"A most immaculately hip aristocrat," Lord Buckley was the epitome of comedy cool; a onetime vaudeville performer and a hulking ex-lumberjack, he was a comic philosopher, a bop monologuist whose vocalese fused the rhythms and patois of the street with the arch sophistication of the British upper crust to create verbal symphonies unparalleled in their intricacy and dexterity. A comedian who didn't tell jokes and a word-jazz virtuoso riffing madly on the English language, Buckley combined the frenetic intensity of Beat poetry with the lessons and moral heft of Biblical tales and...