Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer was a piano-playing singer/songwriter/satirist in the 50’s and 60’s.  He began writing songs while studying mathematics at Harvard.  His first two collections of songs, Songs by Tom Lehrer and More Songs by Tom Lehrer, led to world-wide tours.  The early songs were often parodies of popular song types: love songs (‘I Hold Your Hand in Mine’, ‘When You Are Old and Grey’), a song of south (‘I Wanna Go Back to Dixie’), and a college fight song (‘Fight Fiercely, Harvard’).  His second album, however, included more topical and acerbic fair (‘It Makes a Fella Proud to be a Soldier’, ‘We Will All Go Together When We Go’).  Favorites from this period are ‘Poisoning Pigeons in the Park’, 'Be Prepared', ‘The Masochism Tango’, and ‘The Elements’.  His next records were recorded live and included his introductory remarks which were often the best part.    

In the 60’s, Lehrer contributed songs for the U.S. version of That Was The Week That Was, a weekly satiric comedy TV program.  He later recorded the songs at the hungry i in San Francisco which were released as That Was The Year That Was.  This record includes ‘The Vatican Rag’, ‘The New Math’, ‘Pollution’, ‘Smut’, and ‘National Brotherhood Week’.  In the 70’s, he then began teaching math at UC Santa Cruz.

Tom Lehrer could rhyme just about anything.  He often did this by breaking phrases, contractions, or words across stanza.  

For example, from ‘A Christmas Carol’:

Relations, sparing no expense, ‘ll / send some useless old utensil.

Or, from ‘We Will All Go Together When We Go’,

When you attend a funeral/It is sad to think that sooner o' l / ater those you love will do the same for you.

And you may have thought it tragic/not to mention other adjec / tives to think of all the weeping they will do.

Or other rhymes that are just plain outrageous.  From ‘Smut’:

Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately / I’ve got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley.

 And from ‘In Old Mexico’:

Now it’s fiesta time in Akron, Ohio/  But its back to old Guadalajara I’m longing to go./

Far away from the strikes of the A.F. of L. and C.I.O./...

Last year, a new CD/DVD  was released entitled The Tom Lehrer Collection.  It includes a few songs not heard on the old albums:  ‘I Got It From Agnes’, ‘Selling Out’, and ‘I’m Spending Hanukkah in Santa Monica’. ‘I Got It From Agnes’, actually predates the rest of the songs; it was deemed too racy for its day.  It didn’t revive until the London and off-Broadway musical revue Tom Foolery in 1980.  The new CD also has the songs Lehrer recorded for The Electric Company in the 70’s – ‘Silent E’ is my favorite.  The DVD has a 1967 concert in Oslo and other gems.

It’s difficult to name another singer/songwriter with such satirical impact.   Like many, many Tom Lehrer fans, I first heard his songs sitting on a dorm room floor in college.  He had long stopped touring by then but his wit and cynical edge still cut like a knife.  And when it wasn’t satiric, it was simply brilliant such as in ‘The Elements’, “which is simple the names of the chemical elements set to a possibly recognizable tune.”  Sitting on that floor, I didn’t recognize that tune but I would soon learn that it was Major General Stanley’s Song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance.    

Question of the Day: In Tom Lehrer’s ‘Clementine’, he parodies four “professional songwriters”.  Who are they?