leeds.
From the original album, Stan also managed to bring back June Foray and there was one other cast member we couldn't find. Shepard Menken played a number of roles and was probably eager to be part of Volume Two. I say that because several years earlier, I'd directed him on an episode of Garfield and Friends and we'd talked about his involvement in S.F.P.t.U.S.o.A., which he said was one of the items on his résumé of which he was the proudest. He told me, "Stan keeps talking about recording Volume Two and I hope he calls me for it."
Unfortunately, when that time came, no one could locate Mr. Menken. After Donna gave up looking, I was assigned to track him down but his agent told me, as he'd told her, "I don't know where he is. Shep's kind of dropped off the face of the earth." Someone at the Screen Actors Guild told me, "If you find him, let us know. We have checks for him that came back to us marked 'No longer at this address.'" He was eventually located but not in time to be on Volume Two. He passed away in 1999.
Stan and Donna however assembled a fine ensemble to support the returning players. In addition to Peter Leeds, Lorenzo Music and David Ogden Stiers, they booked Naomi Lewis, William Woodson, Stan's son Donavan and his daughter Donna Jean. The investors and the folks at Rhino Records wanted some "star names" as cast insurance for a project they knew would be costly so Stan and Donna recruited Tyne Daly, Sherman Hemsley, John Goodman and Harry Shearer. All were folks who'd told Stan how much they loved Volume One. Billy May, who'd arranged and conducted the music for Volume One, went to work on Volume Two.
So with the script, cast and music in place, Stan Freberg finally did something that fans and friends had been urging him to do for thirty-five years. He went into a recording studio to record Volume Two of Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America. In what was very much a "dream come true" moment for me, I got to be there. In the next part, I'll tell you what I observed and how little I did.
As you'll see, my biggest contribution involved distracting Ray Bradbury who dropped by to urge Stan to insert some lines about how Bill Clinton was destroying the real United States of America. As you'll also see, even Stan's close friend Ray Bradbury couldn't persuade Stan to do anything Stan didn't want to do. Next time.