Stan Freberg

Gifted with both one of the all-time great radio-announcer voices and the barbed mind of an unrepentant social satirist, Stan Freberg was a singular artist. A familiar voiceover artist best known for his work on Warner Brothers cartoons and as the originator of Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent for Bob Clampett's "Beany and Cecil," Freberg also scored several hit singles through the 1950s, with biting parodies of popular hits like Johnnie Ray's "Cry," Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" and the Drifters' "The Great Pretender." These were interspersed with even more pointed sketch-comedy recordings like "Point of Order," a vicious backhand to right-wing demagogue Senator Joseph McCarthy, and "Green Chri$tma$," a rebuke to holiday commercialism so stinging that Capitol Records originally refused to release it. Not that Freberg thought advertising was in itself evil: beginning in the mid-'50s, he became a visionary advertising man, the first to bring humor and surrealism to radio and television ads, with slogans like "Today the pits, tomorrow the wrinkles!" for a brand of pitted prunes and "Can I have a bite of your pencil?" for a termite exterminator. The timelessly inventive Freberg's career stretched from World War II well into the 21st century. Stan Freberg died on April 7, 2015, at the age of 88.