The forgotten record from the 1960s that won an ‘Album of the Year’ Grammy Award
Whether you like it or not, winning a Grammy Award is the ultimate currency in music for legitimacy, longevity, and, at the end of the day, money to keep the albums rolling in.
Within this, the coveted ‘Album of the Year’ award is the true golden chalice. When an artist’s body of work is deemed to have singularly defined an entire span of 12 months, that’s surely an instant guarantee that their life has forever changed: their music is essential, and their name will never be forgotten. Or will it?
The brutal fact of the matter is that not every musician can be one of The Beatles. Indeed, most artists from the 1960s aren’t. But it still remains that there are just some names that stand the test of time better than others, not just in terms of their possible award wind, but for their persona and massive cultural impact on society.
Others aren’t quite as lucky, and despite receiving all the acclaim they could ever wish for at one point in time, they can fall by the wayside back into obscurity. That even counts for Grammy ‘Album of the Year’ winners – just take the case of the forgotten gem which was crowned at the top of the tree in 1963, but barely to be heard again.
The unfortunate custodian is The First Family by Vaughn Meader, which was initially released in 1962 before going on to win the prized ‘Album of the Year’ at the Grammys the following year. In fairness to Meader, his win was a turn-up for the books in any case – to this day, it remains the most recent comedy album to have ever taken home the award. Those Grammy judges really don’t enjoy a laugh, it seems.
But even still, The First Family had some precedent behind it. As an imitation of then US President John F Kennedy, it evidently hit all the right notes with the American public and went on to be the fastest-selling album in the history of the record industry at that time, sitting atop the charts for a massive 12 weeks.
In this sense, it was understandable how such a novel but equally critical album eventually won over the persuasions of the Grammy judges, but the record’s future fate was sadly not yet fully sealed. A rather awkward accident of timing meant that merely months after its ‘Album of the Year’ win, The First Family was taken out of circulation after Kennedy was assassinated.
It seemed that the man who was originally the butt of the joke actually got the last laugh in this instance, as the record remained firmly off the shelves and gathering dust in the graveyard of former sonic glory. It only managed to see the light of day again some 36 years later, when it was put back into circulation in 1999, but by then the hilarity of the moment had long since passed.
And so, despite the starry trajectory of acclaim that The First Family started out on, its legacy was shot down in flames by the demise of its own muse. How unsuspectingly poetic. It just goes to teach a lesson to any ‘Album of the Year’ winner at the Grammys, though: enjoy the success while you have it, because you never know the cause behind it slipping away.
