LENNY BRUCE
INTERVIEWS OF OUR TIMES*
Fantasy 7001, 1958

LP rip (128 kbps mono) by Dick Baker, January 2015

SIDE ONE
THE INTERVIEW
DJINNI IN THE CANDY STORE
ENCHANTING TRANSYLVANIA
INTERVIEW WITH DR. SHOLEM STEIN 

SIDE TWO
THE MARCH OF HIGH FIDELITY
MARIA OUSPENSKAYA INTERVIEW
FATHER FLOTSKI'S TRIUMPH
BROADWAY MUSICALS SOUND THE SAME, ESPECIALLY THE BARITONES
SHORTY PETTERSTEIN INTERVIEW

[Note that title is rendered as "Times" on cover and record labels, but "Time" on back
cover.]

     This album is the first in Fantasy's proposed Social Study Series in which it is
hoped to present in-person documented interviews and all-too-revealing vignettes with
a series of representative in-group figures to give a cross-section sampling of the
intricate and complicated cultural patterns of our times.
     In order to arrange the proper conditions under which this album could be made
with maximum fidelity of result and minimal disclosure of the plan to the subject
being recorded, it was necessary to engage the services of the most adroit wire-tapper
on the West Coast.  Naturally, in order to avoid possible actionable statements, it is
necessary to keep his name confidential, but for the purposes of these notes we will
refer to him as Wally W. Heider and tell you that he has figured prominently in the
testimony of numerous underworld and/or governmental trials.
     Mr. Heider, a slender, retiring, quiet man who looks younger than his mid-
thirties, possesses some of the most remarkable, deductable, electronic equipment in
this country.  He was able, for instance, to creep within four inches of the
unsuspecting performer, Lenny Bruce, for the recording of "Djinni in the Candy Store." 
Mr. Heider kept Mr. Bruce under surveillance for six days, without being remotely
connected to the nefarious scheme at hand, in order to record Bruce when he was IN a
candy store.  For this, Heider used the cover name of Zaentz.  Heider's on-the-spot
nite club recordings of Bruce is indeed the work of twisted genius.
     For the two tracks on the recording of Shorty Petterstein and Dr. Sholem Stein,
Fantasy was unable to obtain the originals of these two recordings, therefore they
resorted to taping them from a Bob and Ray broadcast (which gave Fantasy their looked-
for chance to avoid the payment of royalties).  A sub rosa tap was placed directly on
the Monitor wire, with the help of a rival network, to secure the extreme high
fidelity mandatory to an album of this caliber.
     Without the immeasurable help of such a formidable tape nut as W. W. Heider,
Fantasy would not have been able to offer this first in its series of Social Studies. 
Fantasy is deeply grateful to Mr. Heider for his assistance and forbearance.
     The equipment used in this album is classified as "Highly Secret" for reasons
obvious to the most cursory listener.  However, it can be revealed, at this time, that
on some tracks microphones were used.  For the multiple voice effects in "The March of
High Fidelity" the assistance of Edwin Chune Shue, Nancy Katz, S. W. Weiss, M. W.
Weiss, Judge Crater and Lenny Bruce's mother is gratefully acknowledged. 
     Sholem Stein and Shorty Petterstein, while not related, are in actuality too
well known to need any characteriological discourse, but it is deeply felt that a
short essay (From Fantasy EP 4051) by the famous German jazz writer, Sixt Von Arnim,
deserves reprinting.  (We wish to thank Fantasy for permission for reprinting).

                             ESSAY
          Jazz, according to Shorty Petterstein, is America's only true art form. 
     It is, in the fullest sense, a music of protest and its practitioners, all of
     them original artists, are the only channel we have today to express the
     vitality and confusion, the intellectualism and the humanism of the great
     culture of America.
          To lend credence and validity to the practicing artist, particularly in
     music, is a service function of the record industry.  It is rare that such
     empathy exists but, when it does, it makes for the most sympathetic presentation
     possible.
          As the noted folk musicologist Margaret Tolk-Watkins has observed, "Jazz
     is as American as Coca- Cola."  To those who say jazz is difficult to
     understand, may we point out that these are original artists, speaking in an
     original language, the new thoughts and ideas and feelings of a new generation.
          Redolent with ragtime and rooted in the blues, jazz in its earliest days
     was the frank music of protest.  Today it is more than that.  The complex and
     highly mechanized texture of our culture is reflected in the intricate polyphony
     and contrapuntal web of modern jazz.  This is, in turn, graphically expressed
     and validated by the highly articulate artist such as Petterstein.
          Jazz today is a vital, living, moving and ever-changing form of
     expression; translucent and opaque, formless and organized, with unity and
     variety as searching and as probing as the mind of modern man.
          Although, granting that jazz music and musicians are ultimately of the
     folk, Margaret Tolk-Watkins, because of her pre-eminent interest in the more
     primitive forms of folk music, was highly impressed by the interview in which
     some unusual aspects of the origins of calypso are delineated by Professor
Sholem Stein.  
          Flying unafraid in the face of the customary analysis of the elements of
     calypso, Prof. Stein explores some of the hitherto unsuspected influences of the
     Hagar myth on the growth of the Caribbean folk music, relating it to the tribal
     culture of the pre-Christian era.

     But now for a word about Lenny Bruce.  Mr. Bruce first came to the attention of
Fantasy Records A & R Department as the lead ukulele, saxophone and trombone player in
the Olympia Boys Orchestra of Sheboygan, Wisc.  His tone on the ukulele was so
outstanding he caught the attention of the late Mac Sennate, who signed him for a
series of Hollywood movies which, thank goodness, were delayed due to union troubles,
war, and similar Acts of God.  Later Mr. Bruce became interested in ESP and FBI and
they in him.  In recent years, Mr. Bruce has made his own movies, The Two Heads of
Dracula, A Friend of James Dean and A Blonde from Down the Block.  During the early
part of 1958 while composing his first symphony, Mr. Bruce was auditioned by Fantasy
and was rejected as being too commercial.  It is hoped that this album, recorded
without Mr. Bruce's permission or knowledge, will prove Fantasy correct.
     If the facts were to be disseminated concerning the reasons for this album, it
would then be realized a cruel hoax has been perpetrated on Mr. and Mrs. America and
that this recording is but a publicity stunt for the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival and
the International Youth Band.
     This, then, is Lenny Bruce, and we hope he starts your foot a-tapping in this
magnificently performed and superbly recorded album.
                              --Horace Sprott and S. John Estes

The Cover:  Cherish this album, as pictured on the front cover (in the only photograph
extant) are three of the greatest fighters for freedom known to the recorded history
of man.  Their magnificent deeds behind the Iron Curtain have given millions courage
to continue the fight for a free world.  Although all White Russians of royal birth,
they were awarded honorary citizenship of the United States when no word had been
received from them in eight months and were then presumed to have been lost in action. 
Is the true story of Joseph Stalin's death to remain a secret forever?  The cat is
stuffed.