Tucson comedian Walt Maxam, a longtime fixture at Laffs Comedy Caffé and a mentor to a generation of young comics, died Saturday after a yearlong battle with lung and bladder cancer. He was 67.
Maxam came to comedy late in life, a graying 50-plus-year-old who had served in the Navy during Vietnam, raised two sons in his native Marana and had worked a handful of jobs including at the Arizona Portland Cement Co. (CalPortland) and Silver Bell mine before landing in the maintenance department at Quail Run Elementary School. He retired from the Marana Unified School District four years ago, said his wife, Sue.
“(Comedy) was a hobby for him,” she said. “I knew he wanted to do it. I just thought he was kind of crazy to want to get up there, but he was really excited about it.”
New Mexico comic Scotty Goff owned Laffs when Maxam started doing open mic nights in the late 1990s.
“I can remember his first time on stage because he was absolutely horrible,” said Goff, who sold the club back to founder Gary Bynum in 2008. “Walt was one of those people who was a naturally funny person. I’m sure his whole life he was the life of the party. But to translate that on stage you have to figure out the formula. He hadn’t figured out the formula.”
It took Maxam a few months of watching other comics and trying new stuff on stage before Goff threw him into the mix of openers, the comics who warm the stage and do the introductions for the bigger-named headliners.
“He really embraced this art form,” Goff said.
When he wasn’t on stage, Maxam could be found seated at the bar, doling out advice to young comedians.
“He would sit by the server station and they would get him his coffee or water,” said fellow comic Gary Hood, who books shows at Laffs. “Maybe if he was feeling really radical he would have an O’Doul’s.”
If he didn’t really know you, Maxam could often come off as gruff and stern with young comics.
“The longer I came around him he just became gradually nicer,” said Josiah Osego, who waited seven months after his first Laffs show before he worked up the courage to approach Maxam two years ago. “For comics who told (sex) and fart jokes, he would school us.”
Hood said Maxam reveled in his mentor role.
“This is a place where a couple of old guys like us can be relevant to a group of 20-year-olds because we were all pursuing the same passion,” Hood said.
“He was amazing at encouraging young comics,” added Lorrie Brownstone, who got her start doing comedy at Laffs a dozen years ago. She now lives in New York.
“He was kind of gruff and direct. A young comic would come off stage and he would say don’t hold the mic that way and don’t take the mic off the stand and leave the stand in the middle of the stage. The smart ones would listen.”
Brownstone and Maxam did a USO tour to Iraq and Kuwait in 2011 and often traveled together for gigs. The pair also were booked together at Laffs, where people would sometimes mistake them for a married couple.
“Walt would say, ‘Hell no,” and I would say, ‘He should be so lucky’,” Brownstone recalled. “I can’t believe he’s not there. He was always my anchor. It is just strange that he’s not around any more.”
In addition to his wife, Maxam is survived by his sons, Richard Shane Maxam and Michael Scott Maxam, both of Tucson; and three brothers, Michael Maxam, Richard Maxam and John Maxam, all of Tucson.
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Marana Mortuary, 12146 W. Barnett Road off North Sandario Road in Marana.
