didn’t even have a car, let alone $125. So we moved with them to this new club where we got a bigger crowd. We lost our third guy, a high school friend, who married my girl that left me, so we tried a duet the first time we moved to this other club. We didn’t know how to do a duet. We had no skills and tools. Tommy was funny. We would just watch him be funny and then it would be time to sing. He’d sing a song, and then he’d be funny. They were funny introductions that were exaggerations. Comically, Tommy was a genius. He didn’t bomb learning a craft. He was just a natural – his timing and everything – and he’s very dyslexic. The college crowd was perfect because they were rude, sometimes drunk, sometimes tell you to go blank yourself, but they forced us to think on our feet. We did a year like that. Then we met this private detective who specialized in insurance fraud. He told us we should go to San Francisco and the Purple Onion, a very famous club across the street from the Hungry I, which was where all the top comedians like Jonathan Winters, played at the time. So he drove us up in his 49’ Mercury convertible. At our audition, we stood up there and we were pretty confident by that time. While we were doing our bit, this old lady was on the phone taking reservations and Tommy kept telling her to shut up during our show, but he wouldn’t stop doing his introductions. Everybody was laughing. And I said, “What are you laughing about?” They said, “That’s the owner’s mother.” The owners said, “We really like you guys.” So they gave us a job one night a week and the first night we worked they said, “Can you come back tomorrow? The guy you’re replacing is sick.” That was a huge break. But one of many. Think of your life as connecting dots or links. If one link isn’t there, and it could be a tiny link, that means the whole thing falls apart or screws up your timing.
Tell me about Jack Parr.
When did you know that you had made it?
When people came out to see you, what did you hope they took away from your show?
When we went to San Francisco and got that “one” night. The flamenco dancer didn’t come on stage because we got three encores our first show. Guess what we did for our encores? Our first three numbers. One at a time. The last encore we didn’t get any applause. We thought, “Maybe we should only do one encore.” Across the street at the Hungry I, the Limelight, an intellectually gifted folk group, were starving. We’d go over and talk to them and they’d come over and talk to us between shows. We did 10-12 minute shows. There were three acts and we were the bottom act. We got $288 a week. We’d go across the street and sit in the back and watch Professor Irwin Corey, Nichols and May, every comedian that was going on. We didn’t intentionally steal anything from them. The fact is we were so different, and that was one of the reasons why we made it.
What comedians did you idolize as you were coming up? We didn’t idolize anybody. We just looked at them as our contemporaries who were more successful at that point. The people that I put on a pedestal, who are not of this earth, are my radio heroes. Red Skelton. Jack Benny. George and Gracie. Fred Allen. He was so acerbic and cutting. I’m a radio person. We hung around a radio speaker growing up.
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Jack Parr, who gave us our national break in 1961, said one thing. “I don’t know what you guys got. But I’ll tell you one thing. No one is going to steal it.” That’s the best compliment I ever had.
Finish the following sentences: Comedy is hard because… It was never hard for us. It’s like picking fruit. We like the fruit and we’re in the orchard. Tommy’s genius kept picking fruit off the tree. We never had to plan. We never planned a bit. We never wrote it and said this is where we’re going to go. It’s like living life.
Performing with my brother Tommy was… The most important, productive and joyous thing in my life.
The Smothers Brothers were funny because… Of our wonderful defects.
In the team, Tommy was… The leader, the follower, the inspiration, the vulnerable, the strong, the man who lead with his heart.
In the team, you were the… Essential ingredient that made it all happen.
What makes you laugh? Life makes me laugh.
What makes you angry? Indifference. Apathy.
Most of our career we weren’t trying to give a message. We talked and listened. The key to a team working together, like Nichols and May, is that that you exchange thoughts, and you don’t give the thought until the other person gives you their thought. It’s like ping pong. The art of conversation. It was our strength. We did 11 or 12 albums, and at least nine were live with an audience. Only one of them did we know what we were doing at the start – the first album, Live at the Purple Onion. We worked a year and a half and then we did this live album. Once we got on The Tonight Show, there was a demand for the album.
How difficult was it to play your instruments and do comedy at the same time? It’s something that developed over time. We’re strumming and vamping, like when Tommy did John Henry. The improvisation and bits had their own lives and led us somewhere, but we never stopped there. George Carlin had a tree trunk of where the start and end of the show was. He went so far out on branches, you would think he lost it and then boom, he would be back at the trunk. It’s like being a jazz musician. It doesn’t matter how long the riff is, as long as you always came back.