Stan Freberg Satire Legend

It all started in the most humble fashion. Born on August 7, 1926 in Pasadena California. The story goes that in 1944 at the age of 18 he jumped on a bus to “Hollywood” and landed on the doorstep of Warner Brother’s Studio. He was hired immediately to begin voicing cartoon characters

In 1951 he began releasing Comedy albums with Capitol Records. He honed his craft at satire and parody from the beginning, taking on topics like McCarthyism, Politics, political correctness before that was even a term, pop culture including a stab at Elvis Presley’s first hit record Heartbreak Hotel.

By 1957 he took over for radio legend Jack Benny on CBS hit comedy radio hour. He took a principled stand against allowing Jack Benny’s Tobacco companies to advertise on his show which severely hampered it’s success.
This only gave him fuel to turn up the satire volume in his work including… you guessed it…. commercials.

Let’s hear a little from his CBS radio Program The Stan Freberg Show from August 11, 1957. This program was broadcast on Pacifica Station KPFK in Los Angeles thanks to overnight legend Roy Tuckman and fellow old time radio fan Bobb Lynes.

In 1961, Stan Freberg recorded arguably his greatest comedy album Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America: The Early years. Pacifica Station KPFA thought so too, and on the Fourth of July 1964 played the entire album to celebrate America’s birthday. We play side 1 of this recording from 1961.

And now we present KPFK host John Schneider’s 1999 interview with Stan Freberg that allows us a fly-on-the-wall peek inside Freberg’s view of the world AND presents some of Stan’s best routines.


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