'Diginfinity' explores life of Lord Richard Buckley
If he hadn't died unexpectedly, some say suspiciously, in the fall of 1960 at age 54, Lord Richard Buckley would surely be as well known today as Tom Leher, Don Rickles, James Taylor, Ken Kesey, the Grateful Dead, all heavily influenced by His Hipness. That's the impression left by Oliver Trager's "Diginfinity! The Life and Art of Lord Buckley" (Welcome Rain Publishers, $30), a big, ramshackle book that pays full tribute to an oversized, ramshackle life.
Along with assuming the manners of a royal court, Buckley freely dispensed titles of nobility, a great bebop goof. Many people assumed from his recordings he was British and black, and some, notably Henry Miller, who had mentioned Buckley in two books and compared him to Rimbaud, were indignant to discover he was neither.
Ed Sullivan was a fan, and had him regularly on his show.
For those who don't remember or haven't encountered this most vagrant of comedians in his many vagrant afterlifes, Lord Buckley performed "hipsemantic translations" of Bible stories and classics — Mark Antony's funeral oration ("Hipsters, Flipsters and Finger-Poppin' Daddies, Knock me your lobes! I come to lay Caesar out, Not to hip you to him"), Jonah in the whale, and his signature number, The Naz, relating three miracles of Jesus — who "told them to dig infinity, and they dug it." These and half a dozen others are included on a CD accompanying this book.
Calling Buckley a comedian is itself a disservice (although he regularly performed standing somersaults on stage). Lord Buckley was one of these indigenous, uncategorical American carny artists, a fraternity that includes Poe and Elvis, who aspire to the poetic whatever their field.
Born 1906 in Tuolumme, a tough mining town in the California Sierras, Buckley started out emceeing dance marathons, teamed with Red Skelton, whose portrayal is one of many small treats in this book.
Al Capone supposedly said that Buckley was the only man who could make him laugh—as solid an endorsement as any in show business. Frank Sinatra reportedly got the idea for the Rat Pack from Buckley's royal court. Following a stellar Sinatra performance, Buckley, not to be upstaged, took to his leg with a saw.
Trager seems to have consulted every book, article, interview even mentioning Lord Buckley, interviewed more than 120 people (nice work, interviewing Robin Williams and Wavy Gravy about Lord Buckley). No scholar could have produced a book this thorough. Trager calls his project a vision quest, and it's more an archive than a book — "biography, oral history, autobiography, scrapbook, anthology, and critique." It even offers a Lord Buckley website .
Whether "Diginfinity" will waken new interest in His Hipness remains to be seen, but it's a genuine treat for anyone interested in American show business. What a story.
Why Buckley didn't become more widely known is itself no mystery. "Too healthy for sick humor, too Western for New York humor, too gentile for Jewish humor, too generous for sarcasm and too ebullient for satire, a total anachronism in the old days," Albert Goldman wrote in the late Sixties. By default and a kind of negation of fame, Buckley's life and career highlight a whole era of American popular culture, right before the Civil Rights Movement and the emergence of hipsterism as a consumer quantity. "People are going to rediscover Lord Buckley," Jonathan Winters told Trager. "If you're a fan of his, you're a fan for life."
Or as his Lordship would say: "The only way you know you're cool is if people are still talking about you."
David Walton teaches writing and popular culture at the University of Pittsburgh. His novel "Ride" will appear next month from the Carnegie-Mellon University Press.
