Wish List: Lenny Bruce 6CD Set

Should be good stuff, not something you would listen to on a regular basis, but great for road trips.


WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Lenny Bruce was broke when he died of a drug overdose in 1966, but the incendiary, profane comedian left a rich legacy that included a string of obscenity arrests, a durable comedic influence and a vast archive of tapes.

Later comedians from Richard Pryor to George Carlin and Bill Maher have been cited as beneficiaries of Bruce's style, which shocked the public not only with blue humour that may seem mainstream today but with social satire that can sting four decades later.

"The trouble is, I picked on the wrong God," Bruce said in a routine in 1962, a year of mounting legal troubles which he attributed to his social and religious satire.

Highlights of his recordings were released this month on a carefully packaged and well-documented 6-CD set called "Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware." The set includes rare versions of nightclub routines, such as "How to Relax Your Colored Friends at Parties," and a recording of a police warning to the comedian.

"What we're trying to do here is tell a story of a man through his own words, but ultimately show what a great artist he was ... and then what happened to him as a result of his work," said Hal Willner, who produced the CD collection for the Shout! Factory label.

"I wanted this to be a box set of dignity," said Bruce's daughter, Kitty, who co-produced the set after years of seeking an outlet for the boxes of tapes she inherited and assembled.

"My father had a lot of style, and I wanted it to portray the type of man that he was ... It's a happy record; it's a sad record; it makes you think."

Free speech
The set also serves a reminder of the history of free speech in the United States, at a time when performers from Janet Jackson to Howard Stern have come under fire.

"It's amazing how in the last six months, this story has become so totally relevant," Willner said. "You're not going to see someone getting arrested for saying a four-letter word," but other forms of censure were a growing possibility, he said.

Bruce was an improvisational comedian, an impressionist, a character actor, a linguist and a methedrine-fuelled jazzman.

Targets of his social and political humor included his Jewish heritage, race relations and the Roman Catholic Church.

John F. Kennedy was a frequent target. One routine focused on Jackie Kennedy's attempt to crawl out of the presidential convertible carrying her fatally wounded husband.

Although he described Mrs Kennedy's actions in crude terms, Bruce defended her against a perception that she tried to flee the scene. "It's a lie to tell the people that if you're good, you'll stay," he said.

Battles with the authorities
After starting in burlesque houses, Bruce was at the peak of his career when he was arrested in 1961 for using a 10-letter slang term for "sodomite" in a San Francisco nightclub. He had recorded several albums, performed at New York's Carnegie Hall and won critical praise as a comic genius.

Bruce was acquitted of the San Francisco count, but arrests in Los Angeles and Chicago followed in 1962, and he also battled narcotics charges. He was banned in Detroit, Australia and England, and nightclubs fearing legal crackdowns shut their doors to him.

Bruce filed an FBI complaint that the New York and California courts were conspiring to violate his rights, and he blamed his arrests on his religious views. "There was an all-out, rah-rah, 100 percent effort to make sure that he was not able to work," Kitty Bruce said.

A 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a separate case helped him prevail in Chicago and the Los Angeles charges were dropped or dismissed, but a New York obscenity conviction stuck until Governor George Pataki posthumously pardoned Bruce in 2003.

As result of his legal battles, Bruce habitually taped his performances. He chafed at police officers recounting his act from the witness stand, and in turn used trial transcripts as material for his routines.

But the struggle wore him down. Kitty Bruce said her father spent long hours at home typing up cases, and researching law and language in a vast library. "Anything possible that a person can do to a word, he had information on," she said.

He became increasingly agitated and unbalanced. In August 1966 he made his final recording, which began as a microphone test and descended into mad gibberish punctuated by vulgarities. On August 3, 1966, he was found dead of a drug overdose -- reports vary over whether the drug was heroin or morphine. He was 40.

"His physical deterioration, and his stress and the financial pressure of everything, that was killing him regardless, drugs or no drugs," Kitty Bruce said. "The man just wanted to do his act, and he wanted to exercise his right of free speech."