[Deathwatch] Vaughn Meader, satirist , 68

[Deathwatch Central]

JFK Satirist Vaughn Meader Dies
Fri Oct 29

AUBURN, Maine - Vaughn Meader, who gained fame satirizing John F.
Kennedy's presidency in the multimillion-selling album "The First
Family" only to have his star plummet when the president was
assassinated, died Friday. He was 68.

Meader, who had battled by chronic emphysema and other ailments, died
at his home in this central Maine city after refusing to be taken to
the hospital, his wife, Sheila, said.

When it came out in late 1962, poking gentle fun at JFK's wealth, large
family and "vigah," "The First Family" became the fastest-selling
record of its time, racking up 7.5 million copies and winning the
Grammy for album of the year.

Compared with today's bare-knuckled political humor, the satire was
tame, but it tickled the funnybone of the Kennedy-obsessed public.

The Maine native, recruited to play the president on the album after he
began throwing Kennedy impressions into his musical act, had to tweak
his own New England accent only slightly to sound just like the
Massachusetts-bred president.

"I couldn't believe what it meant to people," Meader said in an
Associated Press interview last year. "I was just doing my act. I'm a
singer and piano player. I just stumbled onto a voice."

Even the president was said to be amused, picking up 100 copies of the
album to give as Christmas gifts. He once opened a Democratic National
Committee dinner by telling delegates: "Vaughn Meader was busy tonight,
so I came myself."

Meader's career was stopped short by news that Kennedy had been
assassinated. It was also that day that Vaughn Meader died, he would
say. He began going by his first name, Abbott, rather than his middle
name.

Meader's meteoric rise and fall in Gerald Nachman's book "Seriously
Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s."

"One twist to the single-bullet theory that didn't make it into the
Warren Report: the same bullet that killed JFK also murdered Vaughn
Meader's career," Nachman wrote.

Meader was born in the central Maine city of Waterville during one of
New England's worst floods. He often told crowds: "I was born on March
20, 1936, the night the West Bridge washed out."

After high school he joined the Army, and later started doing a standup
comedy act in New York. His Kennedy act led to the popular album, which
brought Meader, still in his 20s, instant fame.

He appeared in Time and Life magazines, on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and
packed rooms in Las Vegas.

"It was just a whirlwind, going here, going there, going here, going
there. And playing the game — the star game," Meader said in an 1999
interview with The New York Times Magazine. "It was a blur, you know? I
thought I was having the time of my life."

With Kennedy's death, his acts were canceled and stores pulled the
album from their shelves. His famous friends no longer associated with
him. Meader said he turned to booze and started taking cocaine and
heroin.

After a period of drifting, he returned to Maine, where Meader wrote
and played bluegrass and country music and became known for his
honky-tonk performances in small, local bars.

Living back in what he called the slow lane, Meader reveled in a
resurgence of nostalgia-driven media interest in his JFK comedy act,
said Sheila, his fourth wife with whom he was married for 16 years. He
maintained his sense of humor, she said.

"I liked his music," Sheila said. "The reason we stayed married was he
made me laugh."

The couple moved to Gulfport, Fla., in 1999 but returned in 2002.

Meader will be cremated and a private committal ceremony is planned for
Sunday. A public celebration of his life was scheduled for Nov. 21 at a
Hallowell, Maine, bar where he had performed.