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Small Batch Edition: Remembering Stan Freberg

Satirist Stan Freberg, right, and his wife, Hunter.
Matt Sayles
/
AP
Satirist Stan Freberg, right, and his wife, Hunter.
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Stan Freberg, who died Tuesday at 88, was a pioneer in music, comedy and advertising. His resume is peppered with firsts and lasts: He was the last radio-only network variety-show host, the first pop-music satirist (Spike Jones had made song parodies, but Freberg's works commented on the performance styles and the culture surrounding them), and a visionary in the art of incorporating humor into TV and radio commercials. He even anticipated decades-later debates over "political correctness" with a song called "Elderly Man River" — a jab at CBS censors Freberg recorded in 1957.

In this Pop Culture Happy Hour Small Batch, Linda Holmes and I spend a few minutes on Freberg's formidable legacy: his focus on belly laughs, his influence on "Weird Al" Yankovic, his parody of Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song" and more.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)

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