Bob Newhart dead at 94
nypost.comThe Wrap.Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Newhart began his career as a stand up comedian in the 1950s, after a stint in the army (he served from 1952-54).
He was known as “the funny guy in the barracks” during the Korean War, he told The Post in 2020. When he was working in Chicago at an accounting job, he started making humorous phone calls to a friend to pass the time and sending the recordings to radio stations.
This got Newhart noticed by James Conkling, the then- president of Warner Bros. Records. Colking booked him in the Houston nightclub, the Tidelands, and recorded his performances.His career took off when his comedy routine “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” won a Grammy Award as album of the year at the 1961 Grammys – becoming the first comedy album to win that honor.“They didn’t even have a category for comedy at that time,” he recalled to The Post in 2020. “It beat out [Harry] Belafonte, Sinatra and an Elvis album [‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’] They kept calling my name and I kept walking up there and thanking them for the awards.”It sold 750,000 copies at the time.
That year, The New York Times called Newhart, “the first comedian in history to come to prominence through a recording.”It’s since been added to the Library of Congress for its registry of historically significant sound recordings. “I thought [‘The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart’] might sell maybe 5,000 albums.
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