” The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back” was Bob Newhart’s sequel to his best-selling album.
While always a fan of Bob Newhart’s two landmark TV shows spanning nearly two decades, I was first introduced to the deadpan comedian as a 5-year-old in 1960.
This album would prove to be a high water mark in American comedy and ushered in a major shift in the world of what was funny. 1960 Album
His comedy album “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” from 1960 was an LP my parents played over and over on their Hi-Fi whenever they had company. While I lay in my bed allegedly asleep, I could hear the combination of throaty adult laughter, the clinking of cut-crystal glasses of scotch, mingling with the deadpan often stammering and subdued delivery of Bob Newhart drifting into my bedroom.
To this day I can recall with great affection his Abe Lincoln vs Madison Avenue” routine where in a one-sided conversation with the unseen Abe, Newhart talks his client into keeping his beard and stove-pipe hat and into not changing “Four score and seven years ago” into “Eighty-seven years” for his upcoming Gettysburg Address.
Back cover of “The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart” 1960
Newhart’s comedy was unique, it was cerebral and a real departure from the standard stand-up at the time. Instead of the normal setup and punch line, this former accountant created short scenarios and acted them out.
More often than not his routines were delivered in the form of a one-sided telephone conversation. He would go on to use this device in his TV shows making him the straight man to an unseen comic on the other end of the line.
The album was released on April Fools Day 1960 via some radio excerpts, and some TV appearances, and the album went to number 2 on the albums chart, the first comedy album ever to do so. The album was such a sensation it won the 1961 Album of the Year at the Grammys.
It would go on to become the best-selling comedy album of the 20th century.
When I cleaned out their home a few years ago, along with Allan Sherman LPs, I was sure to take Newhart’s well-worn album which to no surprise of mine they had kept all these years.
Oh, how I wish I had taken my parents Hi-Fi so I could play that record now.