Arnie Hoffman, discovered Catch A Rising Starin New York Ciity in the early ‘80s. Catch was one of the first Comedy Clubs in the country and was open until the wee hours. Catch was a reason itself to go to New York and Arnie did exactly that.
He listened to the likes of Richard Belzer, Gilbert Gottfried and Paul Shaeffer until the sun came up. At the time he was a distributor for the major labels, selling their cassettes from a coast to coast fleet of trucks. But Arnie wanted to be part of this new comedy business, so he sold his old business and started recording comedians. No other company in the country was doing that.
One of the first comedians he recorded was Jeff Foxworthy which became the best selling comedy album in the history of the record business. That was a surprise to the industry that a new label could outsell the historic comedy releases of Warner Brothers, Sony and the other big record companies. Arnie was asked to be the keynote speaker at the National Academy of Record Merchandisers, where he got a standing ovation. He remains a Grammy voter.
Laughing Hyena still records to this day. Listen to samples of a couple hundred of their best albums on You Tube at Laughing Hyena Records when you have time, It will brighten your day.
