2000 Years with Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks (CD) NEW

As the first album to feature Mel Brooks’s 2000 Year Old Man character (with the indispensable Carl Reiner playing straight man), 2000 Years With… is a vital introduction to the long-running act that made Brooks a star. That’s putting a lot of weight on a collection that, at about 37 minutes total, devotes just 13 minutes to the title character. Still, it’s an auspicious start: in that short time, Brooks delights and the duo sets the tone for an enduring, classic character. The rest of the collection runs along the same lines as the title sketch, with Reiner interviewing Brooks as a variety of characters, including Fabiola (a young singing sensation), an “astronaut,” a not-so-native Peruvian, a psychiatrist, and four denizens of a coffeehouse. This 1960 release may have aged, but time hasn’t passed it by. –Randy Silver