Ya Gotta Laugh - Presidential Political Comedy Albums

Hey, didja hear there's a presidential election going on?  I try to never get political on this blog, but I make an exception when it comes to mid-century political humor.  I did a post about a year ago featuring some of my collection of political comedy records, and since this is an election year, I figured I would rotate the albums on display in the Rumpus Room and give you all a peek at some of the variety beyond the previous post.

A bunch of records tie into the Kennedy Administration in some way...

His successor, Lyndon Johnson, provided the fodder for quite a few comedy records.  I also have a few political records that are serving as fillers until I find a few more unique comedy albums I don't already have.

There are a bunch of albums linked to the Richard Nixon White House and the Watergate scandal.  After Nixon, I guess demand dropped off because there aren't as many albums featuring Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan.  I've got one for the first George Bush, and that's where the genre seems to end.

Blonde Record Cabinet Offers More LP Storage

I recently picked up this great blonde storage cabinet, and I need it to help deal with storing a big bunch of records.

The price was right and shipping cost was very reasonable.

This is very light and the top is in nice condition, as you can see here.  Oh, and aren't those Dick Clark / Dr. Pepper contest forms cool?

I picked these up in April.  I'm probably going to frame them.

Hello from the Big Easy

I'm in New Orleans for a conference this week, and on my first day here yesterday I managed to do a little exploring along Magazine Street, home to a lot of antique and artsy shops. I spent a little time talking to the proprietor of a new vintage modern store called Loisel. Vic, the owner, previously was co-owner of Neophobia. Lots of great furniture and lighting and accessories there. All I left with, though, was this wooden tiki mug.

Mr. Modtomic has blogged before about the Magazine Antique Mall, but sadly I didn't see much in the way of mid century there, except for a lot of tiki mugs and glassware, but I thought the pricing on everything in that place was generally steep. Maybe there's been some vendor turnover since Mr. M was last there.

I tried to stop in at Peaches, another vintage mod store on Magazine Street, but the owner was making a delivery and it was locked up.  Looking through the window I could see some nice lamps, chairs, and tables.

I also found some LPs at a couple of other stops.

These two will be great for my record wall next Christmas - the Col. Sanders album must have been a KFC giveaway back in the 1960s, and this Brenda Lee album is one I hadn't seen. Saw lots of others too, but I don't want to haul a ton of things home on the plane, so I was kinda picky. My other purchases were these four LPs for $15 - I think the Honey West album alone made this a good deal.  I've never seen an episode of that show - I'll have to try and find it.

Sorry I don't have more pics, but I was hurrying to cover a lot of ground on foot (no rental car).

Don't forget, if you haven't already entered the Uncle's lamp and magazine rack giveaway, there's still time.

A few recent finds

Here are a few recent things I picked up:

I had this paper mache toucan that sits on a perch and hangs in our tiki-themed screen porch.

And at my last flea market visit, I found two more.

This last one has the mange - not sure how to preserve it or repair it, but the price was great, and they look good hanging from the ceiling beams.

I also picked up some more masks for the tiki porch wall, including this one.

And this carved head.

I had to feed my wrought iron habit when I spotted this wheeled cart for $9.99 in a Salvation Army store in Parkersburg, WV, last weekend.  It cleaned up pretty well, but I plan to prime it and give it another coat of semi gloss black, and lubricate the wheels a bit.

It's a good time of year to pick up vintage Christmas stuff, and when I saw this plastic Santa and reindeer for $8, I bought it.  A little more than I wanted to pay, but also lower than I've seen similar pieces elsewhere.

Now that I have a great record player, I'm looking through stacks of records wherever I go.  This one turned up in the Goodwill store in Parkersburg, WV, for a buck.  I'd love to have the vintage TV and the stand on the album cover.  Never heard of this TV program, but it works with my collection of records from old TV shows.  I can't imagine a TV show today featuring some guy playing tunes on an organ, can you?!

I've found a few old album covers featuring vintage chairs, so when I saw this, it came home with me too.

These teenagers look like they're having fun.  This was probably pre-American Bandstand.

There are several of these Jonah Jones Quartet albums I've picked up recently, and the same two blondes show up on at least three of them.

