2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks

Cut in front of an invited audience at Steve Allen's studio and released by World Pacific Records in 1960, this landmark session captures lightning in a bottle. Carl Reiner acts as the quintessential straight man, tossing unscripted queries to Mel Brooks, who riffs without a net as a 2000-year-old patriarch. The centerpiece routine, '2000 Year Old Man,' turns historical mythology inside out with razor-sharp Yiddish cadence, from running from mammoths to inventing cheese. Side two features Brooks improvising sketches like 'The Peruvian' and 'The Astronaut' with ferocious agility. Selling over a million copies, it established conversational improv on vinyl and earned a place in the National Recording Registry.