Hour of Slack #1409 – Jonathan Winters Tribute – Uncensored Rare Recordings

For those who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, the late Jonathan Winters was THE sick weirdo comedian. (We were too young for Lenny Bruce, and The Goon Show was only in England.) For many of us in the USA, Winters was our first exposure to true improvisation and stream-of-consciousness surrealism. So, Winters’ recent death was my excuse to a) file an extension on my taxes and b) cram all of my Rare Winters collection into one show. Except for short calls from TWO Daves (!), the whole show is Winters performing, not on stage or TV, but for his friends. Much of it is out-takes from recording sessions for commercials, some of it is phone messages left by Winters to his agent Jim Smith. We know that younger folks think of Jonathan Winters as that fat guy who played grandpas in sitcoms, but long before that he was planting seeds of Slack through Insanity into the brains of young mutants. Incidentally, we could make another whole Hour of Slack out of JUST Winters talking about UFOs, one of his favorite subjects. But we won’t.

The Internet-only version of this show has an extra 6 minutes at the end — Winters doing some racially based humor that we suspect wouldn’t be properly understood in context by some radio listeners.