Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [42]
Yet the “Wonderful WINO” routine underscored the debt he owed his predecessors. The bit had a pronounced resemblance to a 1958 spoof called “Chaos, Parts 1 and 2,” a 45 rpm. single recorded by Bob Arbogast, a radio personality and comedy writer, and his partner, Stan Ross. A quick-selling novelty record that was reportedly suppressed by radio stations when they realized they were the butt of the joke, “Chaos” (set at KOS—“Chaos Radio”) featured Arbogast’s rapid-fire patter, snippets of song parodies, a mock commercial for a product for teens who feel left out by their lack of acne (“Pimple On”), and an update of late baseball scores—“five to one, fourteen to three, and four to nothing.” The similarities of Carlin’s own radio routine are too apparent to ignore. “He had to have heard it,” says Arbogast’s son, Peter, a sports announcer for the University of Southern California. Arbogast was accustomed to finding his material recycled elsewhere. He also came up with a comic segment called “Question Man,” which was adopted (with credit) by Steve Allen and (without) by Johnny Carson, as the long-running Tonight Show bit Carnac the Magnificent. Although Bob Arbogast sometimes joked about Carlin owing him a phone call, says his son, he shrugged it off. “You can’t put any copyright on comedy,” says Peter. “People take each other’s bits and use them all the time.”
With Carlin’s television exposure adding up, the nightclub gigs were improving. He played the Drake Hotel in Chicago twice in 1966; moved up in Dayton from the Racquet Club to a much bigger stage, Suttmillers; and did Las Vegas for the first time, opening for the singer Jack Jones (“The Impossible Dream”) at the historic Flamingo. Along with the prestige and increasing income came a distinct feeling that his act was being monitored at the more upscale clubs. “I told him to be very careful what he did at Suttmillers,” says Dayton promoter Shane Taylor. “But he wanted to work there—the money was good.” Over Thanksgiving weekend Carlin was booked into the Roostertail in Detroit, a swanky, split-level function complex along the city’s riverfront. Opened in 1958 as a fiftieth birthday gift for the wife of owner Joe Schoenith, the club was operated by Schoenith’s son Tom from his twenty-first birthday. The club had a tradition of attracting top talent, in part by giving the entertainers lavish gifts—a car for Wayne Newton, diamond watches for the Supremes. “We gave Tony Bennett his first acrylic paint set,” says Schoenith. “They were wined and dined when they came here.”
Although they didn’t roll out quite that sort of red carpet for the lesser-known Carlin, the venue was the setting for the taping of his first solo comedy album. Comedy hadn’t been a real priority for RCA Records since the label had enjoyed some success with the pseudo-evangelical put-on artistry of Brother Dave Gardner, a drumming, scatsinging, deep-South Lord Buckley who was a Jack Paar favorite before he was busted for marijuana in 1962. The record company assigned a young A&R (artist and repertoire) man, Tom Berman, to produce Carlin’s Take-Offs and Put-Ons, which gathered all of the comic’s top-drawer material to date—“The Indian Sergeant,” “Wonderful WINO,” “The Newscast”—in one place. The album also featured an eight-minute hunk about advertising and a routine called “Daytime Television,” which introduced another of Carlin’s farcical characters, a cross-eyed, featherbrained game show contestant named Congolia Breckenridge. Though the cover featured a grid of black-and-white