September 16–23, 1999

music

Stan Span

Stan Freberg

Tip Of The Freberg: The Stan Freberg Collection, 1951-1998 (4 CDs)

(Rhino)

When The Beatles hit America, Paul McCartney told reporters that one of the group’s main comic influences was Stan Freberg’s "St. George and the Dragonet." Freberg’s 1953 parody ("The legend you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record…") was an international hit, even though Dragnet was on the air only in America. When the show eventually debuted abroad, most foreigners amazingly assumed Jack Webb had built an entire TV series out of Freberg’s record.

Rhino celebrates Freberg’s five decades in records, radio and TV with a comprehensive four-disc set, featuring extensive liner notes (contributed by, among others, Barret "Dr. Demento" Hansen) and a CD’s worth of previously unissued material.

The collection includes Freberg’s savvy spoofs of such 1950s pop hits as "Sh-Boom" and "Heartbreak Hotel," as well as bits from his ’50s CBS radio show and his two fine Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America albums. Freberg has found American history as a starting point to skewer contemporary mores, such as his Pilgrim plea for racial tolerance, "Take an Indian to Lunch" from 1961.

In the tradition of Aristophanes, Gilbert and Sullivan and The Simpsons, Freberg’s satire is rooted in basic values. In his 1960 holiday single "Green Chri$tma$," Freberg, the son of a Baptist minister, spoofed corporate Yuletide commercialization. Freberg also had the courage to create anti-McCarthyism comic bits during the ’50s and produce anti-Vietnam PSAs in the early ’70s.

In 1958 Freberg began a lucrative second career as an award-winning producer of TV commercials. Some saw it as selling out, while others saw it as subverting Madison Avenue from within, injecting humor into an uptight industry. There’s a video assortment of his best-known ads, including his Sunsweet prune commercials plus one of TV’s all-time surreal images — Ann Miller tap-dancing atop a monolith soup can.

Still producing and performing comedy at age 73, Freberg worked with Simpsons regulars Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer on some of the more recent bits. While fans might quibble at some of the set’s omissions, Tip Of The Freberg is a funny and fitting salute to a pioneer of contemporary American humor.

—Andrew Milner