Who is George Carlin?
George Carlin (1937-2008) was a pioneer in the modern observational comedy genre, along with such contemporaries as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Mort Sahl. George Carlin began his comedy career as a disk jockey during the late 1950s, often teaming with fellow comedian Jack Burns. The Burns-Carlin comedy team dissolved during the early 1960s, but Carlin developed several of his most popular characters, including an oblivious disk jockey at “Wonderful WINO” and Al Sleet, the “hippy-dippy weatherman,” during those formative years. Stand-up comedians who hoped to appear regularly on television during the early to mid-1960s were generally expected to present a clean-cut image and limit the scope of their routines to conventional topics. At first, George Carlin conformed to these television standards, but eventually found performing generic, self-edited routines to mainstream America to be intellectually and artistically stifling. By the late 1960s, George Carlin changed his public persona
George Carlin (1937-2008) was a pioneer in the modern observational comedy genre, along with such contemporaries as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and Mort Sahl. George Carlin began his comedy career as a disk jockey during the late 1950s, often teaming with fellow comedian Jack Burns. The Burns-Carlin comedy team dissolved during the early 1960s, but Carlin developed several of his most popular characters, including an oblivious disk jockey at “Wonderful WINO” and Al Sleet, the “hippy-dippy weatherman,” during those formative years.
