George Foster

The comedy writing and production team of Bob Booker and George Foster rode high during the comedy record craze of the mid-'60s and early '70s . During this distinctly laughable period in the music business, yucks were big bucks. Fast-selling discs by artists such as Allan Sherman were stacked in shops as high as boxes of matzo at Passover. The simile is dry, tasty, and appropriate when it comes to Booker & Foster as a great deal of their material was considered Jewish comedy. Not every performer that was involved in these recordings was Jewish; the hilarious Valerie Harper, for example, made one of her earliest appearances on a Booker & Foster record and later explained that she had learned the appropriate accents growing up in Brooklyn. But the material featured on recordings such as The Yiddish Are Coming! The Yiddish Are Coming! and When You're in Love the Whole World Is Jewish belong to the rich tradition of Jews joking fun at Jews and should not be considered anti-Semitic. While this theme dominates the output of this team like a concerned Jewish mother, Booker & Foster pointed their satirical barbs at other subjects during their career. The team's most famous record of all would have to be the twin volumes entitled The First Family, a satire of the John F. Kennedy dynasty that knocked the Beatles off the charts with all the finesse of David pelting Goliath. The First Family is usually associated with the performers whose voices were heard, such as Vaughn Meader and Naomi Brossart, but it was Booker & Foster who wrote the actual material. Later came Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts, a comic look at Jacqueline Kennedy marrying Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis. On the question of topical comedy such as this becoming too dated to be considered enjoyable, it is a fact...