But I’m gonna put a cat on you was the coolest, grooviest, swingin’est, wailin’est, strongest, swingin’est cat that ever stomped on this jumpin’ green sphere. And they called this here cat The Nazz.

This line comes from Lord Buckley’s hipster-jazz monologue “The Nazz,” one of his nightclub-era routines in which he retells the life of Jesus in mid‑century beat slang (“cat,” “groovy,” “jumpin’ green sphere”). Buckley performed and recorded versions of the piece in the 1950s, when his act blended jazz cadence, jive diction, and comic sermonizing for adult club audiences. The quoted sentence is part of the routine’s opening setup, where Buckley announces he will “put a cat on you”—i.e., lay a story on the audience—before introducing his protagonist under the nickname “The Nazz.”

Buckley’s piling up of superlatives is both affectionate hype and parody: it mimics the breathless boosterism of a jazz emcee while recasting a sacred figure in the idiom of cool. Calling Jesus “the coolest…cat” collapses distance between ancient religious narrative and contemporary urban speech, suggesting holiness can be imagined as charisma, moral strength, and radical presence rather than solemn piety. The comic excess (“swingin’est…wailin’est”) also signals Buckley’s method: reverence expressed through irreverent language, using rhythm and slang to make a familiar story feel immediate, communal, and performative—closer to a jam session than a church homily.