In today's Friday Know-It-All, Editor Ira takes us on a journey into the world of 1960s political impersonation.

In modern comedy circles, doing impressions of political figures is often considered the refuge of scoundrels. Sure, it might get you some views on the socials or laughs at an open mic. If you're the cream of the crop you could land a gig on a late night talk show, or even "Saturday Night Live" (provided they don't decide to stunt-cast a movie star instead of someone who can, y'know, do impressions).

By and large, though, the days of superstar impressionists like Rich Little and Frank Caliendo are in the rearview. Nowadays it's a niche talent relegated mainly to podcasts, comedy clubs, and cocktail parties.

That might be because American politics just aren't much of a laughing matter for many audiences at the moment. We're all living in a particularly heated political climate right now, so I'm going to do my best to keep this light and nonpartisan. That's why we're turning our attention away from the current political stage and toward an era when things were simpler and more carefree: the Stable '60s!

I'm kidding, of course. Where U.S. politics are concerned, the 1960s were a powder keg stuffed with powder kegs. Maybe that's why audiences responded so well to impressions of the Kennedy family. The Kennedys brought together ideological charisma, iconic fashion sense, enviable good looks, and, most importantly, hilarious Boston accents. Their "Camelot" image both instilled confidence and invited mockery that could take them down a peg. That made them prime fodder for a generation of impressionists, a couple of whom turned Kennedy-isms into bona fide careers.

This conversation has to begin with Vaughn Meader, a comic fairly universally regarded as the definitive JFK impersonator of the early '60s. Meader had a hardscrabble childhood in 1940s Brookline, Massachusetts, and came into his own after joining the Army in the '50s. While stationed in West Germany, he formed a country-western band with some of his fellow soldiers and discovered his love of performing. He quickly learned that crowds responded especially well when he slipped into impersonations of famous singers.

That realization cast the die for Meader's post-service career. He started performing musical comedy routines at New York City clubs, accompanying himself on piano. As young Senator John F. Kennedy's political profile began rising in the late '50s, it dawned on Meader that his own Boston accent made him a natural-born JFK impersonator. After Kennedy won the presidency, Meader studied his facial expressions and physical mannerisms until he had perfected an exaggerated but fairly uncanny approximation of the Commander in Chief.

Meader became a sensation in the adolescence of broadcast TV, performing in a three-piece suit and immovable coif that made him look enough like Kennedy to suspend disbelief. Meader was a quick wit and a skilled improviser, talents that let audiences know he was more than just an impressionist. His go-to bit was performing a press conference that gave him ample opportunity to mimic the quippy zingers that made the real JFK a reporters' favorite.

Vaughn Meader's fame culminated with the 1962 release of "The First Family." This full-length LP, recorded in front of a live audience, found Meader performing skits as both John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, with actor Naomi Brossart playing Jackie Kennedy. The humor was mild enough to make a hit with people of most political persuasions, with little of the edge and defiance that would define political comedy in the decade to come.

"The First Family" became a surprise mega-hit. It sold 6.5 million copies in its first year of release, setting a record as the fastest-selling album of the pre-Beatles era. Meader not only won a 1963 Grammy for "Album of the Year," he also helped establish the LP as a viable — and bankable — vehicle for comedy, paving the way for several generations of best-selling comedy records.

A slew of imitators dropped albums focused on not just the Kennedys, but also the families of rival heads of state like Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro. Dozens of comics scrambled to work a Kennedy routine into their acts, but none had anywhere near the same impact. Even John F. Kennedy himself was a fan of "The First Family," although he joked that Meader's JFK impression sounded more like his brother Teddy.

Unfortunately, you have a pretty good idea of how this story is going to end. Vaughn Meader spent a solid year as the hottest thing in mainstream American comedy, but the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy brought his career to an abrupt and irrevocable halt. Almost overnight, copies of "The First Family" were pulled from record stores. Meader's upcoming TV appearances were canceled. He tried to rally by shifting to non-political material, but audiences saw him only as "the Kennedy guy," and no one particularly wanted to be reminded.

Meader essentially left show business soon after, embracing the hippie lifestyle, retiring to Maine, and playing piano gigs here and there. His "First Family" producer and collaborator Earle Doud did lure him out of retirement in the '70s to record a parody of "Jesus Christ Superstar" called "The Second Coming," but no one was especially interested.

After such a meteoric rise and such a tragic fall, it seems oddly appropriate that Vaughn Meader's career epitaph was written by his era's most notorious comedy edgelord, Lenny Bruce. Legend has it that in Bruce's first stand-up show following the Kennedy assassination, he took the stage, stood in quiet contemplation for a long moment, and finally sighed, "Boy, poor Vaughn Meader!" The audience's relieved laughter more or less confirmed that Mr. Meader's brief time on top had come to an end.

What hadn't come to an end, oddly enough, was America's thirst for comical Kennedy recordings. Even though Vaughn Meader himself was finished, the '60s teemed with attempts to recapture the lightning in a bottle of "The First Family" with parodies of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and JFK's brother Bobby.

Four years after the ascendance of Vaughn Meader, comedian Bill Minkin came about as close to replicating his success as anyone ever would. Performing under the stage name of "Senator Bobby," Minkin adopted Robert F. Kennedy's trademark Harvard stammer for an intentionally awful cover of "Wild Thing" by The Troggs. On the flip side, Minkin performed the same song as "Senator Everett McKinley," a lampoon of Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen that might hit better today if Dirksen had had a tenth of RFK's cultural legacy. (Although I'd actually say the B-side is the funnier of the two, if only because I haven't been jaded by six decades' worth of Everett Dirksen impressions.)

"What if an unlikely celebrity performed a popular song?" is the oldest trick in the impressionists' playbook, but it's one that captures the public's attention every decade or so. For whatever reason, the notion of two relatively buttoned-up senators offering dueling interpretations of the most primal rock hit of 1966 tickled the national fancy enough to push Minkin's silliness up the charts. Senator Bobby's "Wild Thing" became a surprise Billboard Top 20 hit and landed Minkin slots on national TV variety shows.

A full-length LP titled "Boston Soul" followed, featuring Minkin's takes on Lyndon Johnson singing Roger Miller's "King of the Road," William F. Buckley performing The Lovin' Spoonful's "Daydream," and, um, Bob Dylan covering "White Christmas." (Bob Dylan doing Christmas songs? What an outlandish concept!) Minkin kept up the act for the next few years, with a 1968 reworking of Mitch Ryder's "Sock It To Me Baby" (titled, of course, "Sock It To Me Bobby") standing as his final release before RFK was murdered a month later.

The death of Senator Kennedy also meant the end of Senator Bobby. Minkin was at least able to make a smoother post-parody pivot than Vaughn Meader's. He became a Boomer icon as the host of the long-running classic rock concert series "The King Biscuit Flower Hour," which you might remember as the favorite radio show of your high school friend's mildly sketchy dad.

And thus did an assassin's bullet end a second Kennedy-themed comedy career in an untimely fashion. While that's a sidebar at best in the overall tragedy of the Kennedys' 1960s saga, it's a strange and fascinating one. It probably also reflects something about Americans' unique connections to politics and pop culture, but I'm not going to dissect it any further. Searching all of these parody videos has convinced YouTube's algorithm that I want to see A.I.-generated fakes of '60s-style songs. In fact, there are few things I want to see less, so I have some heavy-duty filtering to do. These are the burdens I take on in the name of your Friday knowing-it-all.