charge was a dollar, unless a member of one of the offending groups appeared at the door, in which case the door-man would point to the sign claiming the cover was actually a thousand dollars.
With one bare red bulb constituting all the lighting the place could muster, jazz tapes playing over the speaker system in the absence of live entertainment, and many customers sitting on pillows on the floor, the original Cellar, Carlin recalled, was “pre-hippie, but definitely post-beatnik.” For a New Yorker, the idea of hipsters in dark shades gathered in a dank hovel, addressing each other as “daddy,” was a bit musty by 1959. Several years too young to have participated first-hand in the bohemian renaissance of the early 1950s in New York and San Francisco (Jack Kerouac was born in 1922, Allen Ginsberg in 1926), Burns and Carlin were sufficiently removed to see it through the filter of popular culture. By 1959 that meant Maynard Krebs and sensational pulp novels and movies about promiscuous young people in black turtlenecks—the “beatniks,” as San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen had labeled them a year earlier. Though the comedians were undoubtedly drawn to the freaky, arty underground and the footloose freedom the Beats represented, beatniks were an easy target by 1959.
In Fort Worth, however, the freewheeling vibe of the Cellar was unprecedented. With a clientele made up largely of return customers who came back night after night, eager to see what kind of fresh debauchery Johnny Carroll could rustle up, Burns and Carlin were obliged to think fast on their feet. “We became very inventive and creative,” said Carlin. In one “vignette,” as Burns labeled it on the act’s album, the pair skewered what was by then the universally familiar caricature of the Beat Generation—the angry poet, railing against inhumanity with excessive use of the adjectives “naked,” “dirty,” and “stinking.” Haphazardly crediting Kerouac and “Arnold” Ginsberg for inspiring the archetype, Burns played the shrill performance poet Herb Coolhouse, the fertile mind behind the epic verse “Ode to a Texaco Restroom on Alternate U.S. 101 South.” Carlin, sucking greedily on an imaginary roach and talking in a wise guy’s nasal clip, identified himself as Coolhouse’s sidekick, Amos Malfi, a “fairly salty bongo player.”
The comedy team had bigger, more mainstream ambitions. After several months pinballing among the KXOL studio, the Cellar, and the bachelors’ apartment in Monticello, the two friends packed their meager belongings and headed for Hollywood. On the air Carlin told his listeners that he and his newscaster were hitting the road as soon as he signed off. Hearing that, listener Pat Havis drove over to the station and parked in the deserted lot. As Carlin walked out of the building and got in his car, she stood there forlornly against her bumper and watched him leave.
Heading west in Carlin’s new Dodge Dart Pioneer, the partners listened to the KXOL signal as long as they could, until it faded into the night sky over west Texas. In a salute to his departing colleagues, “Captain” Mike Ambrose, the overnight disc jockey, played Marty Robbins’s “El Paso,” then a Top 10 hit, several times during the hour after Carlin signed off. It was February 1960. The pair felt sure they were destined for stardom.
Earle Fletcher, KXOL’s station manager, had heard such plans before. He was annoyed; he’d just spent a good deal of money having fan club cards printed for the host of the Hi-Fi Club . “A lot of people, young boys like yourself, have left to go to Hollywood,” he told Carlin. “Between you and me, most of them came right back.”
BURNS AND CARLIN had $300 saved up. Their plan was to live off that until they could round up some nightclub appearances in Los Angeles. They were determined not to fall back on menial labor. “We’re not gonna park cars, we’re not gonna wash dishes, we’re
With one bare red bulb constituting all the lighting the place could muster, jazz tapes playing over the speaker system in the absence of live entertainment, and many customers sitting on pillows on the floor, the original Cellar, Carlin recalled, was “pre-hippie, but definitely post-beatnik.” For a New Yorker, the idea of hipsters in dark shades gathered in a dank hovel, addressing each other as “daddy,” was a bit musty by 1959. Several years too young to have participated first-hand in the bohemian renaissance of the early 1950s in New York and San Francisco (Jack Kerouac was born in 1922, Allen Ginsberg in 1926), Burns and Carlin were sufficiently removed to see it through the filter of popular culture. By 1959 that meant Maynard Krebs and sensational pulp novels and movies about promiscuous young people in black turtlenecks—the “beatniks,” as San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen had labeled them a year earlier. Though the comedians were undoubtedly drawn to the freaky, arty underground and the footloose freedom the Beats represented, beatniks were an easy target by 1959.
In Fort Worth, however, the freewheeling vibe of the Cellar was unprecedented. With a clientele made up largely of return customers who came back night after night, eager to see what kind of fresh debauchery Johnny Carroll could rustle up, Burns and Carlin were obliged to think fast on their feet. “We became very inventive and creative,” said Carlin. In one “vignette,” as Burns labeled it on the act’s album, the pair skewered what was by then the universally familiar caricature of the Beat Generation—the angry poet, railing against inhumanity with excessive use of the adjectives “naked,” “dirty,” and “stinking.” Haphazardly crediting Kerouac and “Arnold” Ginsberg for inspiring the archetype, Burns played the shrill performance poet Herb Coolhouse, the fertile mind behind the epic verse “Ode to a Texaco Restroom on Alternate U.S. 101 South.” Carlin, sucking greedily on an imaginary roach and talking in a wise guy’s nasal clip, identified himself as Coolhouse’s sidekick, Amos Malfi, a “fairly salty bongo player.”
The comedy team had bigger, more mainstream ambitions. After several months pinballing among the KXOL studio, the Cellar, and the bachelors’ apartment in Monticello, the two friends packed their meager belongings and headed for Hollywood. On the air Carlin told his listeners that he and his newscaster were hitting the road as soon as he signed off. Hearing that, listener Pat Havis drove over to the station and parked in the deserted lot. As Carlin walked out of the building and got in his car, she stood there forlornly against her bumper and watched him leave.
Heading west in Carlin’s new Dodge Dart Pioneer, the partners listened to the KXOL signal as long as they could, until it faded into the night sky over west Texas. In a salute to his departing colleagues, “Captain” Mike Ambrose, the overnight disc jockey, played Marty Robbins’s “El Paso,” then a Top 10 hit, several times during the hour after Carlin signed off. It was February 1960. The pair felt sure they were destined for stardom.
Earle Fletcher, KXOL’s station manager, had heard such plans before. He was annoyed; he’d just spent a good deal of money having fan club cards printed for the host of the Hi-Fi Club . “A lot of people, young boys like yourself, have left to go to Hollywood,” he told Carlin. “Between you and me, most of them came right back.”
BURNS AND CARLIN had $300 saved up. Their plan was to live off that until they could round up some nightclub appearances in Los Angeles. They were determined not to fall back on menial labor. “We’re not gonna park cars, we’re not gonna wash dishes, we’re
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