I'm having trouble figuring out what to write about Mort Sahl, who died today at the age of 94. He kinda/sorta invented the concept of the mostly-topical stand-up comedian…an occupation that for a long period was limited to him and some pretty unimpressive Mort Sahl imitators. At times, it seemed like a lot of comics wanted to be him but didn't want to spend the necessary time reading newspapers and understanding current events well enough to joke about them. His albums — even though the material was often dated by the time the record was released — are still essential to any library of spoken word humor.
I met Mort briefly a couple of times. He gave my comedy-writing some encouraging words when I was in high school and I'd write about that here but then this would wind up being a piece about me and it oughta be about him. So I'll just mention that I snuck some of how he influenced me into this article that I wrote in 1996 about the Doonesbury comic strip.
Hey, I guess I can mention that I saw him perform live about seven times. Three or four of those times, he was brilliant and witty and everything you'd want Mort Sahl to be…though on one of those appearances, he said nada about politics or what was going on in the news and spent the whole hour talking about writing a TV pilot for Jack Webb's company. The other times I saw him were massively disappointing; like he was appearing on the stage before us only because someone was holding his loved ones at knifepoint and the ransom was that he just ramble on for a while without making much sense.
One of them was him scolding us for not being more demanding that the real plot to assassinate President Kennedy be revealed and accepted as truth. Back then, I believed there was a conspiracy — I later decided otherwise — but the problem was there were many theories deserving of consideration and with Sahl that night, you either totally bought into his or you were one of those uncaring, unfeeling sheep disinterested in The Truth. I don't think his version, as presented that evening in lieu of the advertised comedy, was later believed by very many people including Sahl himself.
On the topic of J.F.K., he became not only a bore but a condescending bore. Listening to him there or elsewhere, you never got any final answers about who killed Kennedy but at least you could then answer the question, "Why don't we see more of Mort Sahl these days?" Still, when he was good, he was very, very good and very quotable and I hope someone now will put together a big American Masters kind of thing with clips of him at his best. They'd certainly have enough material to fill many hours…and the top "current events" comics of today would queue up to acknowledge the debt they owe to this man. Or at least, they should.