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The First Family is a 1962 Comedy Album

The First Family is a 1962 comedy album featuring comedian and impressionist Vaughn Meader. The album, written and produced by Bob Booker and Earle Doud, was recorded on October 22, 1962, is a good-natured parody of then-President John F. Kennedy, both as Commander-in-Chief and as a member of the prominent Kennedy family.

Issued by Cadence Records, The First Family became the largest and fastest selling record in the history of the record industry, selling at more than one million copies per week for the first six and one-half weeks in distribution and remained at #1 on the Billboard 200 for 12 weeks.

By January 1963, sales reached more than seven million copies. Cadence president Archie Bleyer credited the album's success to heavy radio airplay.
The album was first played by Stan Z. Burns on WINS radio, a friend of Booker, and it instantly became a hit all over New York City. By the time the sequel album,

The First Family Volume Two, was released, The First Family had sold 71⁄2 million copies[citation needed] – unprecedented for any album at the time, especially a comedy album.

The First Family won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1963, becoming the second and most recent comedy or spoken word album to win the award.

Although the album was growing by 1962, production of a record imitating the President met stiff opposition. James Hagerty, a top executive for ABC News, ABC-Paramount Records and President D. Eisenhower’s former press secretary, said the proposed album would be "degrading to the presidency" and proclaimed that "every Communist country in the world would love this record."

After other rejections, Cadence Records agreed to distribute the album, and within a month the record was appearing on store shelves, and seeing brisk sales. Two weeks later it had sold more than one million copies, pushing past the debut album by Peter, Paul and Mary.

Within weeks, many Americans could recite favorite lines from the record, including "the rubber schwan [swan] is mine", and "move ahead...with great vigah [vigor]", the latter lampooning the President's own words.

The album poked fun at Kennedy's PT-109 history; the rocking chairs he used for his painful back; the Kennedy clan's well-known athleticism, football games and family togetherness; children in the White House; and Jackie Kennedy's soft-spoken nature and her redecoration of the White House; and many other bits of knowledge that the public was eager to consume.

Kennedy himself was said to have given copies of the albums as Christmas gifts, and once greeted a Democratic National Committee group by saying, "Vaughn Meader was busy tonight, so I came myself."

According to UPI reporter Merriman Smith, during a Cabinet meeting Kennedy played the entire record for everyone. At one press conference, Kennedy was asked if the album had produced "annoyment or enjoyment." He jokingly responded, "I listened to Mr. Meader's record and, frankly, I thought it sounded more like Teddy than it did me. So, now he's annoyed."

The First Family album won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1963.

That March, most of the same cast recorded a sequel album, The First Family Volume Two, a combination of spoken-word comedy and songs. Release in the spring of 1963, Volume Two was also successful, peaking at #4 on the album chart in June 1963.

Immediately after Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, producers Booker and Doud, along with Cadence president Archie Bleyer, pulled both albums from sales and had all unsold copies destroyed so as not to seemingly "cash in" on the President's death.

#JohnKennedy #JohnFKennedy #PresidentJFK #PresidentJohnFKennedy
#IraGallen #KennedyAssassination

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