"A shameless con man, old-time vaudevillian, stand-up comedian and jazz shaman, Lord Buckley single-handedly brought the hip semantic into the mainstream in the 1950s, mixing scat singing, black street talk and the King's English to tell and retell the stories of Jesus, Shakespeare, the Marquis de Sade, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and much more. He also worked with and/or left his mark on the likes of Charlie Parker, Dylan, Sinatra, Neal Cassady, Ken Kesey, George Harrison, James Dean, and Lenny Bruce.". "If so many of the most influential voices of our century were themselves influenced by this man, why is it that hardly anyone knows who he is? In this, the first study of the man behind the myth, Oliver Trager explains Buckley's life and career and the enormous following he developed in the entertainment community as well as the reasons behind the obscurity into which the man and his work disappeared after his death in 1960."--BOOK JACKET.