Hot Comedy Jerky Boys, Jeff Foxworth And Adam Sandler Bring In Dollars As Well As Laughs With Albums

Select and Warner Bros. are laughing all the way to the bank as comedy albums by the Jerky Boys, Jeff Foxworthy and Adam Sandler continue to be hot sellers.

This week, three hit comedy albums crack the top half of The Billboard 200 chart.

Classic comedy recordings also are finding new life as Warner Archives, Loose Cannon and Rhino have reissued albums that have never before appeared on CD.

“The Jerky Boys,” the first album by the New York-based phone pranksters, moves from No. 81 to No. 75 in its 90th week on The Billboard 200, while the follow-up,”The Jerky Boys 2,” is up from No. 49 to No. 45 in its 25th week.

“The Jerky Boys” has sold 922,000 copies, while “The Jerky Boys 2” has moved 719,000 copies, according to SoundScan.

The comedy and music soundtrack album to the film “The Jerky Boys: The Movie” moves from No. 86 to No. 79 and has sold 27,000 copies, according to SoundScan.

Sandler’s gold-certified “They’re All Gonna Laugh at You” on Warner Bros. is No. 12 on Heatseekers in its 68th week on the new and developing artist chart. The “Saturday Night Live” comedian has sold 521,000 copies of his album, according to SoundScan.

Foxworthy’s million-selling “You Might Be a Redneck If …” on Warner Bros. is holding steady at No. 4 in its 56th week on the Top Country Albums chart. The country humorist has sold 702,000 copies, according to SoundScan. An album of previously unreleased comedy bits on the Laughing Hyena label, titled “The Redneck Test Volume 43,” moves up from No. 71 to No. 64 on the country albums chart and has sold 10,000 copies.

For contemporary comedy acts, feature film and television exposure are key elements in establishing sales staying power. The debut albums by Sandler, Foxworthy and the Jerky Boys are still on the chart more than a full year after their initial release.

“I thought the only way I would get (a platinum record) was to steal one from a radio station,” quips Foxworthy.

The breakthrough success of each of these three acts is a triumph for the spoken humor genre, which often is ignored by retail stores and radio stations.

“Part of the problem for comedy records is that they tend to get shoved into a small bin in the back of the store,” says Craig Duncan, store manager for the Los Angeles Virgin Megastore.

Duncan says that a recent increase in comedy section retail space at his store has generated higher sales for the genre.

Raunchier comedy recordings can have difficulty getting stocked at more conservative retail outlets, such as the mass merchant Wal-Mart.

“Wal-Mart is a lot more selective about the content it carries,” says Scott Colley, music buyer for Amarillo, Texas-based Anderson Merchandisers, which provides music for approximately 1,200 Wal-Mart stores. “While someone like Jeff Foxworthy will do incredible business here, we can’t bring Wal-Mart a Jerky Boys or Adam Sandler record unless it is edited.”

In addition, many retailers remain confused about the appropriate place to stock developing comedy artists, say many label executives.

Foxworthy was erroneously stocked in the jazz section at some stores when his album first came out, says Bob Saporiti, Warner/Reprise Nashville senior vice president of marketing.

Select President Fred Munao says early copies of “The Jerky Boys” were placed in the hip-hop section “because the name probably sounded like it belonged there.”

That isn’t likely to happen again with the Jerky Boys. With a feature-length film, a HarperCollins book and even customized calling cards to their name, the Jerky Boys have risen from underground phone pranksters to gold-level pop stars.

Caravan Pictures’ “The Jerky Boys” opened Feb. 3 as the top comedy film for that weekend, with an opening weekend gross of $4.4 million.

Sandler’s album stands a good chance of a similar boost from his top-billed status on the new comedy film “Billy Madison,” which opened nationwide Friday.

Foxworthy’s success is due in large part to television. Frequent appearances on “The Tonight Show” and CMT airplay of the “Weird Al” Yankovic-directed video for the single “Redneck Stomp” boosted sales of the comedian’s album, says Saporiti.

While the recent surge of sales activity represents a new golden era for comedy, it pales in comparison to the early and mid-‘60s, when comedy had a significant presence on the Billboard charts.

Albums by comedians like Shelley Berman, Steve Allen and Soupy Sales all were in the upper reaches of the album chart.

Bob Newhart’s debut album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” netted Warner Bros. its first No. 1 album. The title stayed at the top for 14 weeks in 1960 and won the Grammy for album of the year.

“Newhart kept this company afloat in its early days,” says Gregg Geller, a Warner Bros. vice president. “As other classic catalog records have been reissued on CD, comedy has somehow fallen between the cracks.”

Indeed, while many classic comedy recordings from the ‘60s and ‘70s are still available on cassette, they have yet to be issued on CD. However, that is beginning to change.

Warner Archives released six classic comedy albums on CD for the first time on Jan. 24: “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” Bill Cosby’s “Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow, Right!,” Don Rickles’ “Hello Dummy!,” Richard Pryor’s “Is It Something I Said?,” Steve Martin’s “Let’s Get Small” and Gilda Radner’s “Live from New York.”

The new PolyGram imprint Loose Cannon debuted late last year with four comedy reissues, including out-of-print recordings from Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx.

On Nov. 8, the label released Pryor’s “Black Ben the Blacksmith,” “Craps” and “Who Me, I’m Not Him” and Foxx’s “I Ain’t Lied Yet.”

“It’s unbelievable, but a whole generation of young people has not been acquainted with this classic humor,” says Loose Cannon President Lisa Cortes.

Rhino plans to issue a four-CD boxed set retrospective of classic American comedy in the summer. “But Seriously: The Best of American Comedy (1915-1994)” will feature rare and out-of-print recordings from both classic and contemporary comedians ranging from W.C. Fields to Robin Williams.

“The environment is just right for comedy now,” says Select’s Munao. “People like to laugh. It’s great medicine.”