Laughs Keep Coming for ‘Bob & Ray’ Shows

NEW YORK — First on Larry Josephson’s agenda is an introduction to his toys. They spill from shelves and coffee tables and box tops onto the floor just inside the front door of his Radio Foundation offices.

One by one, he picks them up to demonstrate: a radio in the form of chattering lips, slippers that make dinosaur noises and a pig that dances to “La Bamba.” Best of all is “The Whipping Boy,” a stricken-looking man with his head between his hands. When Josephson flicks the dial in the back, the Whipping Boy wails, “It was all my fault.”

Neurosis is funny, but then Josephson, once an iconoclastic radio personality in these parts, is himself proof of that. Within moments of meeting him, he volunteers that he is considering writing an article built around the notion that he wouldn’t leave these Upper West Side offices, which double as his apartment, for a year. “In New York,” he says, “you can get anything from Chinese food to a woman delivered.”

Josephson is shaped like a bowling ball with a nearly white beard, and he roams these rooms in a blue pin-striped shirt, tomato-red suspenders and slippers. Clutter is all around him, and most of the clutter is hundreds of tape recordings and compact discs of old-time radio humorists Bob and Ray.

Josephson is the worldwide marketing arm of “Bob & Ray.” Because of him, their sketches can still be heard 50 years after their radio debut, 20 years after their last commercial radio show and six years after Ray Goulding’s death. Thanks to Josephson, their comedy is available on cassettes and CDs, and their vast array of loopy characters can still be heard weekly on 30 public radio stations across the country, with at least a score of others getting ready to join the fun.

So it is fair to say that Josephson is keeping alive Matt Neffer, Boy Spot-Welder and Wally Ballou, Mary Backstayge and Lawrence Fechtenberger, Interstellar Officer Candidate.

Who are Bob and Ray anyway?

During the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, Bob and Ray--the slight, adenoidal Bob Elliott and the deep-voiced, bulky Goulding--were radio staples in just about every metropolis, village, backwater and truck stop from, as Elliott and Goulding would say, “approximately coast to coast.”

Their most famous sketches parodied victims that are now long forgotten, particularly radio soaps, serials and personalities from the ‘30s or ‘40s. But their humor was more generalized than that. Their real target was most often the media itself--bumbling reporters who don’t listen, interview subjects who don’t merit the attention, commercial plugs for inane products (“Einbinder, the greatest name in flypaper” was a favorite), game shows that are contrived, fixed or just plain idiotic, and dramas in which nothing happens to anybody.

Their material would be funny enough on paper, but they were masterful performers as well, each a dead-on mimic and also capable of creating an amazing number of distinct voices.

“They are a seminal influence in my work,” says comedy writer Al Franken, who modeled his “Saturday Night Live” Franken and Davis shtick on “Bob & Ray.” “The way they left stuff unsaid. The timing between them. The trade-off of being straight man and funny guy. They were brilliant and loopy and really smart without being intellectual.

“They are heroes of mine.”

And of Josephson’s too.

Josephson started listening to them in the ‘60s, at a time when he was achieving a measure of fame on the radio in New York City as host of a morning show on New York’s WBAI, a left-leaning nonprofit outpost on the FM dial.

In 1981, Josephson was still on the air, but he was also doing consulting work for the Corp. for Public Broadcasting. One of his main responsibilities was to organize a biannual conference of public radio executives, which meant booking top-flight entertainment. Elliott and Goulding, he figured, would be a natural for this crowd.

By then, Elliott and Goulding were both in their late 50s and six years removed from their last regular radio show on New York’s WOR. They were still frequent guests on television, popping up regularly on late-night talk shows and “Saturday Night Live.” But it was no longer possible to hear them on the radio.

They readily accepted Josephson’s invitation. Naturally, they were a smash, and as Josephson watched the radio executives laughing, something became obvious: “These guys should still be on the radio.”

Their act, he saw, was not dated in the least.

Josephson called Elliott and Goulding with a proposal. How about producing a new series of radio shows for public radio stations?

Elliott and Goulding liked the idea, and back they went into the studio. They created 56 new half-hour “Bob & Ray” shows and once again found themselves on the air all over the country.

The warm reception to the shows led to two sold-out Carnegie Hall performances in 1984. There was talk of a national tour, but by then Goulding’s long fight with cancer had commenced. He wouldn’t be able to handle the travel.

But the success of the shows convinced Josephson that the appetite for “Bob & Ray” material was not sated. They had no record contract. With their permission, Josephson began marketing cassette recordings of the public radio shows. Then he began selling a recording of the Carnegie Hall performances. Finally, he began soliciting collectors for copies of old “Bob & Ray” shows, some of them taped by people in their homes holding a microphone to a radio 30 or 40 years before.

Now, Josephson offers 16 “Bob & Ray” titles (as well as a video produced by the makers of “Saturday Night Live” and a “Bob & Ray” T-shirt). Josephson’s mailing list is 25,000 strong and includes Franken, George Carlin, Johnny Carson and Woody Allen.

The buyers tend to be older people who remember Elliott and Goulding from their heyday. But, Josephson says, when young people listen to their routines, they like them.

The “Bob & Ray” business is not especially lucrative. Josephson says he grosses between $100,000 and $150,000 a year. (Goulding’s estate and Elliott get around 10%.) Josephson’s other source of income is as host of a weekly syndicated public radio show called “Bridges: A Liberal-Conservative Dialogue.” (He’s the liberal of the title.)

Still, Josephson doesn’t make much money. In early December, he said he had made only $39,000 profit last year from all sources. The only reason he can afford an apartment overlooking Central Park is that he moved into it 30 years ago and its rent is controlled.

On the other side of the park is Elliott, but Josephson never sees him. In fact, he reveals, Elliott won’t take his calls. He didn’t enjoy a close relationship with Elliott and Goulding; they argued about money, and he was never invited to either of their homes, not even after Goulding’s funeral in 1990.

Josephson broods about his chilly relationship with the comic duo.

“I gave them another 15 years of life and kept them out of the exclusive hands of radio collectors,” he says, “but I don’t think they ever really appreciated what I did.”

Elliott, who is 73, has remained active since Goulding died. For a time, he was a regular on Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” and on son Chris Elliott’s TV show, “Get a Life.” Franken has cast him in his new situation comedy on NBC next fall. Elliott will play a variant on his most famous creation, slow-witted, terminally nasal reporter Wally Ballou.

In turning down a request for an interview, Elliott recently offered tepid praise for Josephson in a letter. “I commend him on a most thorough search for B&R; material and for packaging and promoting it through cassettes, CDs and T-shirts.”

Yet, Josephson is still glad he’s invested so much in the “Bob & Ray” business. Keeping Wally Ballou and the McBeebie twins on the airwaves is not a bad way to spend your time.

“Someday,” muses Josephson, “I can walk through the Pearly Gates, and when St. Peter says, ‘What did you do?’ I can say, ‘I kept “Bob & Ray” alive.’ ”

He pauses. “Oh, also, I can tell young women that I’m a record producer.”

* A catalog of “Bob & Ray” material is available; for information: (800) 528-4424.