I'll end with this great Rock Ola juke box I spotted in an antique store in downtown Parkersburg, WV.  It's a real beaut, but at $975, it didn't follow me home.  I have never seen a cheap jukebox, have you?

Groovin with the new blonde - record player, that is!

I've got another blonde in my life, and she plays 45s and LPs, even 78s!  Luckily, Auntie Atom likes her too.

I've been collecting old LPs for years, focusing on TV-related records and old comedy records, with some old political and sports related records thrown into the collection.  Only problem was, I had nothing to play them with!  Lately I've been watching the local craigslist for a vintage console stereo, and I've been watching ebay for a smaller tabletop or portable record player.  So recently I landed on an auction for this beauty, and I bid aggressively and got it, and I'm glad I did.

It's a Sears Silvertone model 8247, blond walnut cabinet, with a 3-tube amp.  Check out that great logo and the flecked fabric on the front.  It's in great shape!!!

It's marked HiFi, but it plays only in mono, not stereo.  But it will play stereo records.

It's a beauty, and I could not be happier.  I just need to buff out some light scuffs on the top and wax the finish.  Right now I've got it beside the bar on one of our blonde end tables, because it's just a few inches too big to sit on my record storage rack.

I have some extra hairpin legs laying around, so I may try to build a table for it, or I may try to pick up some tapered spindle legs.  Anyway, now we can listen to these records.  Woo hoo!

First Families - political comedy albums part 1

In an older post, I've shown some of the TV-related vinyl LP records I've collected.  Now here's another LP collection that's even more unique.  Here in the Washington, DC, area, politics is unavoidable.  And with politics comes political satire.  Here are a few albums that have poked fun at occupants of the White House over the years.

This is probably the most commonly found First Family comedy album, produced by Bob Booker and Earle Doud during the Kennedy administration.  Kennedy's voice is done by Vaughn Meader. This album sold around 7 million copies and earned a Grammy as album of the year for 1963.  It was followed by a Volume Two version, which I do not have.  The cover for that second album used the image above but reduced it in size and the rest of the space was a very wide white border around the centered image.  The second version and the first album were both pulled off the market after the Kennedy assassination in November 1963.  Kennedy spawned a large number of comedy and serious records during and after his presidency, and I'll cover more on that topic in a future post.

This next album is a lot less common than the original First Family record.  'The New First Family, 1968, A Futuristic Fairy Tale', was produced by Bob Booker for Verve.  The focus here is on popular celebrities of the time, many of whom got involved in endorsing presidential candidates.  It's a lot less common than the First Family record.  This is the only one I've ever run across. If the art looks somehow familiar, it's probably because the artist is Mort Drucker.  He was a prolific album cover artist, but a lot of his work also appeared over the years in MAD magazine.  Voices on this album included impressions by two of the era's more successful presidential impressionists, John Byner, who did Lyndon Johnson, and David Frye, who did Richard Nixon.  Frye just passed away within the last week.  I'll have more albums by Frye in a future post of Nixon-related albums.

During the Jimmy Carter presidency, the first family format got a freshening.  On the album 'The Washington Hillbillies', Carter, his brother Billy, and their grandmother Lillian provided plenty of comedic opportunities. If you get around to antique malls much like I do, you still see unopened six packs of Billy Beer.  For the younger crowd, do a Google search on Billy Carter and you can get some idea of the color he brought to the White House in the late 1970s.  Although the cover art looks a lot like the first family albums, Booker and Doud do not appear in the credits so I'm guessing they had no involvement in this record.

Following Carter, the Reagan presidency once again lent itself to lampooning, and we got another first family comedy album, again from Earl Doud.  Celebrity impersonator Rich Little appears on this 1981 album, along with Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame, and Vaughn Meader, who was on the original album.

These last two albums were produced during the Kennedy years.  Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev got the comedy treatment in both records, which seem to be pretty rare.  'The Other Family' included impressions by Marty Brill and Larry Foster.

'At Home with The Other Family' featured voices by George Segal, Joan Rivers, and Buck Henry.

I still keep an eye out for more of these political comedy records and I have stumbled across some good ones over the years.  If you ask what they're like to listen to, I can't answer.  I'm still searching for a nice vintage console stereo to use to play the old records in my collection.

Still to come, a post on LBJ-related records, Nixon, and some others from the 1960s and 70s.