League of Inveterate Poets

By Mark Traphagen on March 5, 2010

“Some men are Baptists, others Catholics; my father was an Oldsmobile man!” – Jean Shepherd as “Ralphie” in the film A Christmas Story

Recently an illness kept me confined to the bed for a couple of weeks. During that time, podcasts on my iPhone were my friend and companion. I have a number of favorites that I’ll be writing about in the weeks to come, but at some point I got to pondering: why do I like podcasts so much? There are probably a number of contributing factors. My father was in radio and podcasts are the closest thing we have to the way radio sounded in his day. I like good stories and conversation creatively presented. I can grow and learn (and laugh!) while doing other things (such as lying in bed sick). But at the very root, the foundation, the cornerstone of my love for podcasts is one name:

Jean Shepherd.

These days most people, if they know his name at all, know Jean Shepherd as the narrator of A Christmas Story, a movie now widely considered a Christmas classic for the ages. Fewer may know (unless they pay scrupulous attention to opening credits), that A Christmas Story is based on Shepherd’s written stories, mostly from his first novel, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. Fewer still today would know of Jean Shepherd the actor, the novelist, the comedian, television presenter, writer for major magazines (Playboy, Car & Driver). But my connection with Shepherd (or Shep as we fans called him) was with his most long-lived medium: radio.

For 21 years, beginning in 1956, Jean Shepherd held sway for 45 minutes a night on WOR radio in New York. If you listen to any of the podcast rebroadcasts of these shows that I’ll link below, you’ll understand why I think of him as the Father of Podcasting (though he did not live to see the coining of the word). No music (other than his own collection of zany tunes he’d play the kazoo or Jew’s harp with). No guests. No interviews. No phone calls. Just 45 minutes of Shep spinning stories and whatever else came to his fertile mind. Jean Shepherd was the consummate raconteur and monologist of his time.

There were basically two kinds of Shepherd shows: the story shows and the social commentary shows. Although it was the former for which he was most beloved, the social commentary episodes could be just as entertaining. Don’t let my label of “social commentary” lead you to think these were dry, dusty analysis pieces. Shep had an eye for the offbeat and unusual, and could reveal what they said about us and our culture. Only Shep could explain how the old Flagship Furniture Store on Route 22 in New Jersey (a store that was a life-size model of a navy battleship) was a metaphor for the human condition.

But it was his storytelling which won him legions of religiously dedicated fans. Viewers of A Christmas Story got a taste of Shep’s yarn spinning skills, but only a taste. From 10 to 10:45 each evening my brother and I would put the radio between our beds, trying to keep the volume low enough so our mom wouldn’t come in and switch it off. But that wasn’t the only battle each night. We also had to fight to stay awake to the end of the program, because Shep was famous for drawing out a story across a whole 45 minutes. He would go off on dozens of rabbit trails, and you’d be sure that this time he wasn’t going to finish the story in time. But somehow, every single time, he would miraculously get to the payoff of the story just in the last few seconds as his familiar theme song would reach its last crashing chords.

Jean Shepherd’s stories could be about almost anything, but most were in the form of recollections about his life. I say “in the form of” because, when pressed, Shep was always clear that he was in the STORYtelling business. Fans who dug too deeply into his past were in for many disappointments. But Shep was the first to teach me that the power of stories is that the best ones are always true, even if they aren’t “true” in the historiographical sense.

These stories tended to be about either his childhood in an Indiana steel mill town (a la A Christmas Story), his army days, or his various pre-WOR days on several radio and TV stations around the country. While his stories were not “laugh out loud” funny, they were indeed humorous, in the style of Mark Twain or George Aide. Most centered around a profound sense of irony, and the vague angst we all have that somehow life is a conspiracy against us. Shep’s humor always teetered on the precipice of cynical, but whenever it seemed that he might tumble over, he’d be sure to whip out his kazoo and a scratchy recording of “The Sheik of Araby” or “The Bear Missed the Train” (a satire of an Andrews Sisters German-language hit).

If I’ve made you want to hear some of Shep, the original podcaster, thanks to the miracle of podcasting, you can! There are at least two podcasts that put out daily replays of Shepherd’s old radio shows. The Brass Figlagee recently completed its four-year mission to podcast every available recording of Jean Shepherd’s shows. The owner of that podcast, however, graciously did the hard work of uploading all those files to archive.org (Jean Shepherd on Achive.org). Also, Max Schmid’s Mass Backwards program on WBAI radio broadcasts a Shepherd episode each week. You can find the podcast version by searching “Mass Backwards” in the iTunes store.

Excelsior, you fatheads!

Purchase the only book-length biography of Shepherd below and support this site. Thanks!

Excelsior, You Fathead!: The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd Possibly best known for his creation A Christmas Story, Jean Shepherd (1921-1999) also invented and remains the master of talk radio. Through interviews with Shepherd’s friends, coworkers and creative associates, this book takes a look at a complex and unique genius of our time. 30 photos.Jean Shepherd (1921-1999), master humorist, is best known for his creation A Christmas Story, the popular movie about the child who wants a BB gun for Christmas and nearly shoots his eye out. What else did Shepherd do? He is considered by many to be the Mark Twain and James Thurber of his day. For many thousands of fans, for decades, Shep talked on the radio late at night, keeping them up way past their bedtimes. He entertained without a script, improvising like a jazz musician, on any and every subject you can imagine. He invented and remains the master of talk radio. Shepherd perpetrated one of the great literary hoaxes of all time, promoting a nonexistent book and author, and then brought the book into existence. He wrote 23 short stories for Playboy, four times winning their humor of the year award, and also interviewed The Beatles for the magazine. He authored several popular books of humor and satire, created several television series and acted in several plays. He is the model for the character played by Jason Robards in the play and movie A Thousand Clowns, as well as the inspiration for the Shel Silverstein song made famous by Johnny Cash, A Boy Named Sue. Readers will learn the significance of innumerable Shepherd words and phrases, such as Excelsior, you fathead, and observe his constant confrontations with the America he loved. They will get to know and understand this multitalented genius by peeking behind the wall he built for himself – a wall to hide a different and less agreeable persona. Through interviews with his friends, co-workers and creative associates, such as musician David Amram, cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer, publisher and broadcaster Pa@

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• The man who told A Christmas Story. (slate.com)