Robert Bryan, half of original "Bert and I" duo, dies at age 87

https://www.pressherald.com/2018/12/12/robert-bryan-half-of-original-bert-i-duo-has-died/

The Rev. Robert “Bob” Bryan, half of the original “Bert and I” Downeast Maine humor storytelling team that included the late Marshall Dodge, died Wednesday in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. He was 87.

“Bob Bryan and Marshall Dodge stand as two towering figures in Maine’s cultural heritage through their creation of the Bert and I stories,” said Dean Lunt, publisher of Islandport Press and producer of “The Best of Bert and I” CD. “The images of the farmer, woodsman and fisherman and the type of dry humor they popularized through their early stories not only influenced future generations of storytellers such as John McDonald and Tim Sample, but impacted the image Maine presented to the rest of America.”

The iconic duo recorded several “Bert and I” albums from 1958 into the 1970s, and Bryan and Tim Sample, another Maine humorist, recorded two albums together, “How to Talk Yankee” in 1982 and Bryan’s final album, “Bert and I … Rebooted” in 2013, said Cherie Hoyt, the album’s producer.

In one classic “Bert and I” exchange, a man stops to ask for directions to the northern Maine town of Millinocket. After describing several possible driving routes in a slow, Downeast drawl, the bit ends with the oft-repeated punchline, “Come to think of it, you can’t get there from here.”

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