Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
If I had a briefcase that awesome, I'd hang onto it for 35 years, too.

Announcer: Stan Freberg modestly presents The United States of America!

Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America is (currently) a two volume themed comedy album which presents the history of the United States of America as a series of comedy sketches, from the first voyage of Christopher Columbus up through World War I.

The first volume (entitled Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America: Volume One - The Early Years) was released in 1961, with a second volume planned for the country's bicentennial in 1976, but did not come out until 1996, twenty years after the planned release.

While Freberg promised in the liner notes of Volume Two that the third volume wouldn't take another thirty-five years to release (for one thing, he didn't think he'd be around that long), due to the death of his wife and his own death in 2015, the project has been shelved, probably permanently.

Tropes used in Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America include:

Lincoln: Yes, terrible book. Awful.

  • The Other Darrin: Corey Burton took over for the deceased Paul Frees as the narrator for Volume 2.
  • Punny Name: General Electric. Running Water.
  • Refusal of the Call: Barbara Fritchie thinks "Stonewall" Jackson can find something to shoot other than her old, grey head.
  • Rule of Funny: Everything. To wit: Why is Norman Rockwell in the American Revolution? Why are the same two guys responsible for multiple events in world history? Why would there be a General named Electric interested in the first light bulb? Rule of Funny.
  • Running Gag:

Fanfare
"What was that?'
"French Horns"

As you listen to this album you'll soon begin to understand why Stan Freberg flunked American history in high school.

  • Single-Stanza Song: In two places.
    • The Tin Pan Alley sketch in Volume Two consists of two failed Tin Pan Alley songwriters doing a medley of their greatest hits.
    • The song "There'll Never Be Another War" consists of two different versions of the chorus, depending on which sketch it follows.
  • Tempting Fate: Both the American Civil War and World War I end with the song "There'll Never Be Another War."
  • The Theme Park Version: The events in the album are ostensibly based on American history.
  • Title Drop: An entire sketch about Stephen Foster having writer's block consists almost entirely of nothing but titles of his songs.
  • Those Two Guys: Charlie and his companion are the cause of numerous catastrophes from the minor (making the wrong bird at the first Thanksgiving) to the major (sinking the Lusitania).
  • Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Very loosely. I'm pretty sure Norman Rockwell wasn't alive during the American Revolution.
  • What Could Have Been: Despite a wide fanbase, some of whom are producers (Stephen Spielberg), actors (Richard Dreyfuss and John Goodman), musicians (Paul McCartney), or even Broadway singers (Tyne Daly), Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America has yet to hit Broadway.
  • Who Writes This Crap?:

Columbus: We going out on that joke?
Indian: No, we do reprise of song, that help.
Columbus: But not much.
Indian: Not much, no.

[1]

  1. ↑ Mutiny, mutiny, mutiny.
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