In bluegrass, there's a lot of joke-telling and a lot of banter between bandmates. It's like improv or watching the 'Carol Burnett Show.'
I used to watch a lot of Nick at Nite as a kid, and it would play the original 'Saturday Night Live,' 'The Carol Burnett Show,' and 'Laugh-In.'
Twenty years ago, there were dozens and dozens of independent television producers. There are a couple now, at the most. Mark Burnett, Endemol. It's gone. Everybody works for the Man now. And it's natural law, how that happened: Nobody prescribed it, but it's how things worked out and how it has been for decades, period.
I was in love with a lot of people, because I was a student of the game of comedy - Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Don Rickles, Red Foxx, Moms Mabley - who gets no credit, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Kirby. I loved them all, and I used to just take a page out of all of them.
As a kid, I always wanted to be Carol Burnett or Johnny Carson. I love to chat and entertain.
So many people: Lucille Ball is the earliest incarnation of a woman I thought was funny, Joan Rivers, Roseanne, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radnor, down to current times, where you have Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Kristen Wiig.
I remember watching 'The Carol Burnett Show' with my parents as a kid. All those weird outfits she wore, like turtlenecks and long skirts, really stayed in my head.
Carol Burnett probably had the biggest influence on me as kid. Although I was very young and watched her a lot in reruns, I was mesmerized by the way she transformed, by her physical comedy and the rolling laughter from the live studio audience. I loved her most as Scarlett O'Hara and her well known Cleaning Lady character.