David Gardner (June 11, 1926 - September 22, 1983), known as Brother Dave Gardner, was a U.S. comedian and singer.A Tennessee native, Gardner studied drumming beginning at age 13. After a one-semester term as a Southern Baptist ministerial student at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, he began a musical career as a drummer and occasional vocalist. After a pair of 'demo' singles for Decca Records around 1956, he had a 1958 Top-20 hit on OJ Records with "White Silver Sands."It was his comedy routines between songs, however, that brought him to the attention of RCA Records artist & producer Chet Atkins. The eventual result was a comedy album with a couple of songs on it, Rejoice Dear Hearts! (1959), which propelled Gardner into the national eye, along with the first of several appearances on national television talk/variety shows such as The Tonight Show.After 6 albums for RCA Victor Records, he made 2 for Capitol Records, and then others for lesser labels.He had a role as a Southern preacher in the 1978 made-for-TV film Big Bob Johnson's Fantastic Speed Circus. He was cast in a B-level movie, and was just beginning work on it, at the time of his death.He was twice married; his first wife, Millie, preceded him in death, and he was married to his second wife, Judy, at the time of his death. He had two children from his first marriage--son Dave II (deceased, 1999) and daughter Candace.During his brief time as a superstar among the U.S.A.'s socially-aware 'stand-up' comedians of the late 1950's and early 1960's, he successfully fused a 'stream-of-consciousness' style of addressing subjects (e.g., Lord Buckley, Jean Shepherd) with a classic Southern-American 'storyteller/liars'-bench' manner (e.g., Andy Griffith, and the later Justin Wilson and Jerry Clower), setting himself apart a bit from contemporaries such as Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and Shelley Berman.Gardner mixed one-liner stand-alone 'zingers' (e.g., "What will the Preachers do when the Devil is saved??"; "Contentment is Riches, and Complaint is Poverty, and the worst I ever had was wonderful!"; "Let them that don't want none, have memories of never gittin' any!") with satirical musings on his contemporary political scene, and also told traditional Southern comedy stories. Most notable among these were "The Motorcycle Story;" "When John Gets Here" (also called "The Haunted House"); and, his version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as set in Rome, Georgia (U.S. State).Gardner made a good deal of his comic "mileage" off of his boosting of all things in Southern-U.S.A. culture, making him a sort of latter-day version of Kenny Delmar's "Senator Claghorn" character on Fred Allen's classic radio show. He smoked cigarettes throughout his routines, bragging on them as "a Southern product." He spoke of a Southerner's culinary fondness for "a Moon pie and an R.C. [ R.C. Cola ]." Anticipating the bottled-water market by almost 30 years, he noted that, at Hot Springs, Arkansas, he had seen the so-called "stupid, ignorant Southerners sellin' water to them brilliant Yankees." He said that the difference between a Northern Baptist and a Southern Baptist was that the Northern one said, "There ain't no Hell," and the Southern one said, "The hell there ain't."* Rejoice Dear Hearts! (RCA Victor, 1959) * Kick Thy Own Self (RCA Victor, 1960) * Ain't That Weird? (RCA Victor, 1961) * Did You Ever? (RCA Victor, 1962) * All Seriousness Aside (RCA Victor, 1963) * It's Bigger Than Both Of Us (RCA Victor, 1963) * It Don't Make No Difference (Capitol, 1964) * It's All In How You Look At "It" (Capitol, 1965?) * Hip-Ocracy (Capitol/Tower, 1968) * Out Front (Tonka, 1970) * Brother Dave Gardner's New Comedy Album (4 Star, 1974) * Brother Dave Gardner In Person (Delta, 1980) * The Very Best Of Brother Dave Gardner (Landmark, 1999)
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