You might run into trouble if you go on a scholarly mission to find out who was the “first” stand-up comedian in America.
I’ve been told that the first true stand-up comedian was Frank Faye, a vaudeville performer who was among the first to drop the props, costumes, and straight-man and simply tell jokes. I’ve been told that the first true stand-up comedian was Moms Mabley, a mid-century character comic. I’ve also been told that the first real stand-up comedian was Charley Case, Bob Hope, Lenny Bruce. And each time, the person I was interviewing presented their answer with absolute certain, as if they’d be shocked to hear that anyone would disagree.
This isn’t just a matter of debating intellectuals. The larger and more telling reason, I believe, for these discrepancies is innate to the very nature of stand-up comedy. Stand-up comedy itself is a largely rebellious art form, and its inconclusive origin speaks to its inability to be boxed.
Stand-up comedy is an art form that exists on its own terms. Firstly, this is due to the fact that there has been little substantial and accepted scholarship on the art form. Secondly, stand-up comedy is such a young medium, and it has evolved so quickly and in so many different ways that it is difficult to talk about scientifically. Thirdly, there are so many “x factors” when talking about humor that a lot of aspects, even with the proper scholarship, are beyond language.
You see this balance of official-unofficial throughout stand-up. One of the best examples of this is the naming system that organically evolved in and of the community to express their own material. It all starts with a joke. Once you have a joke you often punch up the joke with tags, which are little lines or quips that you say after the joke. For example, we can look at Anthony Jeselnik’s joke about running for office in school:
Joke: One year in High School I ran for Class President, and I lost to a girl in a wheelchair. Now I'm not ashamed, I know she definitely got the sympathy vote, but that's just because I ran really negative campaign: “Vote for Anthony, his ideas have legs.”
Tag: You should all be laughing at that joke, there’s no ramp here.
While the tag isn’t integral to the joke, it fills it out and often adds a new dimension or new perspective. In Jeselnik’s joke, the tag turns the audience’s reticence to laugh onto themselves. Once you have a few jokes and tags within a similar theme, you have a bit, and once you have a few bits, you have a chunk. If you can arrange your chunks into a coherent hour of material, then you’ve got yourself a special, and if you can get someone to produce it you’ve got an album or a taping.
These aren’t terms you’ll find in a textbook and they’re intuitive and informal to an almost (appropriately) comic degree. These words organically emerged as comedians began talking about their work, and they stuck not through bells and whistles but through a practical sense of reality. In stand-up comedy there are no Italian, French, or Latin terms, simply the short-hand of the working-class people of the field.