“Mom always liked you best”

Tommy Smothers: When Dick was really good, if he really got on my case, the audience would sometimes boo him. Actually hiss a little bit and boo. And it kind of hurt his feelings. I said “that’s – you’re really doing a good job.” Bud Abbott was relentless on, on Lou Costello. Just relentless – he – didn’t show any humanity or – but you believed him. And people believed my brother too so when really gets – he’d do this one litany, about five or six lines in a row, when we were recording an album in St. Louis and he said “you’re stupid. You’re dumb. You’re not a man. You’ve never done anything right. You’re a failure. Da da da da.” And he finished up, he ran out of things and – and “You’ll never amount to anything.” And I said, “Yeah, and mom liked you best.” It was like the – and just the audience fell apart. Don’t know where it came from. So it – we have one enduring, uh, idea that will always live on with the Smothers Brothers, that mom always liked you best. We’re the universal, uh, feeling that every child, every sibling has had somewhere along the line. Or who did she like best? And that became kind of a little mantra.