An Evening with Groucho - 1972

Review	by Bruce Eder

In the early 1970s, Groucho Marx took his one-man show -- which, essentially, he'd been doing, in one form or another, for more than a decade, either on You Bet Your Life or whatever other venue he happened to be working in -- on the road. The culmination was this recording (sometimes referred to as An Evening with Groucho Marx) from his appearance at Carnegie Hall in New York, in front of an adoring audience, introduced by Dick Cavett, and accompanied by Marvin Hamlisch at the piano, with his companion Erin Fleming providing the female vocals where necessary. With the Marx Brothers' movies, it was easy to forget that they had some of the best writers in the business providing them with lines, but as the material was generally built upon their stage personalities, their movie work was representative of the Marxes as artists -- by the time Groucho did this performance, at age 81, he had pretty much become his public persona, so this is an honest representation of Groucho Marx unchained, as it were. His voice creaks a little bit, and one sometimes wishes that he could have made this career move five years or so earlier (if not sooner), but what is here is dazzling in its cleverness and wit, and also as a document of an era of life that was fading away in our midst, and a tradition in entertainment, sometimes coarse but always clever and very ethnic (and Jewish) that was already unknown to most of the people present in the audience. The record became a best-seller as a double LP and later became a highly prized CD before going out of print sometime in the 1990s. From his pronunciations to his details of daily life embodied in his stories, and the fragments of vaudeville entertainment quoted and sprinkled throughout his stories, the recording is priceless. Despite his age, Groucho's energy picks up as the performance rolls along, so that by the middle of the disc, it's easy to forget most of the time that it's an octogenarian that we're listening to, charming, clever, witty, and acerbic all at once.  
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Groucho Marx - 01 - Overture- Medley From Marx Bros. Films (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)
Groucho Marx - 02 - Introduction (Dick Cavett intro)
Groucho Marx - 03 - Hello, I Must Be Going (w Erin Fleming)
Groucho Marx - 04 - Violin Solo, Jack Benny Tribute
Groucho Marx - 05 - My Family, How We Got Our Names
Groucho Marx - 06 - Strange RelativesUncle Julius
Groucho Marx - 07 - Chico At Klauber Horn Co.
Groucho Marx - 08 - Uncle Herman, Chiropodist
Groucho Marx - 09 - Timbuctoo (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)
Groucho Marx - 10 - Annie Berger
Groucho Marx - 11 - World War One, Vaudeville In Toronto
Groucho Marx - 12 - Oh, How That Woman Could Cook (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)
Groucho Marx - 13 - Toronto Song (Irving Berlin Denies He Wrote It)
Groucho Marx - 14 - London Stories Polish Officer Story
Groucho Marx - 15 - Churchill & 2nd World War
Groucho Marx - 16 - Tough Chicago Critic Story
Groucho Marx - 17 - Palace Theatre Sarah Bernhardt
Groucho Marx - 18 - Fanny BriceSwain's Rats & Cats
Groucho Marx - 19 - Poem From The Play Animal Crackers
Groucho Marx - 20 - T.S. Eliot Memorial Laurence Olivier's Lap
Groucho Marx - 21 - 2nd World War Bond Tour
Groucho Marx - 22 - Houdini Story
Groucho Marx - 23 - Music In Cocoanuts- AlwaysGeorge Kaufman & Morrie Ryskind Story
Groucho Marx - 24 - Stay Down Here Where You Belong (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)
Groucho Marx - 25 - Otto Kahn Story
Groucho Marx - 26 - W.C. Fields BB GunProhibitionBaby Leroy
Groucho Marx - 27 - Heavens Above
Groucho Marx - 28 - Everybody Works But FatherFathers Day (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)
Groucho Marx - 29 - Margaret Dumont, The Dowager In Our Films (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)
Groucho Marx - 30 - Thalberg Story- Garbo
Groucho Marx - 31 - Sampson & Delilah Story
Groucho Marx - 32 - Will Rogers, Baseball In Baltimore
Groucho Marx - 33 - Priest's Stories Plaza HotelMontreal
Groucho Marx - 34 - Rome
Groucho Marx - 35 - Show Me A Rose (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)
Groucho Marx - 36 - Lydia The Tatooed Lady (Marvin Hamlisch Piano)