Mort Sahl

It's hard to imagine Mort Sahl as anything but a mature, adult cynic, but in his early recordings in the mid-1950s you can get a sense of the boyish Mort. While the material is richly sardonic, he doesn't sound as deeply cynical as he later became. His voice is lighter and higher than remembered, almost chipmunk-like as he delivers his most caustic cracks. He seems delighted with himself, enjoying his own performance, and his sporadic bursts of laughter are infectious yet not self-congratulatory. He sounds surprised when people laugh or applaud a line, and often he responds with a disbelieving "Really?" as if to say, You actually understand me! thus spurring him ever "Onward!"-his famous battle cry. The monologues were leavened with staccato good-humored guffaws, directed not so much at his own performance as at the general absurdity of American life. No matter how harsh and hostile his pronouncements, there was never any hostility in them. It was just that, as Sahl himself put it, "Everything bothers me."