WFMU has mp3 files of the late humorist Roger Price’s album, Roger and Over. Price was the author of several humor books as well as the classic critique on dumb culture –The Great Roob Revolution.
I was fortunate to become friends with Roger Price in his later years, and fondly remember his encouragement when Carla and I were publishing the print version of bOING bOING.
Roger Price is my favorite forgotten comic, though this album may only give you the slightest idea why. Mr. Price is the self-same Price who co-created Mad Libs with Leonard Stern, and is therefore the Price in Price/Stern/Sloan (or pss!) – but that’s not why, either. He also wrote for Bob Hope, Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad and Steve Allen’s Tonight Show, but that’s also not why. In the early 1950s, Roger Price invented the Droodle. That’s why.
More specifically, Roger Price is aces with me because of the two collections of Droodles published by pss! – a little red book called “Droodles” and a little green book called “Oodles of Droodles” (formerly “Droodles #2”). I’ve had them since I was very young, and they were a major force in shaping my sense of humor. It’s not the Droodles themselves so much, though they were certainly amusing and clever, as the commentary beneath them, which would often be ambling monologues only tangentially related to the picture above. Check out the “Crookshank” essay on the back of the “Roger and Over” record jacket for a sample of what I’m talking about.
