Tiburon resident Bob Booker wrote Grammy-winning album satirizing JFK, family

Tiburon resident Bob Booker, a comedy writer and producer who was one of the creative minds behind the Grammy Award-winning album “The First Family,” a good-natured lampooning of President John F. Kennedy and his family, died of heart failure July 12 at his Reedlands home. He was 92.

Alongside fellow humorist Earle Doud, Booker wrote and produced the 36-minute album that featured impressionist Vaughn Meader as the president and debuting performer Naomi Brossart as first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Their performances teased the president’s vigor — or “great vigah,” as Meader says on the album — in his Boston accent, the first lady’s whispery voice and their family’s athleticism and football prowess.

“I think the thing that people don’t get now is, at the time, no one was making fun of politicians,” Booker’s daughter Laura Booker said. “The idea that you would make fun of a president, it just wasn’t done.”

“The First Family” was a commercial hit, selling 7.5 million copies during its initial run and topping the Billboard album charts for 12 weeks from December 1962 to March 1963. During its first two weeks, the album sold 1.2 million copies, the most of any album before The Beatles.

The album won Album of the Year at the 1963 Grammys, beating the likes of Tony Bennett, Ray Charles and Stan Getz. It’s the most recent comedy album and spoken-word LP to receive the annual honor.

In 2013, “The First Family” was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, an honor bestowed on recordings that the library deems as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”

Kennedy himself was a fan of “The First Family,” enough to reportedly buy 100 copies to hand out as Christmas gifts. Prior to a Democratic National Committee meeting, he told attendees, “Vaughn Meader was busy tonight, so I came myself.”

At a Dec. 12, 1962, news conference, when he was asked what he thought about the album and whether that type of satire brought him “annoyment or enjoyment,” he acknowledged Meader’s impression.

“Actually, I listened to Mr. Meader’s record, but I thought it sounded more like Teddy than it did me, so he’s annoyed,” the president said, referring to his brother, then-newly elected U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Beyond “The First Family,” Booker was also a prolific TV writer who wrote and produced more than 400 specials and variety shows, working along the likes of Ray Charles, Sammy Davis Jr., Andy Griffith, Waylon Jennings and Monty Hall, among others. He also created and wrote a family sitcom that ran for four seasons. He remained passionate about comedy throughout his life.

“Even in the days before he died, he was having me and my sister write down different ideas that he had wanted us to pursue on his behalf,” Laura said.

Robert Booker was born Aug. 1, 1931, in Jacksonville, Florida, to semiprofessional golfer Robert Henry Booker and former silent-film actress Bernice Ingalls, who later became an antiques dealer. He had one older brother, George, who became a furniture maker.

Booker graduated from Landon High School in Jacksonville at 16 and began working immediately after, Laura said.

His first gig during the early days of TV was at WPST-TV in Miami, where he wrote, anchored and did weather reports. He stayed in town, joining WINZ-AM radio in 1958 as an afternoon host. In his drivetime slot, Booker interviewed the likes of Jack Benny, Eartha Kitt and Frank Sinatra.

Booker moved to New York City in 1960. He and Doud began writing for satire duo Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, and he submitted pieces to Playboy magazine, according to an interview he did for the Library of Congress in 2015.

“The First Family” came about when Booker noticed a JFK-themed coloring book. Inspired by the successful albums of Bob Newhart and Lenny Bruce, Booker thought a comedy album about Kennedy was a good idea.

“I knew it would sell; I knew I had the contacts at the record companies,” he told the Library of Congress.

Eleven record companies disagreed, including Leonard Goldenson of ABC TV, which had a record label at the time.

James Hagerty, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s press secretary during his presidency, was in the room at the time and said “the communists will love” the album. Goldenson told Booker he knew “The First Family” would sell, but it needed to go to a smaller record label that didn’t have corporate bureaucracy — some place with “one guy in charge who can make the decision,” he told Booker.

Small label Cadence Records picked up the album instead, and it was recorded before a studio audience on Oct. 22, 1962, at the height of the tensest moment of Kennedy’s presidency, the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Kennedy announced to the nation that evening he was blocking military equipment from entering Cuba and promising full retaliation against the Soviet Union if any nuclear missiles launched from Cuba hit the Western Hemisphere.

The crisis ended and the album was released in November. Though Booker said he knew it would be a hit, he was surprised by the magnitude of the album’s success.

“It was such a hit in New York, they were actually selling it without covers,” he told the Library of Congress. “The cover printers couldn’t keep up.”

A follow-up album was recorded in spring 1963, but both albums’ cultural impacts abruptly ended after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, with copies destroyed and sales stopped in the aftermath of his death.

“We took them all and chopped them up and dumped them in a landfill in New Jersey,” Booker said. “I never regretted it.”

Booker continued writing and producing humorous albums, such as “When You’re in Love, the Whole World is Jewish,” which received a stage interpretation directed by Jason Alexander of “Seinfeld” fame. He also produced and created TV shows, such as first-run syndicated sitcom “Out of This World” with “Saturday Night Fever” star Donna Pescow and the voice of Burt Reynolds, and 1980s sitcom-outtake show “Foul-Ups, Bleeps & Blunders,” hosted by Steve Lawrence and Don Rickles. He also just finished a memoir prior to his death, Laura said.

He met Martha Graham Co. dancer Barbara Noonan on a blind date in 1966 in New York, and they wed in 1968 in Las Vegas, with musician Tiny Tim serving as Booker’s best man. “Love Story” director Arthur Hiller also attended.

The Bookers had two daughters, Laura and Courtney, and they lived in New York, London and Los Angeles. Before moving to Tiburon in 2017, Bob and Barbara split time between Carmel-by-the-Sea and New York for 12 years.

She said they moved to Tiburon after they fell in love with the area during their visits to see Courtney, who lives in San Rafael.

Barbara, who was also a producer on “Out of This World,” said she felt “blessed” to have met Booker.

“Wherever he went, he never lost his sense of humor,” she said. “And I think that’s what kept us together 55 years.”

Laura agreed that her father had a great sense of humor and said he always showed up for the family, attending her and her sister’s youth sporting events and recording portions of their childhood, something she said was uncommon at the time.

“Our joke in the family is that we have our entire childhood recorded, but we don’t actually have a picture of him because he was always behind the camera,” Laura said.

She said her dad loved his grandchildren too, noting he was the kind of grandfather who would pull coins from behind the kids’ ears or teach them blackjack for the fun of it.

She also said her father loved working and loved the people he worked with, calling Booker “a man of his generation.”

“He was just creative, and he just loved creating entertainment and being a part of that industry and was doing it really up until almost the day he died,” Laura said.

In addition to his wife, Barbara Booker, and daughters Laura Booker of New Jersey and Courtney Wilkins of San Rafael, Booker is survived by grandchildren Emma, Jack, Lucy and Charlie. He was preceded in death by his parents and his brother, George.

Details for a celebration of life are pending.

Reach Tiburon reporter Francisco Martinez at 415-944-4634.

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