General
Bob Booker, Whose J.F.K. Parody Was a Runaway Hit, Dies at 91
Most record companies didn’t think “The First Family,” which he and his writing partner created, was a good idea. It went on to become the fastest-selling album of the pre-Beatles era.
Bob Booker, a veteran comedy writer best known for “The First Family,” the 1962 album lampooning President John F. Kennedy and his family, which was such a runaway hit that crowds gathered at record stores to hear it, died on July 12 at his home in Tiburon, Calif. He was 92.
The cause was heart failure, his daughter Laura Booker said.
Today “The First Family,” on which the stand-up comedian Vaughn Meader voiced a spot-on President Kennedy, is a time capsule of somewhat corny humor and political innocence.
But the Camelot-hungry public ate up its parodies of a whispery Jacqueline Kennedy conducting a White House tour and Mr. Meader as the president, in broad Bostonese, insisting that “the rubbah swan” — a bathtub toy — belonged to him, and that he would cross a room “with great vigah.”
Its lines became catchphrases repeated in everyday conversations before the era of internet memes.
“The First Family,” written by Mr. Booker and Earle Doud, became the fastest-selling album of the pre-Beatles era, selling 1.2 million copies in the first two weeks and 7.5 million in all, according to The Associated Press. It won the Grammy Award for album of the year in May 1963.
Six months later, on Nov. 22, the president’s assassination rendered it an instant artifact. Mr. Meader retired his Kennedy impression, but he remained forever fused with it and saw his career evaporate.
