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Brother Dave Gardner

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Dec 07, 2010
Category: Spoken Word

Chuck, a good ol’ boy from Alabama, has “zippers in the sides of his aviator cap so his sideburns could hang out.”

 
His girlfriend is named Baby. She is this dumb: When he says “Let’s blow this joint,” she replies, “No, man, pass it on to the waitress.” 
 
No wonder Chuck has eyes for the waitress: “married, 3 kids and a husband overseas… like little animals when she walks.”
 
Then they get on his motorcycle — there’s a sidecar for Baby — and because we have a “no spoilers” policy, I must stop there.  Good thing. You might just laugh yourself sick. 
 
Oh, okay. Here:
 

 
That’s one side of Brother Dave Gardner, a comedian from Jackson, Tennessee who was so big in the 1950s and early 1960s that he was sometimes called “the Southern Lenny Bruce.” [To buy the ”Best Of” CD, click here.]
 
And then there’s the other side of Brother Dave — when he opened his mouth, pretty much anything could fly out. And a lot of it sounded like old-fashioned bigotry.
 
“Southern Jews is good Jews. It the Yankees I worry about.”
 
“Liberals are people who are educated beyond their capacity.”
 
“Yankees say, ‘Ten o’clock — Southerners are already in bed.’ We say, ‘Ten o’clock — Yankees are still out lookin’ for it.”
 
Racist? I’d say “politically incorrect” and speak of the customs of his place and time.
 

 
Brother Dave Gardner (1926-1983) did spend a term studying for the ministry. But he moved on quickly to be a drummer and songwriter. (He wrote the 1958 hit, “White Silver Sands.”)  Then he plunged into comedy.
 
"Let them that don’t want none, have memories of not gettin’ any… let that not be their punishment, but their reward."
 
“Don’t you know a diamond ain’t nothin’ but a piece o’ coal that stuck with it?"
 
He joked about moon pies and R.C Cola, smoked 100-millimeter cigarettes before they ere invented — and everybody loved him. In 1962, he got busted for marijuana, which won him less love. In l963, during a performance at a Louisiana college, he said, "I was in World War Two and I saw lots of blood spilled but it never sent anyone to Heaven." The audience fled.
 
Then came the tax problems. Brother Dave met Texas billionaire H.L. Hunt, who assured him that the Internal Revenue Service laws were unconstitutional. With that, Brother Dave decided not to pay taxes. Three years later, the IRS swooped in. H.L. Hunt disappeared. Brother Dave lost everything.
 
He died young, forgotten by all but his cult. But his cult continues to grow — he’s that funny. And, just maybe, way ahead of his time.
 
As he’d say: “Well, I mean, it’s a thought. “

 

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