The 40 best comedy albums of all time, ranked

Sixty years ago, no album was as popular as The First Family, a parody of Kennedy’s Camelot devised by producers Bob Booker and Earle Doud and fronted by Vaughn Meader, a comedian with the ability to uncannily mimic John F. Kennedy. The First Family not only was a hit in 1962, it eclipsed all other records, selling over a million copies in its first two weeks and snagging the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1963. By the end of that year, Meader’s career was essentially over after Kennedy’s assassination, but The First Family remains a fascinating time capsule, a record with some genuine comic ingenuity.

Lily Tomlin took her Ernestine the Telephone Operator character from the confines of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In to the recording studio for This Is A Recording. Released in 1972, it’s an album that bristles with references that are inextricably tied to the times—Martha Mitchell vies for space with Gore Vidal and Joan Crawford—but retains its vitality thanks to the precision of Tomlin’s rendering of Ernestine, which helped her snag a Grammy for Best Comedy Recording.

The pinnacle of Stan Freberg’s celebrated career, the 1961 album Presents The United States Of America, Vol. 1: The Early Years finds the satirist recounting the history of the USA by sending up any number of fads and trends from the 1950s and early 1960s. Aided by arranger Billy May, Freberg isn’t just limited to verbal parodies: he has musical numbers that are as inventive as his sketches, making the record a tour de force of the recording studio. The hit album was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2019.

Not a compilation, The Best Of Sellers nevertheless does feature Peter Sellers at a peak. Rushing into the studio after his version of the old music hall standard “Any Old Iron” became an unexpected hit, Sellers crammed his mini-LP—his label Parlophone worried that a full long player would be too much comedy for audiences—with pop, rock and roll, folk, and jazz parodies and characters he essayed on the BBC series The Goon Show. Much of the credit for the record’s crackling high spirit should go to producer George Martin, who started to figure out the limits of a recording studio here, long before he functioned in a similar role for the Beatles.

A figure of historic proportions, Lenny Bruce can be difficult to hear in modern contexts: his innovations have been absorbed by the culture at large and, crucially, a lot of his recordings feature him ranting about the persecution he received. That’s not the case with The Carnegie Hall Concert. Recorded in 1961 before the court cases overwhelmed his life and act, The Carnegie Hall Concert—now available in an expanded double-disc format—finds Bruce spinning out observations and stories with the hep patter of a Beatnik.

The definition of a showbiz survivor, Joan Rivers had several peaks in her long career but it was her work of the early 1980s that set her on the road to becoming a household name. Recorded live in 1983 when she was still Johnny Carson’s choice as a guest host on The Tonight Show, What Becomes A Semi-Legend Most? features Rivers riffing about such cultural mainstays as The National Enquirer, Mick Jagger, and the royal family, while also finding space for her Heidi Abromowitz character. Sharp and profane, it lacks the pro-forma feel of her E! Television red carpet performances: this is the work of a nightclub comic who still knew how to land a direct blow.

Child Of The ’50s serves as a manifesto for one of the great standup comics of the 1970s. Quick, smart, and silly, Robert Klein could do characters, parodies, and observations equally well, a multi-purpose comic who spun out riffs that other comedians would turn into careers. As its title suggests, Child Of The ’50s is something of a period artifact—it’s simultaneously of its time and nostalgic—but the invention of Klein keeps the record funny.

A trailblazer, Dick Gregory didn’t shy away from controversial subjects in a controversial era: his routines crackled with righteous anger and wit. Recorded at Chicago’s Playboy Club, In Living Black And White preserves Gregory’s peak, finding him weaving between pointed racial commentary and observations about the state of international affairs at the height of the Cold War.

Age mellowed Andrew “Dice” Clay, turning him into something of a beloved figure within the comedy world and beyond: he projected genuine warmth as Lady Gaga’s father in A Star Is Born. This turns The Day The Laughter Died into an artifact of a time when Dice was such a public menace he and producer Rick Rubin designed his debut album as a provocation—a double-disc document not of Clay’s nursery rhyme routines but the danger he conveyed as a comic. Performing at a small club filled with unprepared punters, it’s comedy as a weapon: the audience doesn’t laugh, they squirm in a fashion that’s even audible on record.

Of course the king of insult comedy called his first album Hello Dummy: there’s no better introduction to Mr. Warmth than a sneer. Recorded live in 1968 at the Sahara in Las Vegas, Hello Dummy is very much the product of its time, which means there are more than a few jokes that couldn’t fly in the 2020s, but what impresses isn’t the meanness of Rickles, it’s his speed and agility. He’s spitting out jokes that are more absurd than cruel, which is why Hello Dummy still delivers laughs after it’s fallen out of fashion.

