- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- This Is a Recording by Lily Tomlin received the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, the first woman to win the award for a solo performance.
Lily Tomlin – This Is a Recording (1971): Lily Tomlin is one of the most popular and successful female comedians of our time. One of her most successful works is the one-woman Broadway show written for Tomlin by her long-time partner (and now wife) Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985) – pointedly omitting the word “extraterrestrial” in the title – which won the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and was turned into a film also called The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe in 1991. However, Lily Tomlin would probably be regarded as a legend if she had never done anything else except develop the character of Ernestine the telephone operator.
This Is a Recording is Lily Tomlin’s debut comedy album and shows the many sides of the Ernestine character, including some biographical info. The front cover of This Is a Recording shows Lily Tomlin scrunching up her face as part of the Ernestine persona; and vocal tics and frequent snorts punctuate her hilarious sketches that all take place at her vintage switchboard. In the same way that Bob Newhart employs in many of his early routines, though in a more over-the-top manner, you only hear Ernestine’s end of the conversation, though that is enough. Ernestine interacts with her boyfriend Vito and an operator friend named Phoenicia; but she also takes on real people, such as Joan Crawford, Martha Mitchell, and J. Edgar Hoover. According to Wikipedia, the target in one of her best-known sketches, where she is trying to collect an overdue bill from “Mr. Veedle”, is Gore Vidal. In the final track on each side of the album – “Peeved” and “I.B.M.” – Lily Tomlin steps out of character and discusses how customers have to deal with AT&T and similar outfits. Some of the humor on this 50-year-old comedy album might be above the heads of younger people. When Alexander Graham Bell invented and patented the telephone in 1876, that led to the development of American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), the monopoly to end all monopolies. In 1971, when This Is a Recording was released, virtually all of the home telephones in the country were literally owned by AT&T and were made available to customers through user fees. The arrogant and condescending tone that Ernestine uses in her interactions with the public is rooted in her being a front-line representative of the all-powerful Ma Bell, whose motto according to one of the routines on This is a Recording is: “We Don’t Care, We Don’t Have To”. Another of Ernestine’s great lines is, “Hello, have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?”; and her indication of a ringing telephone, “one ringy-dingy . . . two ringy-dingies . . .” is also a classic. This Is a Recording peaked at #15 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, the highest placement by a female comedian in history. The album received the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, the first woman to win the award for a solo performance; and only three other solo women have won that Grammy since: Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Griffin, and Tiffany Haddish.