Judd: What did you study in college?
Jay: I don’t know. My mom has the degree in the living room. Ah, speech therapy. I went to college and I said, “What requires the least amount of studying?” Speech courses had—at the end of the year you had to give a talk. I figured, well, I can do that. So I get up and give my talk and get a C and then get out of there.
Judd: So you’re doing comedy at that point, at the end of college. You knew that was what you were going into?
Jay: Well, I was also a Mercedes-Benz mechanic at the time. I didn’t have any expenses. I didn’t have any lifestyle to maintain. I liked doing it. I would drive hundreds and hundreds of miles to work for free for four or five minutes. I didn’t know if I would ever really make a living at it. It was just a fun way to screw around. I’d make thirty bucks a week or forty bucks a week at best. But that was enough to live on. I had a junky car, and it was fun, you know. But that’s the whole key. You gotta keep moving. You gotta work every kind of job there is. I used to do old people’s birthday parties for the state. Which is real depressing. I had a friend who worked in social services in Massachusetts, and I’d get like eight bucks to drive out to Duxbury, to an old folks’ home. And it would be like, (quietly) “Bessy, we have a comedian here, you know.” Oh, it was real. I mean they were nice old people. And they would kind of look at ya. It was sad. Real bizarre.
Judd: You sound like you’ve played, like, any kind of place where people congregate anywhere.
Jay: What do you mean, I still do.
Judd: What are the other strange places?
Jay: Everything. Indian reservations, any kind of job I could get. You know, that’s it. You learn from the bad jobs. You don’t learn anything from the good jobs. When you go into a club and everybody’s happy to see you and you do your jokes, and the jokes that normally don’t work, work, you say, well, this is terrible. Give me a place that’s awful. Like I was in New Mexico a while ago at an Indian reservation, just a very strange setup. Nice people, but—and they laughed. So I said, Okay, this stuff is gonna work on the Letterman show.
Judd: And how did you progress to better places?
Jay: Well, what happens is you get better money after a while. The places don’t get any better. You know, it just depends how much respect you get.
Judd: How did your comedy change over the years?
Jay: How? Well, I don’t know. I mean, you just get better the more you do. The real trick is to listen to it and throw out everything that’s not funny. You’ve interviewed a lot of comedians, you’ve seen a lot of comedians. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of new people, too. And I’m always amazed when I go to clubs and I see new comedians, and night after night they do the same jokes that don’t work. If a joke doesn’t work, you just get rid of it and do something else. Better you do eight minutes of really funny stuff than sixteen minutes of hit-and-miss, you know. That really seems to be the whole key to it. You bring a tape recorder, you tape it, you say, Gee, every night, this kind of gets a laugh, but not really. Well, get rid of it. It’s not etched in gold, you know.
Judd: And when did you start doing talk shows like Mike Douglas or Dinah Shore?
Jay: First show I ever did was Merv Griffin. Then about a year and a half went by where I didn’t do anything. Then I did The Tonight Show, and that’s where everything really started moving. The Tonight Show kind of officially puts you in show business, you know.
Judd: Is acting something you want to do?
Jay: I like doing this better. I mean, doing films is fun. I’m not as—when I do a scene in a film I have to stop and say to somebody, “Is that any good? How was that?” Whereas in comedy, I hear the laugh, great, I know it worked, thank you, goodbye, I’m outta there.
Judd: Right now you’re doing Letterman every month. Is he someone you knew before?
Jay: Yeah, I knew David years ago in L.A. We both used to write for Jimmie Walker.
Judd: You wrote for Jimmie Walker?
Jay: Yeah, yeah. We both used to write comedy. Jimmie was great. Any struggling comic, Jimmie would pay them a hundred bucks a week, and we’d meet once a week at his house, and throw jokes around and ideas, and—it worked out pretty good. He was real good to a lot of people that way.
Judd: What about comedy albums? Have you ever wanted to do that?
Jay: I don’t buy comedy albums myself, and I’m a comedian. So no, I don’t have any interest in them. I mean, if I was gonna take every joke I’ve ever done and never do it again, then I might put it on an album and sell it. I know, as a kid, I would get annoyed if I buy a comedy album and then go to a nightclub and see the guy and for an hour, I hear exactly what was on the album. I’d rather do it this way, kind of door-to-door comedy, and do my act.
Judd: How would you describe your comedy if you had to? It’s a little sarcastic and observational—
Jay: (Laughs) That about sums it up. Sarcastic and observational. I don’t know. I try not to—you know, I don’t even say I’m a comedian onstage. I just do it and let people form their own opinion about what it is. To sit and pontificate about the wonder of it all is a bit narcissistic. You just do it. As you move along with the business, you get a little bit more experienced. Like now I can go into Letterman, think of a joke that day, and do it on the show and there’s a ninety-nine percent chance it’ll work. Whereas the old days, you kind of had to go over the routine more and more. Working with an audience is like being an animal trainer. If you go in the ring and you’re a little bit nervous and your hand’s shaking, the animals sense it and they rip you apart. Same thing with audiences. If you get up there and go, “Well, hi, everybody…ah, how you doing…ah, ah, ah…,” people go, “Get off the stage!” They’re not gonna laugh. But if you use a little bit of authority and kind of take charge…
Judd: Is most of your humor worked out on the stage? Some people work it out on paper, and they think about it—
Jay: Oh no, I don’t have anything on paper. I’ve never written anything down. I suppose I should. Everybody says, Oh, you should make notes. I seem to remember the funnier stuff and forget the stuff that isn’t that funny. Once in a while I forget a funny one, but no, I don’t write anything down.
Judd: Why do you think in the last couple of years, tons and tons of clubs have been opening up all over the place?
Jay: It’s like anything else. Tons and tons of clubs are closing all over the place and a few good ones will remain. I mean, I think it’s great. It gives everybody a chance to work. There’s good and there’s bad sides to it. The good side is everybody gets a chance to work. The bad side is people that probably would not be in the business are still around.
Judd: Right now, you know, it’s like—there’s hundreds of people getting into it—
Jay: There’s thousands. When I used to audition at the Improv—you know, the Improv in New York would have audition nights, same as Catch a Rising Star. And we would go there and there would only be four people auditioning. Suddenly there are thousands. You go to the Improv on the audition nights and they’re lined up around the block.
Judd: So how do you keep it from getting boring?
Jay: It’s a job. You have to do your work, you know. It’s not a hard way to make a living, it’s a fun way. You make a lot of money for having a good time. And if you can’t get up for it, well then get out of the business. You know people say, Well, gee, what happens when you’re just not in the mood? Well, I mean, the worst I ever had was a bad hour. You know, most people have a bad day. If I can’t fake it for an hour…