Barry Humphries - 1972 - A Track Winding Back FLAC

Along The Road To Gundagai/Is'e An Aussie, Is'e Lizzie/True British Spunk



He’s been called the funniest man in the world. He describes himself as a “music-hall artist”. But to the thousands who have flocked to his one-man shows since the 1960s he has that rare quality that separates the great entertainer from the mere performer. He’s one of the few carrying on the tradition of Max Miller, Roy Rene, and the glorious Broadway era of Jolson, Cantor and the Marx Brothers. All were masters at bridging the gap to the crowd across the footlights.

Barry Humphries was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1934 and was a very intelligent boy who attended Melbourne University. There, he began in revues and doing some impersonations. He moved to London around 1960 and began his TV career. Humphries went on to present a succession of hugely successful one-man shows in Britain, the United States and Australia. In these the ubiquitous 'Dame Edna Everage' appeared with a motley range of other Humphries characters, most notably and consistently the nostalgic, rambling ‘senior’, Sandy Stone, and the appallingly crude Sir Les Patterson, ‘Australian Cultural Attaché to the Court of St James’. The longevity of Humphries’ career – and the characters he created – is unique. For more than fifty years, neither he nor they showed signs of flagging: Edna’s adoring ‘possums’ still crowded theatres, still waved their ‘gladdies’ in joyous unison, and still eagerly submitted to her barbed but good humoured humiliation.

By the early 1970s, censorship restrictions had been lifted on script for "The Wonderful World Of Barry McKenzie" and moreover the newly set-up Film Development Corporation (funded by a government grant) decided to turn it into a movie. With actor Barry Crocker in the title role and Barry Humphries playing Edna and two other characters, cameras started rolling in 1972. The all-star cast also featured Dennis Price, Dick Bentley and old mates Peter Cook and Spike Milligan.

It was at this time that Barry Humphries in colaboration with co-star Dick Bentley, had the idea of recording a traditional Aussie bush song entitled "Along The Road To Gundagai" along with some satirical ditties. Although not his first recording, the EP entitled 'A Track Winding Back' was certainly the first of many successful attempts at musical satire.  Thanks to AussieRock

Barry Humphries - 1958 - Wild Life In Suburbia Vol 2 FLAC

Highett Fidelity/Dear Beryl



 John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE (born 17 February 1934) is an Australian comedian, actor, satirist, artist, and author. He is best known for writing and playing his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. He is also a film producer and script writer, a star of London's West End musical theatre, an award-winning writer, and an accomplished landscape painter. For his delivery of dadaist and absurdist humour to millions, biographer Anne Pender described Humphries in 2010 as not only "the most significant theatrical figure of our time … [but] the most significant comedian to emerge since Charlie Chaplin".
 In 1958, Humphries and director Peter O'Shaughnessy collaborated on and appeared in the Rock'n'Reel Revue at the New Theatre in Melbourne where Humphries brought the characters of Mrs Everage and Sandy Stone into the psyche of Melbourne audiences. In the same year, Humphries made his first commercial recording, the EP's Wild Life in Suburbia Volumes 1 & 2, which featured liner notes by his friend, the Modernist architect and writer Robin Boyd.

Thanks to AussieRock

Barry Humphries - Wild Life In Suburbia

 The Migrant Hostess/Sandy Stone



John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE (born 17 February 1934) is an Australian comedian, satirist, artist, and author. Humphries is best known for writing and playing his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. He is also a film producer and script writer, a star of London's West End musical theatre, an award-winning writer and an accomplished landscape painter. For his delivery of dadaist and absurdist humour to millions, biographer Anne Pender described Humphries in 2010 as not only "the most significant theatrical figure of our time but the most significant comedian to emerge since Charlie Chaplin".
Humphries' characters have brought him international renown, and he has also appeared in numerous films, stage productions and television shows. Originally conceived as a dowdy Moonee Ponds housewife who caricatured Australian suburban complacency and insularity, Edna has evolved over four decades to become a satire of stardom, the gaudily dressed, acid-tongued, egomaniacal, internationally feted Housewife Gigastar, Dame Edna Everage. Humphries' other major satirical character creation was the archetypal Australian bloke Barry McKenzie, who originated as the hero of a comic strip about Australians in London (with drawings by Nicholas Garland) which was first published in Private Eye magazine. The stories about "Bazza" (Humphries' nickname, as well as an Australian term of endearment for the name Barry) gave wide circulation to Australian slang, particularly jokes about drinking and its consequences (much of which was invented by Humphries), and the character went on to feature in two Australian films, in which he was portrayed by Barry Crocker.
Humphries' other satirical characters include the "priapic and inebriated cultural attaché" Sir Les Patterson, who has "continued to bring worldwide discredit upon Australian arts and culture, while contributing as much to the Australian vernacular as he has borrowed from it", gentle, grandfatherly "returned gentleman" Sandy Stone, iconoclastic 1960s underground film-maker Martin Agrippa, Paddington socialist academic Neil Singleton, sleazy trade union official Lance Boyle, high-pressure art salesman Morrie O'Connor and failed tycoon Owen Steele