RIP Tommy Smothers
Tommy Smothers has died at the age of 86. I was an early fan, having seen him and his brother on some variety show or other, doing their number, “Chocolate.” I was a kid and I howled with laughter. They went on to have their own variety show, but it was their earlier work that intrigued me. We even had their record, which I memorized. They specialized in mocking folk songs.
Tommy never stepped out of character as the “dumb, naive” one, and his comic timing was impeccable. Many of his obituaries focus on the political messages of the brothers’ show, but that’s not what I remember about them at all.
Here they are in “Chocolate”:
RIP.
I was introduced to them through their Yo-Yo Man video tape, which my parents had. Tommy is a loser who turns his life around by learning to use a yo-yo, and becomes the Yo-Yo Man (not a superhero; it’s merely a title). Richard narrates, of course.
Very funny stuff.
Liked the folk thing back in the day and some of theirs was pretty good, but it seemed they kind of mechanized it to carry the rest of their Thing.
I guess I wasn’t deep enough to get their comedy–some of it, anyway, and I wasn’t into leftist politics.
When you do politics through entertainment, you don’t have the slightest need to be anything approaching fair.
According to Wiki, at least, Dick disagreed with Tommy’s politics and was more conservative. Also new to me was that their father died in 1945 in a Japanese POW camp. So they basically grew up without a father.
Not really a fan. This was handsome, though.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NE6X4IQNA4&t=32s
So Tommy Smothers was Woody Boyd before Woody Harrelson was Woody Boyd.
The older I get the more I realize that in entertainment at least, there is no such thing as a virgin birth. Everything has a creative godparent. We took our grandkids to see “Migration” today, and the opening scene is a blatant ripoff of Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, minus the various implements being branded Acme.
I grew up listening to the Smothers Brothers as well, and remember my own brother and I having at least one of their albums, maybe all of them. I remember the comedic “Chocolate” and loved their version of “Streets of Laredo” which ended with “if you get an outfit you can be a cowboy too” (you have to listen to the whole thing to appreciate how surprising and funny that last line was). I also loved their serious numbers as well, “They Call the Wind Mariah” comes to mind. At this point I don’t really care about their politics.
Though he posed as a half-wit, Tommy was the brains of the Smothers Brothers act. During their variety show Tommy was the Head Writer. And yes, he also had the strong political opinions. Weird now to think of a TV show being killed because it was leftish.
Which isn’t to say Dickie made no contribution. He was responsible for their more lyrical side. Like “They Call the Wind Mariah” as Chris B mentioned. I’ll throw in “Stella’s Got a Brand New Dress” on the same album as “Chocolate.”
The Brothers had great chemistry and they were a great team.
RIP, Tommy.
Chris B
I remember the ending- hilarious. I had forgotten it was a Smothers Brothers performance.
I was always a fan of their albums. My respect for Tommy plummeted when Penn Jillette wrote in one of his books that their friendship was ended immediately when Penn merely appeared on Sean Hannity’s show to debate him.
Dwaz:
My guess is that you are referring to this exchange between Jillette and Tommy in which Jillette recounts his appearance on Glenn Beck, then argues there is a similarity between the Glenn Beck and SmoBros shows.
Tommy was not amused. Not at all.
–“the green room with paul provenza 1.06”
https://youtu.be/5Gcdghx87gM?t=390
Here’s the Anchoress writing on the incident way back in 2009:
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Smothers was furious that Jillette would talk to “the enemy,” Glenn Beck, but he (and the left) were furious when President Bush would not talk to Iran. All Jillette is doing, really, is what Obama is now doing with Iran: talking to “the enemy” without preconditions. You’d think Smothers would admire that, after all. Yes, irony.
What we call “liberalism” today is something strikingly illiberal.
–Elizabeth Scalia (The Anchoress), “Penn Jillette And Tommy Smothers” (2009)
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/10/22/penn-jillette-tommy-smothers/
But there were good times….
Here’s Tommy on the “Tonight Show” around the time Carson was retiring in which Tommy nailed an impression of Carson, then expressed his desire to be Carson’s replacement and his hurt feelings that he wasn’t. I’ve watched this a number of times.
–“Tommy Smothers dead-on imitation of Johnny Carson – Feb 20, 1992”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oghxf-HS6go
Tommy really bears a resemblance to Carson.
Superb Anchoress post. Thanks much for posting it….
@ Dwaz & huxley > Tommy’s politics went over my head, as I wasn’t very clued-in as a high-schooler when their show was running 1967 to 1969. I did get-it that Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in (1968 to 1973) was not conservative, but neither was I at the time (or so I thought; you don’t have to get much off-center in a small Texas town to be a liberal).
We didn’t care about the politics as much as the music and jokes.
I can still sing several of the Brothers’ comedy bits (without the repartee), but I didn’t appreciate their true musicianship until later.
I wish we had more shows like that on TV now.
I always think of my favorite Aunt, Aunt Marianne, when the Civil War comes up, because of Tommy Smothers. They were about to sing a song from the Civil War, and Tommy said, ” They Great War, the Civil War, Fathers shooting sons, brothers shooting brothers, aunts shooting nephews. “.
An odd personal co-incidence, with the Smothers brothers – they both attended the high school that I graduated from; Verdugo Hills, in Sunland-Tujunga, although I believe Tommy graduated from another school. Tommy ran track, and set a number of records, which we knew about because my brother was also on the track team, years later. One of my English teachers had also taught the brothers – when when the class discovered this interesting factoid, we quizzed her about what Tommy had been like as a student. She was noncommittal, and rather tight-lipped, so we assumed that he had been a smart-ass.
I did get-it that Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in (1968 to 1973) was not conservative,
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Richard Nixon did film clips for them and one of their writers worked on Nixon’s campaign. To the extent there was political content in their humor, it wasn’t partisan.
Sgt. Mom
That was a reasonable assumption. When I was a senior in high school. I took a Music Appreciation class. The teacher had a junior high student in one of her classes who had achieved a certain measure of renown in the school, and who later fulfilled that early renown by winning a Pulitzer Prize. We asked our Music Appreciation teacher what that student was like. I forget precisely what she said, but recall that whatever she said, she did not have a positive opinion of that student. Which suggests that like Tommy Smothers, he was probably a bit of a smartass. (In later years he wrote that he had a low opinion of his junior high music teachers, so the opinion of his music teacher was reciprocated,)
Why your teacher was tight-lipped, and why my teacher was not, is probably the difference between experienced teachers and beginning teachers. Experienced teachers learn that when talking about former students, it is best to say as little as possible- especially if the former student left a negative memory. Which is why most teachers say little about a former student to the siblings of the former student. My teacher was a first-year teacher who had yet to learn that lesson.