Revenge
During the second half of the 1960s, before he became a ubiquitous TV star and commercial pitchman, Bill Cosby was America's most popular--and influential--standup comic. Unlike the generation of Borscht-Belt funnymen that preceded him, Cosby didn't tell jokes, per se. Instead, he delivered colorful, tightly structured tales drawn from his experiences as a child and a parent, adopting a multitude of voices to portray the colorful array of characters who populated the Philadelphia neighborhood in which he grew up. Cosby's 1967 albumRevengeis awash in bittersweet, hilarious accounts of snowball fights, scary monster movies, and youthful one-upsmanship.--Scott Schinder