Jimmy Lynch "Nigger Please"

(www.cultcollectibles.com) Jimmy Lynch credits himself as the first comedian to say "motherfucker" on wax, the climax of a near-album side gorilla fucking joke. That was from '68, and this reissue is from his mid-70s Laff album, a solid, weird record, but not as groundbreaking as his earlier LaVal albums, For one thing, although comics always did their popular jokes over and over, on his LaVal albums he never repeats a joke, but this one features a number of jokes from previously albums (though he leaves off his popular gorilla joke, though he does have a different bit here called "African Nigorilla"). But along those lines, the most amazing thing on this album occurs when he tells the old chestnut about a stutterer going into a bar and stuttering through a series of questions about drink prices, to be met with surprisingly expensive responses from a hunchbacked bartender. After the bartender tells him he doesn't discriminate against stutterers because he has a handicap (the hunchback), the punchline is "everything else is so high in here I thought that was your ass." What's fascinating here is Lynch tells that joke and KILLS the crowd (which makes sense, the stuttering is funny, the delivery of the punchline is spot on) even though he never mentions that the guy was a hunchback...Lynch left that out of the setup! So the joke only makes sense either because everyone knows it already or because they are just laughing because his delivery is so good or because they have Pavlovian responses to great joke telling even if it doesn't make sense. I love that moment because it shows that joke skills are more important than joke quality. I like that he repeatedly refers to his jokes as "lies." But the truth is, Lynch is one of my favorite recorded comics, really strong stuff! This particular album is also good because Lynch (on the original cover, reproduced inside the CD sleeve) gets to dress in both his ragged tramp and slick Mr. Motion clothes, and because he does impressions of Rchard Nixon, and Martin Luther King (no joke on the latter, just a poignant conclusion to his act, which he ends with a black power plea rather than a big joke).