Ray Goulding; Partner in Bob and Ray Comedy Team

Ray Goulding, the heftier half of “Bob and Ray,” radio’s four-decade-long testament to mirth and gentle mayhem, has died at his home in Manhasset, Long Island.

His son, Bryant, said Sunday that his father had died in his sleep of kidney failure and was found Saturday morning.

The gruff-voiced, jowly, sometimes basso profundo of the team that introduced Wally Ballou, Mary McGoon, Charles the Poet and the Piel Brothers to the nation’s airwaves, was 68 and had been in failing health for some time, his son said.

As quiet and introspective off the air as they were mildly rambunctious on it, Bob and Ray since 1946 had made fun of both themselves and Americana in general.

They spoofed politicians, their sponsors (some of whom they invented), the common man and such uncommon women as Mary Backstayge, and soap operas, with such satires as Noble Wife, one of several that helped make them a national legend of laughter.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. once introduced a written collection of their skits with this bon mot: “Man is not evil, they seem to say. He is simply too hilariously stupid to survive.”

Robert Brackett Elliott and Raymond Walter Goulding had worked together since both came home as young veterans of World War II.

They were New Englanders who met at radio station WHDH in Boston where Bob was a morning disc jockey and Ray a newscaster.

They began to put together wacky skits for their own amusement and then developed a show called “Matinee with Bob and Ray,” which preceded the Boston Red Sox baseball games. During rain-outs they would stay on the air all afternoon.

It was then that they developed the outrageous satires of popular radio serials: “One Man’s Family” became “One Feller’s Family;” “Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons” was “Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons;” while “Jack Armstrong” was transformed into “Jack Headstrong.”

“The Gathering Dusk,” a “heartwarming story of a girl who’s found unhappiness by leaving no stone unturned in her efforts to locate it” was sponsored by “the Whippet Motor Car Co., observing the 45th anniversary of its disappearance.”

“The Bob and Ray Gourmet Club” featured a sandwich of the day that was unwrapped to the clamor of brass and drums and then placed on a velvet cushion where club members could dance by and examine it.

They also offered such premiums as “The Bob and Ray Home Surgery Kit” (“How many times have you said to yourself, ‘Golly, I wish I could take out my tonsils.’ ”) and sweaters in two styles: turtle or V-neck. (“State what kind of neck you have.”)

Ted Blaisdell did rope tricks over the air while Natalie Attired spoke the lyrics to songs while accompanied only by drums.

“It kept spreading, just like a fungus,” Goulding said in a 1984 New York Times interview.

In 1951, this zaniness came together in an early evening show over NBC radio that led to a prime-time program in which the slightly tipsy sportscaster “Steve Bosco” would share mike time with legitimate guest stars.

In the 1950s, they moved from NBC to Mutual to CBS radio, then to a TV show on ABC and then back to NBC radio for a five-minute segment on the old “Monitor” series. Late in the decade they abandoned radio to do commercials. In 1970, they appeared on Broadway in “The Two and Only.”

In the 1970s, they were again broadcasting comedy as conversation, this time from WOR in New York, but left there in 1976 and were not heard regularly again until 1984, when their zany cast of characters was reunited for a time on National Public Radio.

But they had not been forgotten in the interim. They placed an ad in New York’s Village Voice for studio audiences to sit in on the taping of those NPR shows and hundreds had to be turned away.

“We get rediscovered every generation,” Elliott noted wryly in a 1984 interview with The Los Angeles Times.

They brought new characters to that show, including “Mr. I Know Where They Are,” who could locate such mysterious figures from the past as famed rodeo rider Tumbleweed Gargon and child movie star Fat Baby Moxford.

But they retained a few of their puckish pals and sponsors, as well, including Einbinder Flypaper--”seldom fatal to parakeets even if they fly directly into it.”

They did a film, “Cold Turkey,” and appeared on “Saturday Night Live.” Their absurd but never cruel humor earned them Grammy nominations in 1987, for the record “A Night of Two Stars Recorded Live at Carnegie Hall,” and in 1988, for “The Best of Bobby & Ray--Volume One.”

Generally, however, the team once heralded as “funnier than anyone else living, including each other,” were seldom heard together in the last few years.

“Write if you get work,” Ray would deadpan as each broadcast ended.

“And hang by your thumbs,” said the stoic Bob.