Jerry Lewis - Jerry Lewis Just Sings (1956)

You get an uneasy feeling with this record that at any moment Jerry's acceptable Johnnie Ray love-calls could lapse into Koo Koo Bird craziness, and that's probably what led the Muscular Dystrophy Association to choose predictable American Idol blandness over Jerry-atrics this year. Nostalgic for the telethon's glory days, I went all YouTube this Labor Day and found a lotta mislabeled clips smearing Jerry's recent years as MDA chairman— "Jerry berates bandleader," "Jerry disses Ed McMahon," "Jerry calls 'kid' a drunken broad." People, when Jerry insults or uses an expletive, it's a term of endearment. Jerry kids for Jerry's kids. Sheesh, it's like no one understands how this whole delicate business of love works anymore. Love — it's the ultimate expletive, for fuck's sake!

People who say with Jerry hosting it was a dying telethon don't know anything about how greatness works, either. Extracting 61 million dollars from dull audiences with yawnfests including Lady Antebellum, Boyz II Men, Darius Rucker and J. Lo is nothing to brag about. But Jerry going from the star power of Frank and Sammy to raising 58 million in 2010 with vaudeville survivors like Norm Crosby and Chester the Amazing Statuesque Dog? That fuckin' just sings, man!

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