On Strategic Grill Locations, the album he self-released in 1999, Mitch Hedberg appears to have arrived full-formed, splicing the laconic delivery of Steven Wright with the wordplay of George Carlin, then giving it a distinctly Gen-X spin; he and the audience are acutely aware they’re performing and attending a comedic ritual. Hedberg died too young—he released only one other record in his life, 2003’s Mitch All Together—which lends Strategic Grill Locations a slightly wistful air that nevertheless gets punctured by the laughter generated by his absurdist jokes.

Bill Hicks specialized in seething, confrontational anger, directing his bile at both the audience and himself. Hicks died of pancreatic cancer at the peak of his career, leaving behind a legacy that resonates to this day. Released three years after his 1994 death, Rant In E-Minor captures Hicks in full vitriolic flight, taking aim at conservatives and Jay Leno with equal viciousness.

One of the defining comic duos of the 1960s, Mike Nichols and Elaine May had an elegance to their rapport that still sparkles. Capturing highlights from their Broadway show An Evening With Mike Nichols And Elaine May, this LP showcases Nichols’ verbal dexterity and May’s facility with characters. What impresses most is their easy, intuitive chemistry, which has been mimicked but never duplicated.

Released the same year Patton Oswalt toplined the Pixar family film Ratatouille, Werewolves And Lollipops finds the comedian decidedly in the alternative comedy world, delivering a rapid and riotous set in Austin, Texas. Swiftly switching between pop cultural and political targets, Oswalt places equal emphasis on smarts and silliness, a quality that keeps this record fresh long after its 2007 release.

The 2000 Year Old Man was such a hit for Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks that it became a comedy institution, with this 1961 album receiving three sequels in the subsequent 12 years. Those albums were boxed up by Rhino in 1994, but it’s the original LP that remains the best introduction to this delightful routine where straight-man Reiner interviewed the ancient Brooks about everything under the sun.

Before he became a household name thanks to the sitcom Sanford & Son, Redd Foxx built his audience through the regular release of underground party records—independent releases that were sold under the counter since they were too dirty for public consumption. Uncensored represents something of a triumph of the party record. Released in 1980, roughly three years after Sanford And Son left the air, Uncensored is filled with the kind of raunchy humor that couldn’t be heard in public in the 1960s. In 1980, it won Foxx a Grammy for Comedy Album of the Year.

A genuine genius in a field filled with pretenders, Albert Brooks is attuned to the structure, not just of a joke but presentation and format. That talent flourished when he became a filmmaker not long after the release of Comedy Minus One in 1973. This record also demonstrates a real attention to detail, playing with the format of a comedy LP, showing loving respect for hoary showbiz tropes but also sending them up with a prankster’s verve.

Housed in an album cover that parodies the cheap extravagance of Master P’s No Limit empire, Bigger And Blacker announced Chris Rock as a powerhouse stand-up. Already a star—he cut an indelible impression on Saturday Night Live—Rock spent some of the 1990s looking for the secure footing he found here. Alternating stand-up routines with hip-hop sketches and cameos, Bigger And Blacker captures the style of the late 1990s, but Rock’s routines are what makes it last.

Steve Martin was the rarest of things in the late 1970s: a comedian who could fill arenas. Let’s Get Small was at the core of this phenomenon, a record that managed to be hysterical even without the visuals of the absurdist antics of Martin. The absence of sight gags doesn’t push Martin to desperate extremes. Instead, he narrows his focus and creates a dynamic, lively record

Six decades into his life, Rodney Dangerfield became a superstar with his bug-eyed grin and self-deprecating shtick. Named after his catchphrase, No Respect delivers a torrent of classic one-liners so perfectly constructed and delivered, they can still elicit guffaws of laughter.

The granddaddy of comedy albums, The Button-Down Mind Of Bob Newhart was a sensation in 1960, such a success that it earned Newhart the Grammy for Best New Artist. The freshness of his one-sided phone calls fueled the phenomenon in the early 1960s and the clean construction of the bit is why the record retains its potency decades later: it relies on nothing but the deadpan delivery of Newhart.

Years after his death, George Carlin retains a prominent position in American culture as the avatar of free speech. Reducing Carlin to a meme misinterprets and defangs his humor, stripping it of the cultural context that was so crucial to understanding his politics. Listening to his albums helps restore that context, since they’re artifacts of the time. For as much as Class Clown belongs to the early 1970s, the artistry helps it transcend its era: listen to “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television” again, and what impresses is not the provocation but rather the construction and execution.

Live On The Sunset Strip is at the foundation of the idea that stand-up needs to be cathartic, for both artist and audience alike. That notion resulted in plenty of terrible comedians, but Richard Pryor’s return to the stage after nearly burning himself alive in a freebase accident remains the ideal marriage of revelation and craft, a dark night of the soul that is riotously funny.