Lenny Bruce

Lenny Bruce pioneered stand-up comedy as social commentary and paid for it with 4 arrests for obscenity in 1961-1962, professional banning from virtually every major US venue by 1964, and his death at 40 in 1966. New York granted him a posthumous pardon in 2003, the first posthumous pardon in state history. Bruce's raw confessional style incorporating jazz, Yiddish, and political satire directly inspired every boundary-pushing comedian from Carlin to Hicks to Rock.