Stan Freberg
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 10/27/95
Comics Buyer's Guide
I have already written in this column of how, when Soupy Sales had his kids' show on Los Angeles TV, I would sooner miss Christmas than an episode. I got the beginnings of my sense of humor from the pie-encrusted Mr. Sales and repeated viewings of his repeated material.
Soupy was something of a short-term idol. But it was because of his show that I found myself a long-term one.
Doing a daily show (and, for a time, one on Saturday, too) was quite a drain on Soupy.One way he'd fill time — the first resort of many who have done local TV shows — was through the use of Needle-Drops.
A Needle-Drop is not some bit of drug-related lingo.The term is still used in this day of CDs and tape; I heard it the other day in a TV studio and there probably wasn't a phonograph needle within miles.
Every day, Soupy would go to a window and his two resident puppets — Pookie and Hippie — would perform a sketch or song, miming to a cut from a comedy album. At first, I didn't know they were records.
Soupy apparently didn't have much of a collection; about every eight days (it seemed), Pookie would be singing "Day-O," in parody of Harry Belafonte's hit song…and Hippie, living up to a name which did not yet have its sixties meaning, would make like a beatnik, going, "It's like, too loud, man…"
I was nine and I loved the bit. The next time they took me to a record store, I asked the man behind the counter if he knew this funny record where some guy sang, "Day-O." I guess I was expecting him to direct me to a bin of Soupy Sales records but, instead, I somehow went home with an album by some guy named Stan Freberg.
That evening, I played the album and found myself overwhelmed by a rash of discoveries…
One was that not only was the "Day-O" bit on the album — exactly as performed on Soupy's show — but so were a couple of others from Soupy's repertoire…
There was the crazy parody of TV bandleader Lawrence Welk and his stilted German accent. The trademark of Welk and his "Champagne Music-Makers" was a bubble-machine that let off a few spritzes of suds during the show's closing number each week. That was on the real show; on the record, Welk's bubble-machine went gonzo and begin filling the ballroom with thick lather…so much so that the whole building wound up floating out to sea as Welk thrashed about in the lather, moaning his catch-phrase, "Wunnerful, wunnerful…"
And there was the even crazier parody of the TV show Dragnet, expertly replicating its unique rhythm of speech and story. But in this version, Joe Friday was recast as St. George, out to arrest a fire-breathing dragon for devouring maidens out of season.
That was all one discovery — that so many of my favorite bits from Soupy's show were really Freberg bits. Another was all the other routines — the ones Pookie and Hippie hadn't usurped — that were just as funny, just as wonderful. (And if I read the liner notes right, there were other Freberg albums available, no doubt filled with other hysterical songs and stories. It took me a long time to get around to buying them all; I think it took four days.)
Yet another discovery was that a couple of the voices on the Freberg records were very familiar.At the time, my favorite TV shows — Soupy's, excepted — were Rocky and His Friends (now known better as The Bullwinkle Show) and Huckleberry Hound.
I was on my ninety-ninth playing of "St. George and the Dragonet" — that was the title of the Dragnet spoof — when it suddenly dawned on me that the maiden sounded a little like she belonged in one of the Fractured Fairy Tales on the Rocky program. I also noted that one male voice had overtones of Huckleberry Hound in it.
When I bought a Freberg album called "Face the Funnies," I found on the back, credits and photos of two key members of his stock company, June Foray and Daws Butler.
It was, to me, the most exciting discovery since a band of Indians found Columbus on the beach, attempting to open the first Italian restaurant in America (a Freberg "in" joke). June Foray's name was in the end credits of Rocky and His Friends. And Daws Butler's name was in the end credits of Huckleberry Hound.
With a keen ear, using the cast list on "Face the Funnies" as my Rosetta Stone, I identified all the Foray and Butler voices on those two shows…and figured out that, though his name wasn't on the credits, this Daws Butler person was also most of the male voices on Fractured Fairy Tales. There was almost nothing on TV or records that I liked that didn't have Daws Butler or June Foray or both on it.
