Andy Griffith

What's Actually in This Catalog

The ten recordings catalogued here under "Andy Griffith" are audio recordings of his early 1950s comedy monologues — not episodes of the long-running television sitcom. Titles like "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," "Cleopatra," "Columbus," "Carmen," and "White Lightning" represent Griffith's work as a standalone comic performer, years before Mayberry existed. The entry catalogued as "So This is Football" corresponds to the famous monologue known commercially as "What It Was, Was Football," one of the biggest-selling comedy records of its era. These recordings capture Andy Griffith at the moment his career was taking shape, and they're a genuinely different thing from the television show that made him a household name.

The Man Behind the Monologues

Andrew Samuel Griffith was born on June 1, 1926, in Mount Airy, North Carolina. He originally planned to become a Moravian minister, but drama pulled him in a different direction. He joined the Carolina Playmakers at the University of North Carolina, where he studied from 1944 to 1949, and after graduating he worked as a high school music teacher. The performing instinct was already there — he just hadn't found the right vehicle yet.

That vehicle arrived in 1953, when Griffith recorded "What It Was, Was Football" for Colonial Records in Chapel Hill. The monologue is delivered from the point of view of a bewildered country preacher trying to make sense of a college football game he stumbled upon. It's a fish-out-of-water premise played with absolute commitment — the humor comes entirely from the narrator's earnest confusion, never from winking at the audience. Capitol Records picked up distribution, and the record eventually sold nearly 800,000 copies, peaking at number nine on the Billboard charts in February 1954. By any measure, it remains one of the biggest-selling comedy records ever made.

The other monologues in this collection apply the same basic approach to different subjects. Griffith takes on Shakespeare — "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet," "Cleopatra" — as well as historical material like "Columbus" and operatic subjects like "Carmen." The joke, broadly, is the collision between the outsider narrator's plain-spoken perspective and the grand subject he's trying to describe. The comedy is character-driven from the ground up. There's no setup-punchline machinery here; it's sustained performance, closer to storytelling than to stand-up.

How These Recordings Fit His Career

The monologues didn't just sell records — they launched everything that followed. The national attention Griffith received from "What It Was, Was Football" led directly to Broadway. In 1955 he made his stage debut as Airman Will Stockdale in No Time for Sergeants, a role that fit the same good-natured, slightly-out-of-his-depth persona he'd developed in the monologues. His screen debut came in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd in 1957 — a dramatically different kind of role, but one that demonstrated real range.

It was the No Time for Sergeants period that also connected him with Don Knotts, who had worked with Griffith on both the Broadway and film versions. That relationship would matter enormously a few years later. When Griffith's television sitcom was in development, Knotts came to him with a suggestion: the Sheriff needed a comic deputy sideman. Knotts auditioned for creator Sheldon Leonard and was offered a five-year contract. The monologue recordings, in that sense, set a chain of events in motion that shaped American television comedy for the better part of a decade.

The Television Show — Context for the Catalog

Since the name "Andy Griffith" almost inevitably calls the sitcom to mind, some context helps. The Andy Griffith Show aired on CBS from October 3, 1960, to April 1, 1968, running 249 half-hour episodes across eight seasons. It originated as a backdoor pilot within The Danny Thomas Show — a February 1960 episode called "Danny Meets Andy Griffith," in which Sheriff Andy Taylor arrests Danny Williams for running a stop sign. General Foods, which was already sponsoring The Danny Thomas Show, committed to the spin-off immediately. Sheldon Leonard created and executive-produced the series; Aaron Ruben produced through 1965, and Bob Ross took over through the final season.

The show was set in the fictional town of Mayberry, widely understood to have been modeled on Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy, North Carolina. The neighboring town referenced on the show, "Mt. Pilot," was presumably based on Pilot Mountain, near Mount Airy. Sheriff Andy Taylor navigated small-town law enforcement with a light touch and a sharp sense of humor. His deputy, Barney Fife — played by Knotts — provided a different comic register: anxious, officious, and deeply well-meaning. Bee Taylor, Andy's aunt and housekeeper played by Frances Bavier, held the household together, and Andy's son Opie, played by Ron Howard, gave the show much of its emotional grounding.

The production filmed at Desilu Studios, with exterior scenes shot at Forty Acres in Culver City and woodsy sequences at Franklin Canyon north of Beverly Hills. The theme music, "The Fishin' Hole," was composed by Earle Hagen, who also performed the whistling in the opening and closing credits. During its entire run, the show ranked no worse than seventh in the seasonal Nielsen ratings, and it held the number-one spot when it ended in 1968.

Knotts won five Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy during his five seasons as Barney Fife, then left to pursue a film career — returning for five guest appearances in the later seasons. Bavier won an Emmy as well, for a combined total of six between the two of them. The show produced two spin-offs: Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which ran from 1964 to 1969, and Mayberry R.F.D., which continued in the same Monday time slot from 1968 to 1971 with Ken Berry as the lead.

After the Show

Griffith didn't disappear from radio after the television years. In 1979 and 1980 he hosted the Tuesday "Comedy Night" edition of the Sears Radio Theatre, a CBS Radio anthology series — a late-career return to the medium that had helped establish him in the early 1950s.

Ron Howard, who was a child when he played Opie, went on to star in Happy Days from 1974 to 1984, then built a career as a film director, with credits including Cocoon (1985) and A Beautiful Mind (2001). Griffith himself returned to television in a sustained way as attorney Benjamin Matlock in Matlock, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1992 and then on ABC from 1992 to 1995.

Andy Griffith died on July 3, 2012, at his home on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. He was 86. The monologue recordings in this catalog come from the very beginning of that long career — a young performer from a small North Carolina town, figuring out what he could do with a microphone and a character voice, and in the process discovering something that would resonate for decades.