More Bert and I

Robert Bryan Marshall Dodge

9781944762285

Islandport Press

CD-Audio $12.95

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Overview

The iconic "Bert and I" stories were first created by Yale University students Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan in the late 1950s and performed around campus. The two amateur storytellers soon recorded a short 10-inch album of 11 stories for friends and family, but ultimately pressed just a few hundred. However, growing popularity prompted them in 1958 to record and release the seminal commercial album of New England humor and storytelling – Bert and I . . . And Other Stories from Down East. Featuring 13 stories, the album depicts Maine fishermen and woodsmen with dry, classic humor and set the tone of direction of the genre for decades. The 13 rib-tickling tracks include "Gagnon" and "Harry Startles Wiscasset."

Track List for The Return of Bert and I:

The Return of Bert and I

Directions

Gagnon

The Return of Virgil Bliss

Harry Sleeps at L.L. Bean

By a Fluke

The Silent Chain Saw

M'am Hacket's Compost Heap

At the Graveyard

The Stove with the Powerful Draft

The Captain and the Lady

The Chicken Truck

Harry Startles Wiscasset

Author Bio

Robert Bryan helped launch Bert and I with Dodge in part by drawing upon his memories from childhood summers spent at his beloved Tunk Lake, where he was fascinated by the area's stories and storytellers. Like Dodge, Bob was born and raised in New York and graduated from Yale. Unlike Dodge, who continued as full-time performer, Rev. Robert A. Bryan used earnings from the early records in the 1960s to help launch and grow another dream – the Quebec-Labrador Foundation, which provides support to remote communities mainly in Quebec and Labrador. Bob continues as a major force at QLF and remains involved in the continued life of Bert and I. Marshall "Mike" Dodge stands undeniably as a godfather of Down East humor, bringing an energy and imagination to the stage that took him from a small Connecticut studio to his standing as the premier "New England" humorist of his era, before he was tragically killed by a hit-and-run driver in Hawaii in 1982. He was just 45. Mike was born in New York, attended high school in New Hampshire (where he first heard "Down East humor"), and graduated from Yale, where he studied philosophy. It was at Yale in 1958 that he and Bob Bryan cut the first Bert and I album and launched what is now a Maine icon.