Groundbreaking satirist
Lenny Bruce's debut solo long-player,
Interviews of Our Times (1958), is more akin to a compilation of older bits rather than a standard album of freshly mined material, particularly as the humorist's record label -- the San Francisco Bay Area-based Fantasy imprint -- had previously issued "Interview with Dr. Sholem Stein" as well as "Shorty Petterstein Interview." These two mocked-up dialogues initially surfaced on the simply titled EP Two Interviews some three years earlier in 1955. Neither were overtly credited to
Bruce, but rather to the erstwhile participants Henry Jacobs and Woody Leafer. However, the majority of the platter was culled from recordings of the artist's appearances at various SoCal nightclubs. Commencing the effort is the truncated rendition of "The Interview" from the Peacock Lane in Hollywood circa January of 1958. Listeners find a self-proclaimed "good-natured slob," who just so happens to also be a junkie and jazz musician, being interrogated for a job by none other than
Lawrence Welk.
Welk's litigious nature would result in his name being edited out. Some folks just can't take a joke. A longer version -- with a copious back-story -- can be heard as "The Sound" from the posthumous
Bruce project
Thank You Masked Man (1972). The brief "Djinni in the Candy Store" is an innocuous bit that takes place in a Jewish owned and operated Big Apple confectionary. Although the specific race doesn't play much of a part in the delivery or punch line, it foreshadows the innocent and all-ages yarns spun by comedian
Myron Cohen.