CRANK(Y) CALLS
The foundation for this set is pretty basic: Comic Jonathan Winters was in the habit of leaving extended, extemporaneous phone messages whenever he reached his buddy Jim Smith's answering machine. Smith saved the tapes and gathered 28 communiqués on one CD. Pretty flimsy, yes, but Winters is the comic's comic and improvisation is his forte, so there some yucks to be had here, albeit frequently of a darker hue. Winters seems to have a bizarre fixation with the Prince of Darkness.Crank(y) Callsis just weird enough to be rewarding for fans of Winters, if not for folks with a taste for more scattershot phone scalawags as theJerky BoysandRoy D. Mercer.--Steven Stolder