Louis C.K. to Perform at Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner

Louis C.K. attends the First Annual Comedy Awards at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Louis C.K. has been tapped to entertain at the next Radio and TV Congressional Correspondents' dinner in June. The comedian, fresh off the success of his latest comedy special, which he made available as a download through his website, will give the dinner "a bit of an edge," said CNN's Jay McMichael, current chair of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association (RTCA). 

The annual dinner, sometimes attended by the president, typically features topical humor that can test the boundaries of decorum. In recent years, however – after Stephen Colbert's controversial jokes at the White House Correspondents' Dinner at the expense of then-President George W. Bush in 2006 – such events have mostly played it safe, hosting Jay Leno, Rich Little and Craig Ferguson.

"One of our goals was to make it not so stuffy an evening," said McMichael of the RTCA's black-tie affair. Choosing C.K., who is known for his raunchy humor and his willingness to voice any dark thought for a laugh, would seem to guarantee that.   

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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