The Cancel(ed) Culture
I've been thinking about Vaughn Meader lately. It's a weird thing to be thinking about. I can't be the only one with weird thoughts, though.
Vaughn Meader is a novelty name, a trivia question, an unfortunate example of timing being everything. At the age of 26, he became one of the most famous people in the country, for almost exactly one year.
After he got out of the Army, Meader was just another guy who thought about leveraging what talent he had into a career in comedy. Working in nightclubs, he realized that with some subtle adjustments, his native New England accent could be changed into a funny imitation of the President of the United States, John Kennedy.
Record producers Earle Stroud and Bob Booker hustled the young man into a studio, hired other actors and writers, and produced The First Family in October 1962, a comedy album gently satirizing the New Frontier. When it was released, it quickly became the best-selling recording in history.
Not a typo there. In history.
Not that this would last. Two years later, four boys from Liverpool would be setting their own records, but Meader wasn't sidelined by The Beatles.
It was a caricature of Kennedy, not an accurate impression (when you hear Mayor Quimby on The Simpsons, Dan Castellaneta is doing Meader's JFK voice, if maybe unintentionally), but it was funny and a big hit, and Meader was hot. He was making a lot of money and crisscrossing the country, accompanied by rising fame and odd vowel sounds.
He wasn't dumb. He knew that it was career suicide to put all his eggs in a Kennedy basket, and was already planning a future career as a political satirist when JFK was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The First Family was pulled from record stores, and relegated to the back of family collections, where it gathered dust until discovered by bored kids like me, baffled by the topical references but still sort of amused at the artifact of another time.
And Meader couldn't get arrested. The job he was good at, that he worked on, that he envisioned, was wiped out over three long seconds in Dealey Plaza. The job ceased to exist. And so did, to a large degree, Vaughn Meader.
Lenny Bruce, who went on several wild rants onstage about the Kennedy assassination, knew immediately. On his initial appearance after the assassination, Bruce’s first line was, “Boy, is Vaughn Meader fucked.” He was, too.
He made a couple of attempts to move on, but nobody was paying attention. Nobody wanted to. He was forever associated with a dead president, and he knew it. He went to bed on a Thursday night at the top of the game. Friday night his career was finished.
He spent the better part of a decade fighting drug addiction, then eventually settled back into his first love, music. He became a fairly popular bluegrass musician in Maine, and passed away in 2004 from COPD.
And now here we are.
...
I've been thinking of this story because I know musicians, too many to count. The collateral damage from Covid-19 is widespread and varied, but people who perform for a living for live audiences are running under a lot of radars.
Their jobs have ceased to exist. Temporarily, we hope, but nobody's crystal ball is working right now. My son-in-law is a singer who travels constantly – gone. My daughter's clients are largely performers like her husband – gone.
And dozens of friends, their friends, my friends. These aren't pro athletes with long, already-negotiated contracts and money in the bank, but they're not bartenders either. They've spent years of study and practice and performances sharpening their natural talent, and now they've been canceled.
People who played at Carnegie Hall two months ago are filing for unemployment (or trying to). Career paths that were already daunting are now nonexistent, and it's not like they can wait tables while being patient. Waiters have also been canceled.
I don't have a clear vision of anything. All I can muster is a suspicion that this will take a couple of years, years of recovering and reestablishing cultural connections, and for some people it'll be too late. Fates have been altered and decisions will eventually have to be made.
Hair stylists will be back, and beaches will open. I'm not so sure about malls.
And I'm concerned for cello players, for violinists, for composers and concert masters. For big dreams that have no appreciable future.
Sure, it's personal. Lots of others are falling through the cracks of our awareness – Covid-19 disproportionately affects the poorest and the sickest, the weakest and the most vulnerable, and not coincidentally the least visible. Native populations are being devastated, and populations of color. Bodies pile up in hospital hallways while asshats in public office scream about the tyranny of social distancing. If you haven't read half a dozen horrific accounts of life on the inside from a healthcare worker, you haven't been paying attention.
It's not just musicians on the margins, either. I loved watching the Sondheim special event last night, as all of these famous folks sang for Stephen from their bathrooms and bedrooms, kitchens and neighborhood parks. I'm not worried that Lin-Manuel Miranda won't have enough to eat. I do wonder if he'll have a theater to perform in.
And I wonder if we can fully understand what's happened, and what will. So I think, again, of Mr. Meader.
He was flying to Milwaukee for another comedy gig on November 22, 1963. When he arrived at the airport and got into a cab, the cabbie turned around. "Did you hear about Kennedy in Dallas?" he said.
"No," said Meador, getting into the backseat and used to friendly people. "How does it go?"
I don't know how it's going to go. I just need there to be music to go along with whatever, and I worry.
