Maine Humor, Bert & I and Laughter

Tim Sample, left and Bob Bryan, the creator of the Bert & I Maine humor routines, in 2012. Bryan, now 85 began telling traditional Maine stories in 1957. Bert & I photo

Anytime of year is a good time for a little humor. The new (2013) CD release of Bert & I Rebooted with Bob Bryan and Tim Sample is noted here with seasonal good timing given the roots of the original Bert & I recordings and Bryan’s career.

Bob Bryan is a humorist who first performed, developed and recorded Maine humor with Marshall Dodge in 1957. Bryan’s family had a camp on Tunk Lake in Franklin, Maine. It was during his time at Tunk Lake where Bryan heard old-time Maine stories. It was the phrasing, dry wit, slow-breaking ball punch lines and Maine Yankee drawl that captivated Bryan’s imagination. Dodge’s roots were in New Hampshire.

Bryan was a divinity student in college when he and Dodge began telling the stories Bryan had heard in Maine to friends. Their audiences found them so hilarious they began creating some of their own stories and soon were performing locally and beyond. That led to a recording made to be given to their relatives at Christmas and that recording led to a commercial recording in 1958 that became popular in the Northeast and nationally. Radio programs from Portland, Maine, to Phoenix, Arizona, played the Bert & I recording.

As a clergyman fresh out of Yale Divinity School, Bob bought a floatplane with proceeds from Bert and I, established a flying ministry for the Anglican Church of Canada, and launched the Quebec-Labrador Foundation to further assist northern coastal communities. His family home in coastal Ipswich, Mass., served as headquarters for Bert and I, Inc., and Bob’s late wife, Faith, ran the business. Bryan, who flew from Ipswich into the remote areas he served, was known as the flying parson.

Throughout this period, the recordings continued to sell, although Bryan and Dodge rarely performed together. Marshall Dodge was a folklorist who continued to perform solo routines nationally, adding other regional accents with similar stories until 1982.

Bryan wrote a memoir published by Down East Books titled Robert Bryan: The Flying Parson of Labrador and the Real Story of Bert & I. The book has a few pages about Bert & I, but is focused more on his work as a priest and especially about flying, which he enjoyed. He did a lot of flying and some of it into remote areas with primitive airfields.

The 2013 CD was recorded by the 82-year-old Bob Bryan and comedian Tim Samples, the man Charles Kuralt called “Maine’s Humorist Laureate” and who credits both Marshall and Bob as important mentors, in a Portland studio and in Bryan’s boathouse. Bryan’s story as the flying parson bringing good cheer to the remote villages of the northern hinterland seemed like good timing for December, an especially good time for a little humor.