I started performing on stage over 55 years. When I was 17, I entered the High School Talent Show with my impersonation of a popular comedian named Shelley Berman. This comedian was brilliant, a veteran of the New York coffee houses and Colleges and Universities.he won the first Grammy Award for a spoken comedy recording in 1959. His routine was about a drunk at a party. I was in high school. I did all his material for a few years after hi-school. I performed as the front man with my band at parties and such. I continued doing my standup in Talent Shows to larger and larger teenage gatherings, the largest was the Southern US Hi-Y conference. The audience was 750 people., I was 19.
For years I enjoyed the accolades, I called myself a stand-up comedian, but the accolades were not mine to enjoy, I was mimicking Berman. I tried to perform my own material for the frat parties at U of Miami in Florida. I bombed! They appreciated the drunk routine but walked away when I started my own. I continued playing in bar bands until I joined the Air Force in 1965.
I wanted to present original material. On some level I knew I had to prepare it and rehearse it. I let that failure paralize me from doing the hard work to learn How to write comedy material.
So when I met the Magic Man, Dale Schulman who called my bluff and booked me on one of his magic shows as a ventriloquist.
After that we worked on material together. As I learned to Evoke the puppet. Hi name was JoJo and was a modified wrap around chimp puppet. And I welcomed someone to share the stage.