The Abraham Comedy Archive: “Mr. Comedy” Jeff Abraham Has 5,000 Comedy Records and Counting

It just might be the one of the nation’s most comprehensive private collections of comedy recordings- comedy records, books, and tapes, of all different eras and styles and it’s sitting in the apartment of Hollywood public relations senior executive Jeff Abraham. Abraham has a distinguished career in comedy, representing some true heavyweights including Dice, George Lopez, Bill Maher, and the biggest name of them all- Carlin- for 11 years. He’s an accomplished author, (his latest, The Show Won’t Go On: The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers Onstage) an archivist, and interviewer, one of the purest comedy fans I’ve ever met, (and people who work in comedy and are fans, are the most interesting) and he also works closely with the National Comedy Center, a perfect position for a man who has a virtual comedy museum of his own, in his own home.

There’s no official list for the most prolific comedy collectors, but there’s no doubt that Abraham would have a single digit ranking with somewhere around 5,000 vinyl records in his stockpile, plus 1000 books and some pretty cool comedy artifacts. He calls it the Abraham Comedy Archives, and it covers comedy from the early 1900’s to today, and weaves around his two bedroom Hollywood apartment.

“A great deal of it is shelved, alphabetically from A onwards. Then the overflows are alphabetically because the shelves may only hold say 2500 and then you add to it. So you have to have overflows and they’re alphabetically. Then I have a separate section for compilation albums. In between that, you will find comedy personalities like, you know, Groucho Marx and Jimmy Durante and Jack Benny radio shows. So there’s a little bit of everything,” he told me early in 2020 during a telephone interview that took place pre-pandemic.

Growing up in Levittown on Long Island, Jeff was already in love with comedy, and already devouring it when most kids’ sense of humor is as sophisticated as a banana peel. The first album he remembers buying was a Woody Allen double LP. “It was a brown cover and I remember buying it in a drug store in Levittown. Yeah, I remember loving the moose routine. You know and all those great classic routines. So I do remember that. Then there was a box set that came out by Murray Hill. It was called Three Hours, 59 Minutes and 47 Seconds. I’m butchering the title slightly. It was like a four LP collection of Marx Brothers snippets from radio shows. I said, oh my God! For like $9.95, four records. Where did this come from? Those were very early on. I remember getting the Evening With Groucho album probably again in the early 70s.”

Back then, buying albums was more than just for laughs, it was a way for Jeff to learn history. “It was a way to be informed,” he recalled. If you wanted to hear what a Jack Benny radio show sounded like, you had to hunt down an album. “When I was 12 years old there was a big Marx Brothers revival. It was right around the same time You Bet Your Life came on TV, which had to be around ’75. Once I saw one of their movies I said, I want to read about these guys. Then there’d be some company would put out an episode of You Bet Your Life on vinyl and, ‘Wow.’ And the same thing with W.C. Fields. You see one of his movies, there’s a book out. But now, there are 11 books on W.C. Fields and 15 on the Marx Brothers. Then it just grows and grows and grows.”

Back then, it wasn’t easy to get your hands on these great recordings. There were no Tower Records in the mid 70’s. You bought music in a department store or a small town drug store. And the collections were not comprehensive. “We live in a great age, the inter web, Google media. The world wide web, that’s what I’m trying to say, is great. It’s all there. Back in the day, you really had to search high and low to find this stuff.”

Twice a month I’m at two different swap meets in Southern California,” he told me, “and you go to the same swap meet for 25 years, people go, “Hey, Mr Comedy, I found something.”

Times have changed. Tower Records stores have come and gone. Spotify has replaced Sam Goody and YouTube replaced Virgin Megastores. But Abraham’s search methods haven’t changed that much. Now he adds rare recordings to his collection visiting swap meets, combing through eBay, and the usual recommendations from friends and friends of friends- still searching high and low. The swap meets, where he’s become a familiar face to sellers, is one of his best sources for new-old material. “Twice a month I’m at two different swap meets in Southern California,” he told me, “and you go to the same swap meet for 25 years, people go, “Hey, Mr Comedy, I found something.”

