Page 32 - JOA-2-21

Nixon and Adlai HI, BOB
Stevenson were targets of
his observations and wit. Bob Newhart was an accountant who dreamed of becoming a come-
This was, however, not dian and gave himself one year to see if he could make something
actually Sahl’s first happen. “I always said that if I had stayed in accounting, the Enron
comedy album. An unau- corporation would still be in business. Because no one could figure out
thorized recording of a my books. I wasn’t a great accountant, at all.” He was, however, a
Sahl concert in 1955, natural comedian with a wry
titled Mort Sahl’s At sense of humor that resonated
Sunset, had been illegally with the American public.
distributed a few years Bob Newhart’s The Button-
earlier, perhaps proving Down Mind, recorded at a
public demand for Sahl’s Texas nightclub and released
brand of humor. Today, in early 1960, was a game-
At Sunset is considered changer for comedy records,
the earliest example of proving the genre could be
modern stand-up comedy The 1956 Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter more than a niche segment of
on record. On its cover, Song Book is a studio double album produced by the record industry. It also
Saul is shown in his Verve Records. It was the first Fitzgerald album on showed that the public
trademark persona – the Verve label. Fitzgerald's manager, and the enjoyed laughing as much as
dressed in a V-neck producer of many of her albums, Norman Granz, they enjoyed listening to
sweater with a newspaper visited Cole Porter at the Waldorf-Astoria and music. Newhart’s album
as a prop. played him this entire album. Afterwards, zoomed to the top of the The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart
Mort Sahl’s humor Porter merely remarked, “My, what marvelous charts—not the “comedy” The back of the album starts out with “You
led Milton Berle to diction that girl has.” charts, the Billboard charts for may find this hard to believe, but Bob
describe him as “one of popular music! Newhart really is an earthling.”
the greatest political satirists of all time.” “Four months after we
Sahl shared his increased success after putting out a comedy album recorded it, a friend of mine in Chicago asked me, ‘What ever
with his colleague Shelley Berman (1925-2017), who was making happened to that comedy album you were going to do?’” Newhart said
a name for himself performing comic monologues at nightclubs in a May 8, 2020 interview with the San-Diego Union-Tribune. “I called
in Chicago and on the West Coast. In the 2008 PBS documentary Warner Bros. Records and said: ‘Hi, I’m Bob Newhart. I recorded a com-
Make ‘Em Laugh, Berman recalls how Sahl changed his career with a edy album for you and I’m calling to find out what happened to it.’
simple suggestion: They said: ‘It’s selling great in Minneapolis!’ And it was. That was the
“Mort, said, “Hey first inkling I had that something was happening.
I’ve made a record with “It just went crazy after that,” Newhart recalls in his interview. “I
Verve. Why don’t you mean, a year and a half before that I was doing a local man-on-the-
do the same thing?” I street show in Chicago, and I put out this record album, hoping it
said, “Oh my God, put would sell maybe twenty-five, thirty thousand copies, you know? I was
all of my material on a just totally unprepared for the commotion they caused.” In fact, The
record? Forget about it! Button-Down Mind sold over 600,000 copies within the first year of its
I’ll never be able to do it. release, and in 1961 beat out Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, Nat
Because the surprise will “King” Cole, and two classical music releases for the “Album of the
be gone and everybody Year” Grammy Award.
will know my stuff.” Later that year, Warner Bros put out a sequel, The Button-Down
And Mort said, “Go on, Mind Strikes Back! That album rose to the No. 2 spot on the Billboard
try it.” So the techni- charts, making Newhart the first comedian to simultaneously have the
cians came for two top two best-selling albums in the United States. His third album,
nights, or something like Behind the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, came out in 1961,
that, at the hungry i and followed by The Button-Down Mind on TV in 1962.
just went to town Newhart’s brand of humor made him a sold-out performer at
Inside Shelley Berman recording me. And one comedy clubs and concert arenas over the next half-century. He was
According to the liner notes, “This album is a day I saw my record in a additionally able to
recording of Shelley Berman actually doing one of his window. An LP. With a successfully cross over
night club acts. It’s a new idea in records, just as picture of me. And they into television with two
Shelley is comparatively new in cafes.” separate hit Bob Newhart
picked a title, Inside
Shelley Berman. I was TV sitcoms that ran a
pretty thrilled about that. And then somebody told me I was decade apart. He played a
on the charts. I said, ‘What the hell is that?’ I didn’t know a thing. Chicago psychologist in
And suddenly I was handed a tremendous check for my royalties. the 1970s, then a New
And there, now, I realized, ‘My God, I’m a star.’ I had no idea it England innkeeper in
would be so successful. I had no idea that it would make such a big the 1980s.
difference in our industry.”
Inside Shelley Berman is generally regarded as the first hit comedy THE RISKY 1960S
album and was the first full album to win a Grammy in the “Spoken
Word Comedy” category in 1959. It occurred to producers that they Coming off the
could recreate and make money on the best 45 minutes of a comedian’s Excerpts from success of Bob Newhart’s
live set just as it occurred to the comedians that by recording their The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart debut album, the 1960s
routines they could reach a much larger audience and all the fame and This 45 rpm record was put out by Warner saw a comedy album
fortune that comes with celebrity. Brothers and includes “Driving Instructor,” explosion with the likes
The success of Shelley Berman’s premier album gave a would-be a pilot script for a new TV series. This was used for of Jonathan Winters,
comedian from Chicago, hope. His name was Bob Newhart. professional reasons and was sent to producers, Don Rickles, Woody
shows for consideration of a guest spot, etc. Allen, Allan Sherman,

30 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles