Ernie Kovacs collection delivers lots of laughs

A true Philadelphia comedy original (with musical high-jinks) finally gets his props with a terrific box-set release today.

We'll also be zeroing in on more traditional music attractions, such as Steve Miller, The "Glee" Warblers and kids fave Brady Rymer.

ERNIE WHO? He died before his time - in a car crash at age 42. And truth is, Ernie Kovacs was never all that popular even in his lifetime - too kooky for mainstream America to wrap its collective arms around. For many, Kovacs' demolitions of bad actors and cheap B-movies, cheesy commercials and doofy game shows must have made him seem like an anarchist.

Yet for those who "got" his rule-breaking style of humor, at turns surreal and anarchistic, tech-savvy and satiric, there was no figure more important in their comedic development (or devolution) than Kovacs (and maybe the "gang of idiots" at Mad magazine, for which, no surprise, he also wrote). And it's truly a thrill that "Television's Original Genius" is being honored today with a most elaborate, six-DVD-set release, "The Ernie Kovacs Collection" (Shout! Factory, A).

"His style was sometimes scattergun, often hit-or-miss, because he was so experimental and improvisational," analyzed comedian Robert Klein in a recent interview. "But a lot of the visual stuff and characters Kovacs came up with were amazing. And he just seemed such a likable guy. As a kid, I wanted to be his friend."

Also jumping early on the Kovacs bandwagon were the likes of Chevy Chase, David Letterman (who'd later even hire Kovacs' announcer, Bill Wendell), Mel Brooks and Monty Python's American interloper Terry Gilliam, who exported (among other things) Kovacs' mastery of comic contrariness. ("So you have five children then?" "I have no children." "No children?" "Well, just three.")

After breaking into radio in his hometown of Trenton, Kovacs landed in Philadelphia in the early 1950s at NBC affiliate WPTZ-TV 3 (later renamed KYW), then at 1619 Walnut St. (where Temple Center City now resides). Here, he pioneered the concept of the two-hour early-morning show, later to be copied by NBC with the "Today" show. Ernie also hosted a 15-minute (!) midafternoon show from Philly carried on the fledgling NBC network. And it's here that he first teamed up with comedic sidekick and singer Edie (then "Edith") Adams, later to become the second Mrs. Kovacs.

A couple of years later, Ernie and Edie moved their shtick to New York, where the workaholic did both radio and TV shows (sometimes simultaneously) for CBS and the short-lived Dumont Network. Kovacs became the regular fill-in for first "Tonight" show host Steve Allen (who also copped Kovacs' shtick, such as his "Mr. Question Man" routine, later reborn as subsequent "Tonight" host Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent).

Kovacs' golden age came in the early 1960s on ABC, when the development of videotape and special-effects technology allowed his visual imagination to go hog-wild. He even won Emmys for those ABC specials, though that death thing (Jan. 13, 1962) really proved a bad career move.

From the start, Kovacs was loose and goosey, disrespectful of the TV medium. He'd poke his nose against the camera lens, drift off the set so viewers could see "behind the scenes" and even wandered outdoors to poke around behind the building on Sansom Street. Stage props - like a suit of armor - could come alive and bite him. He'd tilt his desk-set platform and camera at an angle, then pour milk into a glass so it would seem to fly off to the side, defying gravity. Another of his most memorable (and oft cited) sight gags was smoking his ubiquitous cigar underwater, with both bubbles and smoke pouring from his mouth.

From the start, Kovacs' house "band" consisted of a couple of guys in gorilla costumes, complete with deadpan masks, who always played the same tune and banged each other upside the head. Later, they'd become three - the beloved Nairobi Trio. So was it mere coincidence that first "Today" show host Dave Garroway featured a real-life monkey (J. Fred Muggs) as his sidekick?

Kovacs also had a pet ant - invisible to the naked eye - and put his hands in the puppet heads of the Kapusta Kids - quite popular with younger viewers like Klein, who also loved Kovacs' prissy poet character, Percy Dovetonsils, "modeled after Tennessee Williams," Klein believes.

Edie Adams did impressions, too - including a great Marilyn Monroe - and she sang a lot on the show. Most of that vocalizing has been edited out of the new video-disc collection, ostensibly for cost reasons. Yet we still get a great sense of how much music meant to Kovacs, with his use of (public domain) classical works, "Mack the Knife" (in the original creepy German) and the cocktail jazz of Esquivel to accompany segments and even entire, 30-minute programs of totally mimed, off-the-wall, sight-gag humor. Why even the Dutch Masters cigar spots that Kovacs dreamed up for the commercial breaks were funny and dialogue-free.

And guess what? They're smoking, still.

ANOTHER BIG BOX OF LAUGHS: Also newly out and courting our deviant comedic heart is the 18-DVD box set "100% Complete Bull" (Classic Media, B+) honoring the cartoon foolery that was/is "Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends." Cheer as squirrel and moose take on Cold War spies Boris and Natasha and our own political quagmire.

Good, too, for many chuckles (and the worst word-slinging outside the pun-itentiary) are those twisted Aesop Fables, Fractured Fairytales, Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties and the adventures of the brilliant, time machine-traveling dog Mr. Peabody and his pet boy Sherman (soon to be a major motion picture).

While much of this stuff has been out before on VHS and DVD, this set marks the first time that final-season five has come home again. And the whole shebang's been newly remastered for improved color and sound, said Tiffany Ward, daughter/protector of the legacy for her late dad, Bill Ward. It was he who also dreamed up "Crusader Rabbit" and the name/logo for "Cap'n Crunch" cereal and trained many a future sitcom writer.

SONIC TREATS: Uh, yeah, there's some good new-music CDs out this week, too.

The Steve Miller Band will have you boogalooing down Broad Street with "Let Your Hair Down," (Roadrunner, B+) - from the dance sensation name-dropper "Snatch It Back and Hold It" to covers of bluesy finger-poppers first made popular by Canned Head and Mose Allison ("Love the Life I Live").

Also warming our blues heart: Tracy Nelson's "Victim of The Blues" (Delta Groove, B). She starts out rough and husky - making us fear the voice of "Mother Earth" has bit the dirt - then pulls a remarkable recovery.

Voices are absolutely pristine and glistening, maybe even too perfect for words on " 'Glee' presents The Warblers" (Columbia, B) - gathering the best a capella performances from the second (all boys) TV troupe. They got me good, though, with sky-high soaring treatments of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs."

Special people deserve special music. Children's music fave Brady Rymer serves up a good- time, rockin' bunch on "Love Me for Who I Am" (Bumblin' Bee Records, B), with cute 'n' pointed titles like "Who Wants to Wear Shoes?" "I Don't Like Change" and "Tune Out" (featuring Bernie Worrell).

Also, a really big bunch of talents - including surprise high point Scarlett Johansson (with "One Whole Hour"), Antony, Ben Harper, Norah Jones, Bob Weir, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, Devendra Banhart and Martin Carthy - are singing new songs by J. Ralph on the soundtrack to "Wretches & Jabberers" (Rumormill Records, B-). The film trails two well-functioning autistics on their global mission.