The Stand-Up Comic Who Had the Highest-Selling Comedy Album

Mort Sahl’s album At Sunset has been referred to as “the earliest example of modern stand-up comedy on record.” But although it was recorded in 1955, it wasn’t released until 1958. In between then, Redd Foxx put out an album called Laff Of The Party Volume 1 that consisted entirely of him doing stand-up. Regardless of which record technically counts as the first of its kind, everyone is in agreement that stand-up albums as we know them date back to the 1950s. And a lot of comedians have come and gone since then, including some very prolific ones.

Bill Cosby and Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, to name a couple, released over 20 albums in their careers, and George Carlin came close to matching that number. Would you believe that none of them even cracked the top 20 when Billboard compiled its list of the best-selling comedy albums back in 2014? In fact, between the time Nielsen SoundScan first started tracking album sales in 1991 and 2014, there was one other stand-up comedian who stood well ahead of everyone else in that department. And on top of that, he’s only released six solo albums in his entire career.

Adam Sandler might have landed the No. 1 spot on the list for his 1996 album, What the Hell Happened to Me? (the one featuring “The Chanukah Song”), but that’s a collection of songs rather than a stand-up album. It was Jeff Foxworthy’s Games Rednecks Play, released in 1995, that held the distinction of being the highest-selling stand-up comedy album as of May 4, 2014. The album had sold 2,087,000 copies up until that point. The runner-up? Foxworthy’s 1993 effort, You Might Be a Redneck If…, with 2,055,000 sold at the time.

The closest stand-up release to Foxworthy’s numbers-wise was Dane Cook’s 2005 album Retaliation, which had sold 1,404,000 by then. Billboard’s list also gives us a clear idea of how popular the Blue Collar Comedy troupe was at the time, with Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, and a Blue Collar compilation filling out the top 20. It’s worth pointing out that these comedians aren’t as popular as they once were, and physical album sales have declined significantly over the years, so there is a possibility that other people could be creeping up behind them (if they haven’t surpassed some of them already). However, no one has officially beaten Foxworthy’s numbers just yet, and in recent years his total album sales were reported to be anywhere from over 8 million to more than 13 million.