Chapter One

Okay, let me get something off my chest. When I wrote my first autobiography - 'My Life, My Love, My Hell', I took a lot of heat about not including much on my early childhood. One critic said, and I quote from the Chicago Tribune, "Carr's anxiousness to concentrate on his middling success imparts a truly detached quality to his life: it's as if he would have us believe (that he believes?) he was born grown and trilling - microphone in hand - on a stage in the Sands Hotel."

The fact that this particular critic later charged me with assault is a pretty good indicator of his lack of judgment. Back to the issue.

A lot of autobiographies begin by recounting the writer's childhood. I guess that makes sense, but there's a big problem - it's boring. Look, all kids are alike. They run around all day screaming and crying and slamming into trees. It's as if they all go to the same massive school that teaches them how to act like kids. My point is they don't do anything that's original. Plus, only a kid knows what it's like to be a kid - not some adult writing about what it's like. See what I mean?

The whole "I was born on a hot June night in a small cabin by a deep swamp in Georgia" strikes me as a lame way to begin a book. I mean, you can't recall your own birth, so all you're doing is just repeating someone else's recollection - so already the story is bullshit. Anyway, life doesn't begin when you're a kid: it begins when you're old enough to date.

Get my drift? Anyway, some of my childhood actually is in 'My Life, My Love, My Hell' - which I'm told is out of print because there are currently so many lazy pinheads who would rather read fiction than the real thing. Generally speaking, people have got stupider in the last fifty years. They think they're being interesting by talking about Picasso's use of pastels or politics in the Middle East, but I see the same articles in Time magazine - and that doesn't mean you know anything; it just means you can remember and repeat someone else's opinions.

Okay, already I'm digressing, but I seriously wonder if there was a kind of huge Moron Plague that infected America right after World War Two. Suddenly everyone began talking about how much they fucking weighed! Or they formed groups that played Scrabble on a regular basis. Young men began to think that golf was cool. And parents began calling their kids names like Biff and Skip and Troy. I mean, what the hell happened?

Alright, the early years - back to the time when I began dating. From an early age I was a celebrity and that made it very easy for me to meet girls. I was a radio star on Jack Benny's program. This was about 1948 so I was something like fourteen years old - right at that terrible period in life when a young man realizes there is this sick, twisted demon in his brain called 'Hormone' with whom he's going to be in a death-struggle for the next sixty years.

So I believed the easiest way to get girls was to exploit my celebrity - which I did. It's a funny thing: if a man is fat and ugly but famous, women will still consent to mate with him. But if a woman is famous and rich yet terrible looking, a man will have serious reservations about procreating with her, especially if his friends can find out. I regard this situation as a great mystery of life. It leads me to believe that women somehow associate happiness with power, whereas men associate happiness with good-looking broads. Women will gladly kiss a man with really bad teeth if it means that he will buy them a new dress. Are broads more forgiving or greedy? Anyway, it's a key difference - and something I discuss objectively in the chapter entitled 'Women Are Bloodsucking Thieves Who Want Your Soul".

But I'm not bitter. I think my problem with women is that I've always associated good looks with good times - which is dumb because most of the good looking broads I've met are among the biggest scumbags on the planet. There's a Cole Porter song that talks about a guy who's really depressed, but then everything changes when this woman turns around and he gets a full-front shot - "And then I suddenly see your fabulous face". I want to believe that. Sure, call me a fool, but chances are that I'm marginally smarter than you. Alright, let me get back to 1948.

When I was fourteen I met Stella McQueen. She was eighteen and an actress. Back then, women had a softer look about them: today, they are either starved or bloated - no in-between. But Stella was soft and she knew how to move. I remember watching her from the wings as she acted in these half-ass plays that were always the same - about a crotchety old man with crazy daughters who spends his time behaving like he's either got chronic constipation or diarrhea (I could never tell which) because nobody listens to him. In the end, the daughters marry some slim guys with nice hair named Willy or Freddie and the father begins to whimper and weep openly as he realizes how much he's going to miss everybody. Same crap every time and not a dry eye in the house.

So after the shows we would go walking hand-in-hand through Central Park (these were the days when people could walk in New York City without some drug-addled, snot-faced junkie twisting a penknife in their guts) and she would talk about her hopes and dreams and I would make many hidden references to hardcore sex. Things were working out just fine and I couldn't believe my good fortune, falling in love with a girl as pure as fresh-fallen snow.

My mother Queenie, whom I talk about in my first book, never liked Stella because she thought she was a prostitute - which was partly true, but hey, I've known hundreds of women who do exactly the same things as prostitutes yet fancy themselves as "ambitious" or whatever. Just look at these pinch-faced society types who don't even know their husbands' middle names. Jesus said "take it easy on prostitutes", that "they perform a valuable public service." And that's always been my attitude though I'm not a religious man. Anyway, my mother was a part-time prostitute so I can see why Stella was a sore point with her. People hate to look in a broken mirror.

Stella taught me wonderful things, many of which gave me intense pleasure. Then one day I went around to this apartment she shared with another actress and learned that my Stella had gone off to Hollywood with a famous actor. I was more surprised than depressed. But it seemed logical to me: this guy was handsome and rich and I was young and awkward and relatively poor. Anyway, Stella's roommate felt sorry for me and let me stay the night with her. In the morning I woke up fresh, energetic and positive, bolstered by a very powerful sense of rage and revenge. I vowed that never again would I expose my poor heart to this thing called love. Over the years, people have asked me, "Hey, when you sing sad songs, you're so believable. It's very delicate and touching. Where does it come from?" Well, I think it comes from falling for a scheming, lying, and rancid woman.

People have also asked me, 'What was Jack Benny really like?' Put it this way: I've met a lot of supposedly talented people in my life, but I've only met three undeniable geniuses - Jack Benny, Frank Sinatra and Lenny Bruce. Jack was a very vulnerable guy, very gentle. People today who watch these dumb-ass comics talking about politics or airplane rides or their stupid wives have no idea how they pale against a giant like Jack. It's like comparing Johnny Carson to Jay Leno. I mean, one guy makes the other look like a jabbering geek. I learned a lot from Jack, especially the notion that you have to be kind to people who are much more pathetic than yourself.

I was Jack's 'Tripple Tipple Kid'. You see, Tripple Tipple Soda (which went out of business long ago because their glass bottles kept busting on people's lips) was the show's sponsor - and it was my role to sing the Tripple theme song and maybe a few favorites of the day. So I got this reputation as a singer. Around 1950 a little record label in Memphis, called Silly Sally Records, decided to sign me for a recording contract. They had an idea that I could become a kind of Sinatra that would appeal to young girls.

I told Jack Benny my plans to become a recording star, and he reacted in a very atypical manner. He removed this small length of chain that he always carried in his pocket, and began whipping my neck and head. His face was all clenched up and he was sweating. I remember having blood running down my face and someone grabbing Jack, shouting, "For Christ's sake Benny, leave the boy alone," and Jack screaming, "He's leaving me! They all leave me! I make them what they are! Without me they're dog shit! You hear me? Dog shit!" But let me repeat, he was usually gentle.

So I left Benny and went to Memphis. It was 1950, I was about sixteen, and within three years almost everybody in America would know my face and - especially - my voice.