I didn't, at the time, recognize the voice of star Freberg from anywhere else but, I learned much later, I'd been hearing him too for most of my then-brief life.Stan was Pete Puma in "Rabbit's Kin" and the Gambling Bug in "Early to Bet" and Junior Bear in all those Three Bears cartoons and so many others.
And that wasn't even the first time I'd heard Freberg's voice (or Butler's). I have no memories of seeing the original Time for Beany puppet show but my mother says she never missed it when she was pregnant with me and that, once I appeared, I watched it every day. So their voices were probably among the very first voices I ever heard.
Few days went by in my childhood without my listening to one or more Freberg discs. I still have those copies and they've logged so many playings you could probably hear both sides of each record without flipping it over. Later, I collected double and triple copies, the better to ensure I'd always have my Freberg; I also tracked down most of his singles and some special items that never made it onto LPs.
Through TV interviews and the occasional newspaper article, I pieced together a rough outline of the career of this incredible man.
He'd started as a cartoon voice artist, then segued to the TV puppet show. While doing Cecil (and the show's arch-villain, Dishonest John), he started making comedy records.
Commencing in 1950 with "John and Marsha," a send-up of radio soap operas, Freberg produced a string of novelty records, any one of which would earn him a permanent place in history, the hearts of comedy lovers…and the Dr. Demento show. "St. George and the Dragonet," co-written by and co-starring Daws, sold a million copies in a matter of weeks.
Comedy records were just coming into their own in the fifties but most of them were, like Shelley Berman's, stand-up routines developed in night clubs. Freberg's were just about the only ones to evolve out of radio. Most had music and sound effects; many had a chorus and the Frebergian Players — although Stan often made a record with two starring roles and did both; he was both John and Marsha, for example. (Several of Stan's records are now available on CD. You will probably find them in the Comedy section of your local CD/cassette emporium and they will probably be in front of a little index divider card that will spell his name "Freeberg" or "Freburg.")
They didn't call him a comedian, although they could have. He was usually labelled a satirist — that most dangerous of designations, fatal to so many — for most of his records mocked a current TV show or movie or, most often, other records. It was only weeks after a new kid named Elvis Presley released "Heartbreak Hotel" that Stan had his burlesque of it in music shops, making Freberg probably the first Elvis impersonator of all time. He was almost certainly the first entertainer to kid the unique Presley style.
His work was infectious; once it entered your head, there was no chance of it passing undisturbed out either ear. It stayed there…because it was about something. (And the music, though meant to be funny, was always expertly written and produced. When the Beatles hit America, at a time when everyone was humming Lennon-McCartney tunes to each other, McCartney told a reporter he loved to hum Stan Freberg's songs. That is not a small compliment.)
Everything Freberg wrote/produced/performed was born out of an intelligent, pragmatic look at the world around us, underscored with an expert command of music and voices, all of it set to a very moral tone. He was, you could tell, a very moral man — the son of a Baptist preacher, in fact. But he was almost never preachy, always going for laughs first and foremost. He consistently managed to entertain and vent his mind at the same time — not the easiest combination in the world.
The result was one of those wonderful spiritual arcs that too rarely exists 'twixt performer and audience. You not only laughed at Freberg, you respected him…because it was so obvious that he respected you.
The records led to a radio show, debuting just as network radio shows were becoming extinct. Freberg's, in fact, was the last of the breed, lasting fifteen weeks of brilliant satire. The show had comedy, it had music…it had everything except a sponsor. He kept making records but, soon after, a shocking thing occurred. He joined the enemy.
For years, much of his humor was dead-on lampooning of advertising. Perhaps my two favorite Frebergian masterpieces skewered, chopped and otherwise pureed Madison Avenue…and he didn't just go after the commercials. Often, he impugned — humorously but unmistakably — the morals of those who created them.
Shortly after "I Was a Teen-Age Werewolf" hit movie theaters, Stan did his version, all about a werewolf who, when the full moon hits him, undergoes a horrifying transformation into that most terrifying of creatures…an advertising man!
Even better was "Green Christmas" with Scrooge recast as the head of a major ad agency and Bob Cratchit as an account exec committing industry-heresy by not exploiting Christmas every way possible in his ads.
