May 16, 1964 - Tom and Dick Smothers, two singing satirists who call themselves “a small folk-song group,” talked and sang their way amiably through a program at Carnegie Hall last night.
The Smothers Brothers have been seen in cabarets in New York in the last few years, but this was their first major program in a concert hall.
Even if their satire is mild and directed mostly at folk-song pretentions and each other, they left a pleasing impression as comics and musicians and were warmly appreciated by the audience.
Their musical work was graced by an expert sense of timing, secure instrumental work on guitar and bass, and a pleasant blend of voices.
Their songs, however, were merely vehicles for their forays in humor. The over-long ethnic introductions to folk songs were burlesqued, the group-participation craze was spoofed, and they used quick and jolting changes of musical mood. This all added up to a diverting evening of neither high nor low satire, but something rather pleasant in between.
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