The line comes from Johnny Carson doing his Karnac character, who reads minds. (The routine shtick was that the Great Karnac sets up the joke by answering an unknown question, then he opens an envelope to read what the question was, which is the punch line of the joke.)
The setup answer-line was “Sis, Boom, Bah”.
Karnac then opens the envelope to read the punch line:
" Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes."
This results in wild, uncontrolled laughter–from the audience, and also, crucially, by both Carson and Ed McMahon, who break their professional demeanor and laugh so hard that they lose control of themselves on camera.
Ed McMahon proudly recalls this as the best joke of his career.
But I don’t get it.
What am I missing?
And second: a link to an interview with Ed McMahon several years later, recalling how wonderful the joke was, saying it was the most popular line he ever said. (2 minute clip)https://youtu.be/Vw_2Mkve_rk
Light the fuse: sissssss
Explosion sound: boom
Sound of a sheep in panic, comic-book style: baaah, as it soars through the air after being exploded (yes, if it was truly exploded, it would be dead. Forget it Jake, it’s jokesville)
The internet is also telling me that sis boom bah’s origins are as an onomatopoeia of fireworks. So, the association with an exploding something would probably be easily understood by most audience members, and the joke is of course that “bah” is also the sound a sheep makes.
yeah, I figured that sis, and boom are the sounds, and of course sheep go bah. (or more properly, I think “baaah”)
But I sure don’t see anything even remotely funny.
Also, possibly relevant: Back in the 1950’s-60s’ the phrase “Sis Boom Bah” was an old college chant used at, I think, football games. But I still don’t get the humor. Yet two of the best professional comedians on television lost control of themselves.
Weird.
Personally, I think it’s hilarious. The best part is watching Ed and Johnny trying to keep it together afterwards. Same same with Tim Conway’s elephant joke. Vicki’s punchline was killer, but the sheer joy of the joke is watching everybody on the couch trying to get through the bit without losing it.
I don’t know the right terminology for this … but this (at one time) familiar use of “Sis Boom Bah!” is exactly the joke’s “antecedent” – the bit that is completely familiar to the studio audience and against which the punchline counters.
That’s funny-- that’s what I get when I google it too, but I always thought it was an onomatopoeia of a marching band. The person with the cymbals clapping together making the ‘sis’ sound, then a person banging a drum for the ‘boom’, and I don’t know what the ‘bah’ would have represented. A trumpet or trombone, maybe?
It’s not gut-busting funny, but it is quite amusing, as it turns a once-familiar phrase “sis boom bah” (which I can’t help but follow up with “Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, rah rah rah!”) and recontextualized it into an exploding sheep. It takes a beat or two to figure it out, and it puts a smile on my face.
Me too, actually. I think because I’ve mostly heard it in the context of sports cheers, and I drew an association with cheerleading and marching bands.
This is an example of a joke not being particularly funny on paper, but hilarious in delivery.
It can almost never be predicted and can hinge on the inflection of a word, a facial expression, timing, or a hundred other factors. In rare instances it can turn a somewhat funny idea into something special. Examples:
I don’t agree. Ed McMahon explains in the interview that Johnny warned him in advance that he (Johnny) was going to say a line on the show that would “put you away” .
So Carson knew that the line would be funny by itself, not because of its delivery. And he was right–everybody exploded in laughter immediately. I didn’t see anything unusual in Johnny’s acting. Only after the initial, spontaneous laughs, did it continue on, reaching higher and higher levels, as the uncontrolled laughter became infectious, and built on itself to the point that even two very experienced professionals couldn’t stop.
And I still don’t get it.
Apparently those homo sapiens of 1970 had brains which evolved differently than mine.
Explaining a joke is like plunging a knife into its heart, but since we’re already a half-dozen posts in, I’ll go ahead. It boils down to two things:
It’s absurd. As non sequiturs go, it’s as good as anything Monty Python ever came up with. As noted upthread, “sis boom bah” was a cliched cheerleading expression. As a setup and punchline, it was completely unexpected.
If you watch the clip, you’ll see that Carson (who knew what was coming) and McMahon (who knew something was coming, if not exactly what) were both struggling not to break up before even opening the envelope. Seeing that, the audience was primed for a big punchline, and reacted appropriately.
Maybe the absurdity of the joke has been dulled by time. There just aren’t a lot of jokes based on old cheers anymore. And personally I think the tomahawk bit was funnier. But that was a one-in-a-million shot in front of a live audience, followed by a true ad lib from Carson, while Carnac was a series of one-liners (often groaners) worked out in the writer’s room.
I get the gist of it but I don’t think it lands since the visual doesn’t match the description. I know it’s overthinking it but you immediately think “why would a sheep make a noise after it exploded?”
I think a better set-up would have been “Describe the sound made when a sheep is shot from a cannon.”
Jokes, and especially the ones written for late night monologues and skits are generally not all that funny (and often repetitive); it is the host’s job to ‘sell’ the joke via delivery. Carson was actually a master of this (at least in his heyday; he got pretty lazy about it later in his tenure and relied on McMahon and ‘Doc’ Severinsen to punctuate them with gusty laughter and a drum sting). The real gag of the “The Great Carmack” is that he delivers the punchline first and generates anticipation of what the joke will be; by the time it gets delivered the objective quality of the joke (as told in normal sequence) is kind of irrelevant.
Jay Leno tried to ape Carson’s delivery with his patent head shake and squeaky delivery which frankly wasn’t very funny even with good material. Dave Letterman, on the other hand, was excellent with this, often reading intentionally dumb material and selling it to the audience through ridiculously over-the-top delivery and self-deprecating metacriticism, which was good because he was often clearly disinterested in and sometimes open hostile to his actual guests.
