Track Listing

1. Sneakers
2. Street Football
3. Water Bottle
4. Christmas Time
5. Giant
6. Oops!
7. Lone Ranger
8. Ralph Jameson
9. Medic
10. My Pet Rhinoceros
11. Half Man
12. Rigor Mortis
13. Neanderthal Man
14. T.V. Football
15. Seattle

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2251 in Music
• Released on: 1998-04-28
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live

Amazon.com
Here's a slice of Cosby before he became a major television star. At this point in time, the main appeal of I Started Out as a Child is its innocence. Recorded live at a Chicago club in 1964, the disc is a product of a now-quaint American scene, as yet untouched by the radical social changes that were just around the corner. Cosby pulls in the listener by introducing his only mildly humorous stories in a warm, intimate tone. Then he switches to using a variety of animated voices and vocal sound effects to get laughs from a responsive audience. If you want to enjoy the gentle ambiance and warmth of another time, this CD is for you. However, Cosby's at-times charming, skilled performance isn't enough to make this dated material funny. --Fred Cisterna

Customer Reviews

You got to Hell, Kimosabe!
This album by Bill Cosby was released in 1964. It consists of 15 short routines (the album is only 30 minutes long). Cosby is always funny, but this album is a bit less funny than usual. Probably because the routines are so short, they don't have time to build. Some of that may be the fault of whoever edited the album, because there seem to be a lot of abrupt cuts during the performance. But Cos is still funny, especially when talking about his childhood. The "Street Football" routine is a classic. Fans of Cos will dig it.

This is Bill Cosby doing what he does best
This, Cosby's second album, deals with his childhood and the fun he had. Listen to him recall playing street football, owning a pet rhinocerous, going through his drunken father's pants for change...There are also more contemporary situations: He talks about being a medic in the Navy, playing football on TV, and he discusses on the sickness of witnessing dead people in open caskets. For pure sillyness, he does a clever spoof of "The Lone Ranger".

I love Bill! (Totally biased review)
With that out of the way, my favorite is the street football. I mean kids now-a-days are stuck inside watching TV. No one lets their kid catch the "J" street bus and have them open the doors at Nineteeth street for the fake. So in some ways life has gone on and left this era behind. But the stories are still great.

He really did capture the rain loving of Seattle. The feel of new sneakers. And yes some of the other CD's have longer stories but I loved them all this CD included.