Eclectic Company: Bob Newhart and the Grammy Museum

People are always telling me that I have a great memory for odd facts and the details of long ago events, as if I was purposefully storing up trivia morsels and anecdotal view-masters to relish during discontented winters. I think they’re wrong, because I can only remember what I can’t readily forget. For instance, I’m a great fan of and participant in the Grammy Awards, and I know a lot about how to vote and who I’m going to vote for. But if I were a true trivia buff, I would know who won what in which year, and I would certainly have known that standup comedian/actor Bob Newhart is a three-time Grammy award winner — for Best New Artist, Best Comedy Performance — Spoken Word, and the shocker, to me, anyway, for Album of the Year (When will we ever again see a spoken word album win year’s best album against all the music bests? Never.), all three honors presented during the third Grammy Awards in 1961, for his groundbreaking comedy LPs, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” and “The Button Down Mind Strikes Back,” multiple million-sellers which were both released in the previous year. (You can get copies of these and his other comedy recordings from www.bobnewhart.com).

Some of Newhart’s most memorable standup routines were recorded for “Button-Down Mind,” including “Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue,” in which the eccentric President rejects advice from his slick publicist, and “The Driving Instructor,” in which a harassed teacher tries to keep his cool under fire from a pupil’s scary mistakes. In the late 1950s, when Newhart first delivered them, one-sided conversations in which the straight man leaves the audience imagining and guffawing at the provocative inanities and mishaps of the never-heard second banana, these bits were a new kind of standup — clever, underplayed, the escalating punchlines delivered with exquisite timing, paced by Newhart’s natural stammer.

That’s right, it’s not just a comedic device, he really does stammer, Newhart insisted to the 200-member audience during his interview with Grammy Museum Executive Director Bob Santelli, as the first comedy guest of the Museum’s public programs and archiving project. Stammering, he lectured us, is a manner of speech that is never to be confused with its lower life-form cousin, stuttering. “I’ve always been a stammerer,” Newhart explained, “so I’m used to people finishing my sentences.” Despite that provocation, Santelli avoided the pitfall almost entirely, allowing Newhart to speak for himself through a well-crafted interview that ranged from the former accountant’s start in comedy (he and a bored friend would phone each other at the end of the work day, and riff freely for their own amusement, until Newhart’s friend moved away, and he had to continue their conversations one-sidedly), through both of his popular sitcoms — the “Bob Newhart Show” starring Suzanne Pleshette, in which Newhart played a Chicago psychologist, and the “Newhart” series, featuring brothers Larry, Daryl and Daryl, in which Newhart played a Vermont innkeeper — and of course, to his astonishing Grammy wins, for an album that was recorded live before his FIRST ever nightclub audience. Newhart closed his interview by performing a taste of the Grammy-winning stand up bit, “The Cruise of the U.S.S. Codfish,” in which he portrayed the clueless Captain of a mutinous submarine crew. At the end of the performance, Santelli showed us Newhart’s gifts to the Museum — signed scripts, a prop telephone, and one of those ubiquitous cardigans worn on either or both of the sitcoms.

I was gifted the courtside seat to hear Bob Newhart, and with a whirlwind tour of the highlights of the 16-month old Grammy Museum (opened in conjunction with the Grammy’s 50th year celebrations), courtesy of my old friend Tracy Strann, who’d just been named its Director of External Affairs. The Museum is wonderful, with loaned artifacts from all over the musical and Grammy-winning universe, like Michael Doucet of Beausoleil’s fiddle, one of Bob Newhart’s Grammys, which in those days were black gramophones on a gold base, and a special exhibit of Michael Jackson memorabilia, including the single diamond-encrusted sparkling glove and a variety of military and suit-of-lights toreador-style jackets.

But more importantly, the Museum is filled with interactive displays that educate as they entertain, including an award-winning timeline that brings history and musical styles to life via touch table. The exhibit, called “Crossroads,” allows visitors to explore nearly 150 genres of music by grabbing those of immediate interest, which open up to reveal photos, songs, and artists’ voices describing the musical style and its impact, and then revealing that genre’s connections to other musical styles at their crossroads. As President of the Music Museum of Southwest Louisiana, still archiving our first major gift of objects and ephemera, I had more than a few pangs of exhibit envy.

I arrived at the Museum near closing, so I missed what may be the most exciting part of the experience for would-be Grammy recording artists — a chance to work in the eight pods where you can learn to record different musical sounds using a variety of techniques under the virtual guidance of famed musicians, producers and engineers. According to the Museum’s brochure, the “In the Studio” experience uses “touch-screen interactivity and one-of-a-kind film footage to take you inside the recording process” so users will feel that they are in a real studio, where they can hear the results of making various creative and technical choices. I’m definitely going to make a special trip when I’m next in Los Angeles to take that ride at the Grammy Museum. (More info from www.grammymuseum.org.)

I used to worry that putting music in a museum would be like putting trees in Joni Mitchell’s “tree museum” – that it would be all that’s left when paradise is paved and the last live song’s played until the music’s over. But it’s had exactly the opposite effect. The new music museums show you how exciting music is and can be, and why and how you can get involved in making it with hands on exhibits. Try the Experience Music Project|Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle, Washington (www.empsfm.org), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio (www.rockhall.com), and Vienna, Austria’s Sound Museum (you can find out how different sounds are made, by playing with a whole room full of sound-generating toys and equipment. More info from www.hausdermusik.com/en/sound-museum/16.htm)