Political comedian Mark Russell, who died on Thursday at the age of 90, was a jovial satirist whose friendship with Roll Call founder Sid Yudain helped define the newspaper’s tone in its early years.
As part of celebrating Roll Call’s 50th anniversary in 2005, Russell wrote about how Sid (Sid would hate it if we referred to him on second reference as “Yudain”) helped him get a job playing the piano at the Carroll Arms hotel near the Capitol.
“I didn’t go to college, but my poli-sci class was the Carroll Arms. My textbook was Roll Call and my professor was Sid Yudain. He would introduce me to various politicos, staffers and lobbyists — aka, The Ones Who Pick Up the Checks. He would suggest which hearings to attend in order to pick up ideas for comedy material. Although he was not a music critic, Sid rightly recognized that I could not survive on my piano playing alone,” Russell wrote.
