Any celebration of the comic genius of
Ernie Kovacs
that documents audio without video is going to be fundamentally flawed.
Kovacs
was a talented actor, writer, and comic, yet his greatest work was primarily visual; his groundbreaking television shows of the '50s and early '60s captured a boldly playful surrealism and inventiveness that the medium is still catching up with decades after the fact. Onscreen,
took anarchic concepts and executed them with a grace that never blunted their eccentricity, but when he was in full flight, he could work similar magic with words, putting his estimable verbal gifts to the test. Originally released in 1976,
The Ernie Kovacs Album
collects memorable bits from the
TV archives that can be enjoyed without the benefit of seeing them, and there's a meticulously crafted absurdity to these routines that's often dazzling.
achieves a plain-spoken zest in densely detailed sketches like "Tom Swift" (in which a prison football star is briefly transformed into a sandwich) and "Droongo" (an extended explanation of a profoundly complicated board game) that suggests
Lord Buckley
's buttoned-down cousin, and the shorter bits (random news items and parodies of Ripley's Believe It or Not) take the standard set-up/punchline formula and pushes it into unexpected directions. There are several appearances from
' most popular character, the tipsy and lisping poet Percy Dovetonsils, as well as the powerfully accented French storyteller Pierre Ragout, the professional know-it-all Mr. Question Man, and Uncle Buddy, a children's show host who is constantly beset by his pint-sized sidekicks, painfully cheerful Mary Margret and surly Ricky. ("Uncle Buddy" is one of the few bits here where
interacts at length with other actors, and he and the kids play off one another brilliantly.) The material and the execution are consistently fine, and while this album does suffer for the lack of visuals,
' knack for finding charmingly odd music and suitable sound effects goes a long way toward replicating the original feel of the material. (
Omnivore
's expanded 2019 reissue of the album adds several tracks from
' radio shows, and they are a strong testament to what
could do without a camera.)
isn't the best way to introduce yourself to one of the most distinctive and influential comic minds of the mid-20th century, but it does preserve some clever and truly original humor that has barely dated over 60 years after it first aired, and it makes one thing obvious: This man was a true original and a genius without peer. ~ Mark Deming