Up for auction the "Smothers Brothers" Tommy & Dick Smothers Signed Album Page. This item is authenticated By Todd
Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of authenticity.
ES-6985
The Smothers Brothers are Thomas ("Tom" – born February 2, 1937)
and Richard ("Dick"
– born November 20, 1938), American folk singers, musicians and comedians. The brothers'
trademark double act was
performing folk songs (Tommy on acoustic guitar, Dick
on double bass), which usually led to arguments between the
siblings. Tommy's signature line was "Mom always liked you best!"
Tommy (the elder of the two) acted "slow" and Dick, the straight man, acted "superior." In the late 1950s
and early 1960s, the brothers frequently appeared on television variety shows
and issued several popular record albums of their stage performances. Their own
television variety show, The Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour, became one of the most controversial American TV
programs of the Vietnam War era.
Despite popular success, the brothers' penchant for material that was critical
of the political mainstream and sympathetic to the emerging counterculture led
to their firing by the CBS network in 1969. One episode was
left unaired. The
brothers continued to work, both independently and as a team, on stage and
television, and in films during subsequent decades. The brothers were both born
on Governors Island in New York Harbor, where their father, Thomas B. Smothers Jr.,
a West Point graduate and U.S. Army officer, was stationed. Tom was born on
February 2, 1937, and Dick was born on November 20, 1938. Major Smothers served
in the 45th
Infantry Regiment and died during World War II, while being transported from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Fukuoka, Japan, to a POW camp
in Mukden, Manchukuo. They were raised by their
mother in the Los Angeles area. They
graduated from Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, California,
and attended San Jose State University.
After a brief time in a folk group called the
Casual Quintet, the brothers made their first professional appearance as a duo
in February 1959 at The Purple Onion in San Francisco. They were a popular act in clubs and released
several successful top 40 albums for Mercury
Records, the most successful being Curb Your Tongue, Knave! in
1964. Their first national television appearance was on The Jack Paar Show on
January 28, 1961. On Sunday night, October 4, 1963, at 9:00 P.M.
E.S.T., the Smothers Brothers made an appearance on the CBS variety
series The Judy Garland Show which
also showcased Barbra Streisand. Tom and
Dick inherited Garland's time slot when their own variety series began in early
1967. The brothers appeared in a segment of the television series Burke's Law,
in 1964, in which they played two compulsive hoarders. Their first television
series was a situation comedy, The Smothers Brothers Show (1965–1966), produced
by Four Star Television. Tom
played an angel come back to earth to oversee his brother Dick, who played a
swinging bachelor. It did not do well in the ratings and had little of the
music that was identified with the brothers. Tom would say in 1969 that
"Four Star gave me ulcers."