I did a Steve Martin singalong bit with a banjo in college once. It worked beautifully, like a piece of machinery — because that’s what it was — all you had to do was master Martin’s precision timing and physical control. Which, it turned out, is what Martin did too: an ode to craftsmanship.
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The Edge of the American West 
4 comments
January 30, 2008 at 11:20 am
ari
Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the circumstances.
True of everthing, no?
Appearing on the show was Sammy Davis Jr., who, while still performing energetically, had also become a historic showbiz figure. I was whizzing along, singing a four-second version of “Ebb Tide,” then saying at lightning speed, “Frank Sinatra personal friend of mine Sammy Davis Jr. personal friend of mine Steve Martin I’m a personal friend of mine too and now a little dancin’!”
Genius. Must find Youtube.
Couldn’t find it. But the above is funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=XT0HAp2uobc&feature=related
And that’s Comedy for Dogs.
January 30, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Steve Balboni
thanks for linking to this, great article
January 30, 2008 at 8:50 pm
charlieford
After seeing him on Charley Rose, my daughter bought me his new book. Every teacher should read it.
January 31, 2008 at 10:10 am
bitchphd
Nice article, and I’m happy b/c it explains why, despite Martin’s cleverness, I kind of disliked him back in the early days–that bit about how he realized that the 70s were waning so he dawned a suit and got rid of political material. There was something about him that seemed to me back then as sort of assholishly smug in what I would now label a sort of young Republican way. (He was also the favorite of my cousin who went to Brown and who I always found assholishly smug back then, although now that we’re both adults we get along pretty well.)