Andy Griffith: "What It Was, Was Football"

By Richard K. Barry

Andy Griffith died a couple of days ago at the age of 86. Everyone knows him as Sheriff Andy Taylor on the old Andy Griffith Show on television or as Matlock in the legal drama that was on years later. Before any of that, Griffith had a career in comedy and on Broadway.

In 1953, he recorded a comedy monologue on a smaller label called "What it Was, Was Football." Things more or less took off from there.

Capitol Records released it around the same time as the original and put out 800,000 copies and, according to the Wiki, it's still one of the biggest selling comedy records of all time. It was a big enough deal that Griffith appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1954 due in large part to the popularity of the record.

The YouTube clip of this comes with illustrations and subtitles, which I guess is helpful, though I don't find Griffith's southern drawl that hard to understand.

I remember my father talking about it when I was a kid. I was thinking about posting it when Griffith died and then my sister sent the YouTube link from Florida, where she lives. We must have had the same thought.

It still stands up pretty well.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)