Still, as network radio was dying and the comedy record was on life support, Stan Freberg — in a move worthy of Elliott Ness taking up a tommy gun and enlisting in the Capone Mob — became an advertising man. It was a less-likely transformation than the one by the werewolf but it led to some very funny radio and TV ads.
He didn't invent the humorous commercial but, ever after, his set the standards against which all others would be measured. Most other agencies scurried to find writers and producers to create Freberg-like spots. That's what they probably called them.
Not that he was without his detractors; Someone once told me that many TV producers didn't want an advertiser with Freberg-produced spots to sponsor their shows; all too often, it led to reviews that said the commercials were funnier than the program.
They were all classics — every one of them. My favorite was a parody of a cigarette company's TV spot. (Freberg was a long-time detractor of tobacco-advertising; his radio show would have stayed on longer, had he been willing to accept a cigarette sponsor.)
This was back when there were such ads on TV. Lark Cigarettes blasted America, over and over, with commercials that had a camera driving around on a truck with a sign that said, "Show us your Lark packs." Person after person in the spots would proudly hold up their package of Larks, all of this set to the sounds and strains of the William Tell Overture.
Freberg's version was for Gino's Pizza Rolls and took place at a fancy party. To the same rousing symphony, a camera rolled around, imploring tuxedo-clad party-goers to show off their packages of frozen Gino's Pizza Rolls. Incredibly, they all had them.
It was hysterical…but the "topper" came when a Lark Cigarette exec stopped the proceedings to complain about the usage of "that music." Then the Lone Ranger stepped in (the real one, Clayton Moore, flanked by the real Jay "Tonto" Silverheels) and intoned to the exec, "I've been meaning to talk to you people about the same thing."
(For those too young to know: The Lone Ranger people used the William Tell Overture as the masked man's theme song on radio and television. How depressing that I have to explain this.)
I cannot begin to tell you how much I and everyone I know laughed at this spot…especially the part where Tonto would go, "Pizza roll, Kemo Sabe?"
Through my involvement in the animation community, I got to meet June Foray and, soon after, Daws Butler. They both proved to be as wonderful as you'd want a favorite performer to be.
I ran into Freberg a couple of times and said all the geeky, fannish things that, I have since learned, are said to him, everywhere he goes.
Now, I've tried it a dozen different ways and there is no humble way to say the following: Though Stan rarely does cartoon voice work any more, he liked my writing well enough to agree to appear on shows I wrote and voice-directed, mainly Garfield and Friends.
First time we had him in, Thom Huge — who does the voice of Garfield's hapless master, Jon — could not have been more excited. He said all the geeky, fannish things that folks say to Stan (see above) and then we went into the booth and all the actors settled in at their respective microphones.
"I need a level, Stan," I said…which means, "Read a little of the script for us so that the engineer can fiddle with his dials and adjust whatever he has to adjust." Freberg took the script and lapsed into an arrogant businessman…a not-too-distant cousin of the character he played in "Green Christmas."
And Thom got hysterical.
He started laughing and laughing, like some sort of sensory overload of delight had kicked in. Even though he knew fully well that the man he was about to perform opposite was Stan Freberg —
— suddenly, that man sounded like Stan Freberg. He sounded just like he did on the radio.
I knew just how Thom felt. I'd given out with the same demented cackle several times when I was sitting here, composing the script, knowing that the guy who made all those glorious records was going to be reading my words. I couldn't have been happier than when he said, on several occasions, "You know…I hear a lot of my influence in your writing."
A few times, I have awakened on a Saturday morn — as usual, long after Garfield has aired — to find his unmistakable voice on my answering machine. "Protégé, this is your idol," he began one long message, favorably critiquing the episode he had just caught on TV.
One of those calls came on a day when everything else in my world was going wrong, a writing project was going pestilent on me and I was seriously considering a career in Motel Management. It was just one of a lifelong series of inspirations he has given me, commencing long before he knew I existed.
He's not the kind of person you can thank directly so I thought I'd write this column and send him a copy.
As I noted earlier, I got the beginnings of my sense of humor — whatever it is, whatever it's worth — from Soupy Sales. I sure hope I got most of the rest of it from Stan Freberg.