Penn Jillette’s Essential Comedy Albums

Filed Under Records, Sketch Comedy

Entertainment Weekly asked Aristocrats producer Penn Jillette his top 12 comedy albums in their recent “Listen To This” supplement for subscribers. I can’t find the link anywhere on their site, so I thought I’d list them here, as I think they’d be quite educational to any comedian or comedy writer.

The interesting thing about Penn’s descriptions of the albums (which I won’t type) is that he mentions memorizing almost half of them. Though obviously doing someone else’s material is wrong, memorizing a comedy album is learning by doing, imitating. Here’s the list:

  1. Smothers Brothers - Sibling Rivalry: The Best of the Smothers Brothers
  2. Albert Brooks - Comedy Minus 1
  3. Firesign Theatre - Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers!
  4. Stan Freberg - Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2
  5. Team America: World Police
  6. Phyllis Diller - The Best of Phyllis Diller
  7. Gilbert Gottfried - Dirty Jokes
  8. Martin Mull - Martin Mull & His Fabulous Furniture in Your Living Room
  9. National Lampoon Radio Hour: Best Moments
  10. Lenny Bruce - The Lenny Bruce Originals Volume 1
  11. George Carlin - FM & AM
  12. Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan - Bert and I & More Bert and I

UPDATE: Entertainment Weekly finally put Penn’s Choices up on their website.

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Comments

Posted by drew on 11/29  at  09:29 PM

I understand that Penn is probably trying to compile a list of stuff that some people may not have heard of, but c’mon, a top 10 list of comedy albums with no Richard Pryor, no Steve Martin and no Cheech & Chong?

Jillette’s always seemed like someone I’d wanna support, but the moment he opens his mouth on something like Celebrity Poker Showdown I want to kick him in the face until he shuts up.

Posted by weebles on 12/31  at  01:23 AM

Ms. Drew,

Notice the title of the article…. “Penn Jilletteā€™s Essential Comedy Albums”.

It doesn’t say “Essential Comedy Albums for the General Population”. It’s the stuff Penn likes.

I’d like to kick you in the face until you quit being a fascist punk trying to tell everybody what to say and think.

Sheesh… get a grip.

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