BY JESSE FRAGA

Bayville-based comedian Jackie Martling’s phone lines rang nonstop in 1979. Most callers were AT&T receptionists looking to hear a one-minute answering machine of his lewd or shallow quips.

“There was no such thing as Long Island comedy,” recalled Martling, a native of Mineola. “I was just a short, wise guy who knew every joke in the world, and found out that nobody else did.”

Three comedy albums, fledgling standup shows, and 10 phonable joke lines later, Martling landed his 15-year role as head writer of “The Howard Stern Show” in 1983. But by 2001, he quit due to contract disputes.

Martling realized listeners only knew him from behind the radio booth.

In Martling’s recent documentary titled “Joke Man,” he opens up about his infamous departure from the show, and looks back on “a tiny prick of a town,” none other than East Norwich, where he grew up, the 75-year-old explained.

“Nowadays, Long Island is comedy central. My only interest, whether it’s shallow or not, was always to make people laugh,” he said. “It’s the salt water, the ships, the sea-going people, I mean everybody’s crazy, loud, and horny.”

The Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame is set to host a screening of the film, featuring a live talk with Martling on Jan. 27 at 7 p.m.

Tom Needam, vice chairman of LIMEHOF called Martling a “legendary entertainer.”

“The LIMEHOF is very excited about Jackie’s upcoming event particularly because of our new commitment to honoring entertainers outside of the music world,” Needam told The Island 360. “His significant contributions to ‘The Howard Stern Show’ as well as the world of comedy, are noteworthy.”

In Martling’s early days, he performed with comedy icons Eddie Murphy, Rob Barlett, and Rodney Dangerfield; and musicians Les Paul and Willie Nelson, to name a few.

Among Martling’s recent projects, he wrote two books, “The Joke Man: Bow to Stern,” and “Disgustingly Dirty Joke Book;” and co-hosted a weekly radio show, “Jackie’s Joke Hunt,” alongside Ian Karr, director of IKA Collective, the production company behind Martling’s documentary.

Prior to his big break, during the 70s, Martling was a long-haired, pot-smoking guitarist who toured the island in his rock band’s 1955 yellow Cadillac Hearse.

“I asked my buddy to teach me how to play guitar so we could get laid, you know, like every other kid in the world,” Martling quipped. “We never had intentions of getting anywhere.”

He ditched the band, “Off Our Rockers,” in 1979, the same year he started standup, and launched a joke phone line.

Strangers could tune into Martling’s pre-recorded jokes as a form of advertisement for his first shows at Cinnamon, a bar and restaurant at the Northeast corner of Main Street and Route 110 in Huntington.

Two years later, his parents’ attic became his office, where AT&T hooked up ten phone lines to the number (516) 922-WINE, at his request.

“I still get calls from all over. It’s been 45 years and people still come up to say, ‘I used to call you back in the 80s, then their heads explode,” Martling said.

His childhood home in East Norwich was unconventional, to say the least.

His parents’ siblings married each other, and had a careful eye on their first son, baby Martling.

“I had four doting parents,” Martling recalled. “They must have kept track of every time I took a leak and everytime I took a step,” Martling recalled. “My aunt and uncle moved out, my mom had a baby, my father started drinking more, and I went from four parents to none. Like where the fuck did everybody go?”

Martling felt pressure to be successful after “wasting” seven years on an engineering degree, he noted. A joke-telling career was the last route on his mind. Not only was Martling the oldest of three brothers, but the other two were “ridiculously smart,” he said. One analyzed DNA at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Laurel Hollow, then, for an unrelated reason, died of an opioid case.

“I’m just stupid enough to know that you got to work hard. I was like the little pig that built the house out of bricks instead of sticks and straw,” Martling said, referencing his first standup video called, “A Safe Distance from Genius.”

One of Martling’s most distinct memories of his family’s two-story house was his mother’s crude jokes, often too mature for a five-year-old to understand, though she still said them.

“I was walking around with my zipper open. My mother looked down and would go ‘Eveready Eddie,’ which isn’t a big deal, but it is if you’re five years old,” Martling said, comparing her to Dorothy Parker. “That was my mother.”

With a mom of these sorts, Martling believes his quick wit is in his blood. His routines often point toward similar characters he’s come across in real life.

“If I talk about helping a little old lady across the street, at least I’m doing something positive. I’m not pushing her in front of a truck,” Martling said. “I’ve done rude jokes, and I’ve taken shots at the whole world in a joyful way. It’s all in the attitude.”

To this day, Martling embraces his crude punchlines, ignores critics, and continues to perform for the listeners of Long Island. He was sure to shout out Bayville Seafood, Schultzy’s Restaurant, The Crescent Beach Club, Mill Creek Tavern, and Wall’s Wharf.

“I have always ignored everything,” Martling told Blank Slate Media. “They watched me get rich on ‘The Stern Show’ and now I’m back to the local guy going down Bayville Avenue to the post office. Sure, these days I go on the Mark Simone show, and I still tell jokes that are a little too dirty for the radio, and I will always plug the places here in Bayville.”