Word: freberg
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...Providence and Boston, plaintiffs' research has yielded some detail on the scope of church enterprises. But no matter how opulent their headquarters or how many seaside retreats their subsidiaries operate, the archdioceses and dioceses generally plead poverty--and tend to get away with it. Los Angeles attorney Katherine Freberg recalls trying in vain to get around California laws preventing access to church documents in a sex-abuse case last year. By releasing so little financial information, the Los Angeles archdiocese and Orange County diocese, reputed to be among the wealthiest in the country, were able to negotiate a relatively small...
...record was a Top 40 hit and launched Freberg on a burst of satiric inspiration. He shadowed the pop-music hits of the day with his own meticulously crafted parodies. Doing most of the voices himself, Freberg skewered the schmaltzy Johnnie Ray and the early Elvis, made fun of gabby folk singers (Rock Island Line) and Harry Belafonte's calypso shout (Banana Boat). Freberg's parodies were notable not just for their dead-on mimicry but also for the sophistication of their musical commentary. A jazz lover, Freberg fought a rearguard action against rock 'n' roll, which he considered undisciplined...
...Freberg was an enormously talented composer whose intricate rhymes and uncanny ear for song styles would have made him a Tin Pan Alley success even without the satire. On his great United States of America album, Freberg portrayed Ben Franklin as a prickly conservative who balked at signing Tom Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. The two founding fathers sing a number that includes this exchange...
...Freberg's parodies continue to gleam even as their subjects fade into history. Arthur Godfrey, the hugely popular star of 1950s radio, was the target of a 1953 Freberg cut, never before released but included in the boxed set. Godfrey may be all but forgotten, but Freberg's gag about his obsequious sidekick, who answers every comment with a knee-jerk, "That's right, Arthur," sums up a century of show-biz sycophancy...
...Freberg--who at 73 is living in Los Angeles and still does a syndicated radio show--likes to recall that St. George and the Dragonet, his chart-topping parody of Dragnet, was a big hit in Australia even before the TV show was seen there. Later, when it finally arrived, an Aussie fan came up to Freberg and marveled, "Somebody has gone and built a whole TV show around your record!" For a satirist, that's the Academy Award...