Old political humorist

Mark Russell

, the wisecracking pianist who pierced Washington’s elite with snappy one-liners and upbeat tunes, has passed away. Hey what 90

The irreverent satirist died Thursday at home in Washington, DC, from complications of prostate cancer, his wife

Alison Russell

told the Washington Post.

A master of political satire with a rapier wit, Russell was best known for his “Mark Russell Comedy Specials” that aired on PBS from 1975 to 2004 and for spreading impartial humor set to music behind a flag-draped piano.

I am an equal opportunity provider, told

The Times in 1991.

It’s actually cowardice.

“I sing songs at the piano and also talk,” he previously told The Times. “If [people ] were just tuning in [to my shows] for the first time and they had no idea who I was, chances are they would only like half the show because I’m an equal opportunity offender.

That

“

equal opportunity

“

offense was “actually cowardice,” joked the affable comedian.

MARK RUSSELL: On the satirical path

With his dark-rimmed glasses and bow tie, Russell

had been was a

familiar face in the capital since the end of the Eisenhower administration, but

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catapulted onto the national stage with his first PBS special in 1975. He also wrote a syndicated newspaper

column

and considered himself “a political cartoonist for the blind”.

The spectacular entertainer grew up in Buffalo, NY, in the 1940s and 1950s

S

. He was inspired by radio comics

jack benny

and the aerobics

Fred Allen

but idolized his uncle a band singer with the staff orchestra on a local radio station and the only person in the family who had been an entertainer.

He began piano lessons at age 7 and scored his first professional gig at age 14, earning $10 playing the piano with a bassist and a guitarist at an Italian restaurant on New Year’s Eve. We knew 10 songs and kept playing the same songs over and over,” he told The Times in 1991.

He served in the Marines as a radio operator in Japan and Hawaii in the early 1950s

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chicken

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worked for his father for a short time

Virginia

gas station in virginia

,

where his family moved shortly after he graduated from high school.

Russell said he had no career goals at the time but “wanted to have some form of entertainment. He described his musicianship as too much of a disgrace to be a serious jazz pianist, but said

That

he “used those three chords I know pretty well.

He joked that he became a political satirist because he “lived in Washington and it was just the best thing to do.”

“If I lived in Detroit, I would talk about the auto business. The politicians everywhere got such great respect, such reverence, and I approached them from a different perspective,” he said in a separate Times interview.

Russell prefers Irk Without a Net : Humor: Appearing on PBS specials, the political satirist likes to perform. He’s doing a concert at UC Irvine on Sunday.

In the late 1950s, he was hired to perform at the bar of the Carroll Arms Hotel, which he described as a smoke-filled political hangout on Capitol Hill frequented by senators, congressmen, and lobbyists.

“I was hired as a pianist and whatever else I could do, he said. I told jokes and did other people’s stuff, but I couldn’t get their attention until I started talking about what they were doing in politics.

Usually he acknowledged the heavyweights present, figuring out

That

if they showed up they wouldn’t mind being made fun of, and eventually got stung by one of his barbs a badge of honor

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with many politicians appropriating his material for themselves.

Washington is a hotbed of joke theft,

Russell hey

told The Times.

Russell.

My daughter recently heard a politician give a speech and she said it contained three of my lines.

So you have to be very careful; you have to somehow connect your name to it.

Hey made one

big

career-enhancing move to the Shoreham in 1961, which at the time was “the largest, poshest hotel in Washington” and worked as a resident comedian for 20 years. He also appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show”, “The Dean Martin Comedy World Series” and in a series of episodes of “Match Game” in the 1970s and 1980s. By then, he had taken his show to the road, performing at public and corporate events across the country. He eventually played in all 50 states, last hitting North Dakota in 1991 and wrote funny stories and observations about each that he collected in a book.

“Last week I reached my 50th statehood,” he told The Times in 1991. “North Dakota held on all these years for some reason. I kept dropping hints about talk shows and stuff. I thought maybe no one invited me because they didn’t have public television, but then I thought about it for a while; maybe she

Doing

have public television.”

Russell was hired by and berated both Democrats and Republicans, tending his humor to “everyone in power” and assuming that “it will be even on Judgment Day”.

“It’s strange. It shows I have no scruples. It’s what’s known as the spineless middle ground,” he joked.

In addition to his wife, Russell is survived by three children from his first marriage, Monica Welch, John Russell and Matthew Russell of Tucson, a brother, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, according to the Post.