Andy Kaufman

Consider him as a comedian, actor, performance artist, or prankster, but the legendary Andy Kaufman was also a recording artist with his debut album landing almost 30 years after his death. Born and raised in the upper-class Long Island suburb of Great Neck, New York, Kaufman was a standup comedian who was "not trying to be funny" ("I just want to play with audiences' heads"). His career took an upswing in the mid-'70s when he was a regular guest on the comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live, while the late '70s saw him join the cast of the television sitcom Taxi where he would remain until 1983. He passed away in 1984 from a rare form of lung cancer, but as the 1990 Milos Forman biopic The Man on the Moon showed, prankster Kaufman had always loved the idea of a "death hoax" and the rumor that he had faked his own death remained active for decades. Close friends and family have repeatedly denied the hoax, but the idea was a popular talking point in 2013 when the Drag City label issued Andy's "debut comedy album," Andy and His Grandmother. The album was compiled and edited by Rodney Ascher, who pulled the material from 82 hours of micro-cassette recordings Kaufman had captured between 1977 and 1979.