Ready, Aim, Skewer: Freberg Set Is on Target

There were two bastions of American satire in the 1950s: Mad magazine and Stan Freberg.

A comic book and some goofy recordings might not sound like the makings of a revolution, but in a decade of regimentation, their irreverence and skepticism were a lifeline for anyone who didn’t buy into Madison Avenue and the mass media. With their national distribution and easy availability, both helped stitch together a nonconformist community that presaged the coming counterculture.

True, Freberg’s hits for Capitol Records weren’t exactly political broadsides. But even as he was making fun of Mitch Miller, Harry Belafonte and “Dragnet,” Freberg’s unmistakable subtext was an impatience with shallowness and passivity. Like any great satire, it undermined as it entertained.

By returning much of his work to circulation and by including his groundbreaking work in advertising, Rhino’s new four-CD boxed set compiles a strong case for Freberg as an essential force in 20th century American humor.

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**** Stan Freberg, “Tip of the Freberg: The Stan Freberg Collection 1951-1998,” Rhino. Freberg was born in 1926 and grew up in South Pasadena. He caught the performing bug in high school, and shortly after graduating went to work for Warner Bros., where he did voices for many of the studio’s cartoons. Later he wrote and performed the dawn-of-TV kids’ show “Time for Beany,” and also worked with a comedy orchestra.

Eventually, his association with country-music radio personality Cliffie Stone led to a deal with Capitol Records, which released his soap opera spoof “John and Marsha” in 1951. It reached No. 21 on the pop chart and launched Freberg on a memorable, decade-long assault on the hit parade.

Nothing was safe. The folk music boom, Johnnie Ray, Les Paul & Mary Ford, the skiffle craze, calypso and, of course, rock ‘n’ roll, all cowered in his cross hairs, as did television icons--his 1953 roastings of Ed Sullivan and Arthur Godfrey are released here for the first time. While Freberg didn’t venture often into pure political commentary, his send-up of the Army-McCarthy hearings on “Point of Order” is a classic piece of surreal satire.

Freberg was a paradoxical figure, part stuffed shirt and part swinging subversive. He was 30 in 1956, and he never could comprehend the nonverbal message and the joy of gibberish in rock ‘n’ roll and R&B.; Like most in his generation, he saw these rude arrivals as a threat to the “good” music he loved--jazz and swing--and that passion intensified his parodies of “Sh-Boom,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” et al.

But while he could get sanctimonious and heavy-handed on the issue (see “The Old Payola Roll Blues”), the Capitol singles that fill most of the set’s first two discs are consistently spirited and inspired.

The material was tightly written, and Freberg’s stock company performed it with a timing and spontaneity that keeps it as fresh as ever. Abetted mainly by arranger Billy May, the records both captured the appeal of the chosen target and added a parodic energy. Elvis might end up swamped by echo in this “Heartbreak Hotel,” but the record also rocks.

With actors Jesse White, Peter Leeds, Daws Butler and June Foray, Freberg created a gallery of memorable characters: the hipster pianist reduced to playing “that clink clink clink jazz” on “The Great Pretender,” the irritable bongo player on “Banana Boat Song” (“You’re too piercing man,” he grouses to the booming-voiced Belafonte figure), the hapless Lawrence Welk, awash in champagne bubbles and adrift in the Pacific at the end of “Wun’erful, Wun’erful.”

The single-record format enforced a discipline on Freberg that helped keep his work focused. Given room to stretch on a series of CBS radio shows in 1957, he could meander instead of punch. “Incident at Los Voraces” is the most sprawling of the four examples on “Tip of the Freberg.” (Fifteen of the complete shows are available through the Radio Spirits company at (800) 723-4648.)

Freberg regained his form in perhaps his most famous work, the 1961 album “Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America . . .,” a Broadway musical for the ears that combined great sketch comedy with a series of catchy original tunes. Because it is his magnum opus, it’s hard to argue with the inclusion of several cuts from the album and its 1996 sequel, even if the full albums are widely available.

The discipline of the form also helped Freberg stay focused in a second career that he launched in 1957--advertising man. Unbuttoning the button-down world of marketing with his infusion of humor, Freberg prospered in the field, and “Tip of the Freberg’s” real treasure is the compendium of the commercials he created for radio and television--there’s a bonus video with 16 TV spots, including the famous Busby Berkeley-inspired production number with Ann Miller singing and dancing for Heinz’s Soup.

The boxed set trickles away with some of Freberg’s more recent material, including his syndicated radio commentaries and sketches. It’s wan by comparison, and here’s where you wish for the inclusion of some obscurities--maybe the Cliffie Stone single that marked Freberg’s recording debut, and some of the missing Capitol cuts, including “Rock Around Stephen Foster” and “Wide Screen Mama Blues.”

But those are minor complaints. The Mad magazine legacy was recently enshrined in CD-ROM, and this set joins it as an indispensable document of American comedy.

Cue the French horns.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.