Speaking of Stan Freberg, as I was just yesterday here, there's a company called DRG Records which, of course, does not make records. But they do make CDs, and they've just issued a new 2-CD set of Freberg gems. It's called Stan Freberg: The Capitol Singles Collection and it features 35 of the best things Stan ever did. Thirty of them are recordings he did for Capitol as singles. (In a few cases, one was the flip side of another in this set.) The other five are routines he did either for his radio show or for his legendary album, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Vol. I…but they're cuts that were later released as singles so I guess they qualify.
Wherever they came from, they're joyous creations and they're also very funny, too. Stan did smart material but he also — and this is easy to forget when the work is smart — was very funny. He's still very funny. I was over at his house last month and he was very funny.
In the meantime, a British company has brought out a CD called International Lampoon that has some of the same material on it but also has something else interesting. Stan did a lot of parodies of contemporary (then) records. He did a send-up of Mr. Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" that would qualify him, I maintain, as the first-ever Elvis Impersonator. He did spoofs of Eartha Kitt and Harry Belafonte and Les Paul & Mary Ford and others. This new CD includes not only Stan's take-offs but the original material, as well. You can hear the hit Johnnie Ray song, "Cry," and then you can hear Freberg's burlesque of it…and so on. A clever bit of packaging.
One of the impressive things about Freberg was that it wasn't always necessary to know what he was parodying to enjoy his work. The Dragnet satire he did with Daws Butler, "St. George and the Dragonet," was a smash hit in Australia even before the Dragnet show was ever broadcast there. As a kid, I loved a lot of his records without even knowing they were based on anything pre-existing. Still, it's a great idea to match 'em up so folks who aren't familiar with the original can compare the mockery.
So these are two great CD packages. The only things wrong with them are the weird covers. The Capitol Singles Collection uses this bizarre caricature of Stan that was done for a British album of his work more than twenty years ago. It didn't look anything like him then and it doesn't look anything like him now. The International Lampoon sports a photo of Stan showing his flying saucer prop to Dick Clark. The saucer was the one that Stan's puppet Orville used to live in…but Orville isn't on the cover or, for that matter, on the CD. But Dick Clark, who isn't on the CD either, is on the cover. I don't understand any of this.
You can order the Capitol Records Collection from Amazon by clicking here and you can order the International Lampoon from Amazon by clicking here. Both come with great contents and stupid covers.