It takes a lot of digging and trading and knowing people to curate such rarities like unreleased air checks, Friars Club recordings, a dinner for a politician in New York and Milton Berle was there and Joe E. Lewis. Or one of Abraham’s favorite finds- a cut of the infamous Lucille Ball Testimonial Dinner where Albert Brooks’ father Harry Einstein passed away while performing.

“I was at a record show and I saw an acetate and it had a label and all it said was, “Desilu Oppenheimer,” on it,” he said. “Maybe it’s the Desilu dinner and it was Jess Oppenheimer’s copy.” So I knew the guy, I said, “Let me play it for a couple of seconds.” I played it and I go, “This ain’t what that is. It’s something else.” It turns out when Jess Oppenheimer left CBS he was offered a contract to go to NBC to produce and do his own shows. Desi, Vivian and William Frawley had a little get together for him at Lucy’s house and they recorded it and they did some song parodies. So they pressed a couple of copies for this record. So maybe 10 copies were made.”

Abraham’s love for comedy history goes deep. Ask him about his favorite comedians and he’ll start talking excitedly about who begat who. “If you’re into John Oliver or Trevor Noah and go, well they’re political comedians, well before that there was Jon Stewart. And then before him was Mort Sahl and then there was Will Rogers. So that’s one reason why I love to have a collection because these people are all connected,” he said. But you look at the start of the ’60s, when it was Shelley Berman, Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart. That was the great era of the great albums. At the same time, you had Redd Foxx and Lenny Bruce who had albums at that time. So yeah, that’s an amazing era of stand-up.

“As much as you had the newer comics as they were calling Newhart and the new wave, you still have a lot of the classical guys. They got the era before them. The Shecky, Jackie comedians, the Jackie Gayle, Henny Youngman, Jan Murrays of that era. So I love that kind of era. And then it continued into the ’70s with Robert Klein, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby unfortunately has tainted his reputation. But I don’t think anyone will deny that those first few albums are the greatest. Noah is one of the early… that’s another early album. I think Bill Cosby’s, one of his first albums, Why Is There Air? And then I think everybody’s mom or dad had in their collection, Allan Sherman My Son, the Folk Singer.”

Allan Sherman, by the way is one of Abraham’s favorite vinyl records to pull from his own collection and listen to again and again, “just because lyrically it’s wonderful.” He doesn’t often play his own records, he told me. Maybe he gets a little lazy, he admits, saying it’s easier to go to YouTube or streaming services to listen to some digitized copy of the material he has in his collection. But that doesn’t mean his collection isn’t put to good practical use.  His albums are precious to him, but it’s not too precious to loan out. In fact, it’s important to Abraham that his records be used. He sees his role as preserving the material for others to discover.

“That’s the reason, to have an archive that will outlive me and be there for scholars for the next generation. Then the best part is I get to make it available for scholars and research,” he said. For example, when Wayne Federman started his podcast called The History of Standup, he came to Jeff to raid the archives. When CNN did the History of Comedy and they did the first episode on blue language, it was Jeff’s recording of Johnny Carson being dirty at a Don Rickles roast that they used. And when Dan Pasternack is working on a Jonathan Winters project, it was Abraham who shared rare radio commercials.

“‘Why not share it to a friend,’ because when he’s going to find something, he’s going to give it to me. So it all comes around. I think it was Frank Sinatra that said it, ‘Who has the most toys at the end of the day wins.’ But I think you really need to share your toys.”

And they’re fabulous toys.

If you’re looking to start your own collection, good news, collecting comedy is relatively inexpensive.  Whereas rare music albums can go for hundreds of dollars, most archival comedy can be found for under ten bucks. And Abraham has a few recommendations to get your collection started. “It’s probably the same names that you would find on the top 10 list of who’s the top 10 greatest comedians. You will probably want a Richard Pryor album on there. You will want a Carlin album there. You should probably have The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart. I think everybody should own The 2000 Year Old Man. Allan Sherman, I think somebody should have a Lenny Bruce album in their collection. Vaughn Meader’s The First Family, just because it was one of the biggest selling albums of all time. I also remember having, When You’re In Love The Whole World Is Jewish. So I mean there are some essentials. They’re part of the history of recorded comedy.”

Just remember to share.

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