How Bob Newhart’s smash 1960 comedy album launched his career

nypost.com:

The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” reached  No. 1 on the Billboard charts, the first-ever comedy album to do so, launching Newhart’s storied 60-year career, including the iconic CBS sitcoms “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart.”“I thought [‘The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart’] might sell maybe 5,000 albums.

I would’ve been happy with that,” Newhart, 90, told The Post, on its 60th anniversary milestone. “I really saw it as an adjunct to stand-up, to maybe get four or five more people to come [to a club] because they’d heard about that album.“And then it exploded.”Less than a year earlier, Newhart was working part time and hoping for a career in comedy — with no experience and absolutely nothing to show for his efforts, save for being “the.