Lord Buckley

Lord Buckley was a monologist rather than a joke teller. He retold Shakespeare, Poe and the Gospels in the slang of jazz musicians, delivered with the airs of a British lord, so that on his 1955 RCA Victor album Mark Antony's funeral speech opens "Hipsters, flipsters and finger-poppin' daddies, knock me your lobes." Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg all acknowledged the debt, and he showed that a comic monologue could be a piece of performance art. Recommended recording: start with The Nazz, his hip retelling of the life of Jesus, then hear a whole show on So You Thought Hip Was New, a recording of his February 1959 Ivar concert that streams on Apple Music.