Bert and I... and Other Stories from Down East

The iconic Bert and I stories were first created by Yale University students Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan in the late 1950s and performed around campus. The two amateur storytellers soon recorded a short ten-inch album of eleven stories for friends and family, but ultimately pressed just a few hundred. However, growing popularity prompted them in 1958 to record and release the seminal commercial album of New England humor and storytelling-Bert and I ... And Other Stories From Down East. More than fifty years later, their milestone album has been digitally remastered for this special CD edition, which also includes three bonus stories taken from the private ten-incher that preceded the first commercial record. These three stories did not appear on the commercial album or were changed. Eventually, Dodge and Bryan recorded three more Bert and I albums together. They remain the godfathers of Down East humor.

Robert Bryan (1931-2018) helped launch Bert and I with Marshall Dodge in part by drawing upon his memories from childhood summers spent at his beloved Tunk Lake, where he was fascinated by the area's stories and storytellers. Like Dodge, Bob was born and raised in New York and graduated from Yale. Unlike Dodge, who continued as full-time performer, Rev. Robert A. Bryan used earnings from the early records in the 1960s to help launch and grow another dream--the Quebec-Labrador Foundation, which provides support to remote communities, mainly in Quebec and Labrador. Marshall "Mike" Dodge (1935-1982) stands undeniably as a godfather of Down East humor, bringing an energy and imagination to the stage that took him from a small Connecticut studio to his standing as the premier "New England" humorist of his era, before he was tragically killed by a hit-and-run driver in Hawaii in 1982. He was just 45. Mike was born in New York, attended high school in New Hampshire (where he first heard "Down East humor"), and graduated from Yale, where he studied philosophy. It was at Yale in 1958 that he and Bob Bryan cut the first Bert and I album and launched what is now a Maine icon.