Last Sunday my wife and I went by the local flea market at the National Guard Armory here in Medford and I found the above treasure for $5.00 used. As I have posted before in the early 1960's as a kid late at night in Coos Bay, Oregon I would listen to Ira Blue on KGO radio from the Hungry i in San Francisco. Little did I know that 30 years ago they had a reunion concert for events that took place about 50 years ago in San Francisco and that it was put on DVD 6 years ago. Here is the description from amazon.com ( Click on title for link to amazon):
San Francisco's world famous nightclub provides the setting for this 1980 reunion of the stars who made their debut there. During the 1950s and 1960s, San Francisco's hungry i nightclub was the main breeding ground for rising comedy talent. The hungry i reunion features interviews with comedy greats including Bill Cosby and Phyllis Diller and star-studded performances of classic comic monologues from Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Ronnie Schell, Jackie Vernon and the incomparable Professor Irwin Corey. The show also features rare footage of the legendary Lenny Bruce, in performance. The club was also famous for its folk-singing sessions and two regulars, the Kingston Trio and the Limeliters are on hand to perform some of their classic hits. As a bonus- this special edition DVD includes an entire 30 minute, never-before-seen performance by the revolutionary Mort Sahl, live at the hungry i.
I loved Mort Sahl and his sophisticated political humor. In reading his wikipedia page I learned he taught a class recently at Claremont McKenna College.
Here is what I posted a few years ago:
In the early 1960's Coos Bay was a fairly isolated place on the Oregon coast. If you had cable TV you got the the three networks and an independent station from Portland that featured Portland Wrestling and old movies. There were three radio stations that played music and a newspaper.... the Coos Bay World and on Sunday we got the Portland Journal. There was no Internet, or cable news channels. My parents were fairly strict and even late into our teens we had a time we had to be in bed on school nights much earlier than I believed was necessary. I have always been a "night owl". However, I had a radio with a earphone jack and so I would late into the night listen to KGO radio from San Francisco broadcast live from the Hungy i with Ira Blu as the host. According to Wikipedia:
The hungry i was a legendary San Francisco nightclub operated in the mid-1950s and early 1960s by Enrico Banducci at 599 Jackson Street in the North Beach district. The hungry i was instrumental in launching the careers of singer Barbra Streisand and comedians Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Professor Irwin Corey, Woody Allen, Dick Cavett, Phyllis Diller, the Smothers Brothers, and Joan Rivers.
The club also featured folk singers such as Peter,Paul & Mary and The Kingston Trio.The comedians or singers would often stop by the Radio booth and visit. A very cosmopolitan world for a kid in Coos Bay.
50,000 watt radio Station KGO would broadcast live from the Hungy i and its voice would pierce the dark winter nights to isolated Coos Bay and brought a different world to me of hip comedians and folk music that I love to this day.
KGO was one of the first "talk radio" stations. According to Wikipedia:
