Mort Sahl - At Sunset (1958)

At Sunset by Mort Sahl

With his popularity as a comic rising, Dick Gregory more commonly found his name and work referenced in the papers. And of course, a reporter can't describe one artist without using another as a measuring stick, so Greg found himself being compared to his white contemparies. They described him as the "negro Mort Sahl... Bob Newhart and Shelley Berman". As the joke goes, Greg read a diversity of papers that included the Congo Daily Tribune. In these papers, he could find the likes of Mort Sahl described as the "white Dick Gregory".

Mort Sahl's audiences were highly educated college students and recent graduates who enjoyed his comedy routines in between jazz acts like the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Where his predecessors in comedy relied on solid jokes with deliberate punch lines, Sahl relied on a free flowing set whose topics came from the daily newspaper, recent publications, fliers, and the liner notes of jazz albums and were all littered with a number of subtle punchlines throughout. In order to get his comedy, not only did audiences have to have a certain level of literacy and knowledge of contemporary events, but they had to play close attention because jokes could come at any time. Like Gregory, Sahl's comedy routines took on overt political opinions, a natural side effect of using the newspaper as source material. He was especially critical of McCarthy Conservatives in power but didn't hold out on the inconsistencies of any politician of the day.

Besides being known as one of the preliminary figures of modern comedy, Mort Sahl also holds the distinction of having recorded the first modern comedy album. The album was cut without his knowledge at a jazz club in 1955 and briefly released by Fantasy Records. Briefly because Mort Sahl did not authorize this use of his material, and the record was pulled. Interestingly, his rate of speech was sped up slightly in order to fit the whole performance onto the record.

Here is the discography surrounding Mort Sahl's debut album:

At Sunset

BBC Four Piece on Mort Sahl and the "Cerebral Comedians" (slightly inaccurate)


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!