When I was a teenager, I went through a pretty intense Allan Sherman/Tom Lehrer phase. That was a little before Weird Al Yankovic became weird. Dr. Demento was definitely demented. But I think it had more to do with a girl named Marjorie I was dating who was a bigger fan than I.
When my 7-year old was picking out songs from my iTunes for a CD, he added Allan Sherman's "Pop Hates the Beatles" and all three kids instantly loved it. The song is cute and funny--even when insulting to their favorite band, the Beatles. A parody to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel," they are familiar with the sound. And it gave me (like a true homeschooling Dad) an opportunity to give them a slice of American cultural history from the early 60's, although that was even before my time. So I explained about girls fainting, and the British invasion and even changes in economic scales (the daughter in the song bought a pair of tickets for $47... we extrapolated that to hundred of dollars today). But silliness always wins out and the favorite line remains:
There's Beatles books and t-shirts and rings/and one thing and another
To buy my daughter all of these things/I had to sell her brother
So I picked up a CD of Allan Sherman and started listening again, and I came to have a better chance of listening and a clearer understanding of his songs as a cultural snapshot of the early 60's. I has always know him to be a parody of "the borscht belt" entertainers in the Catskills in the 50's and 60's, and certainly his Yiddish accents and constructions are familiar to me.
Everyone has no doubt heard his "Hello Muddah Hello Faddah" letter from Camp Grenada, his biggest and longest-lasting hit. It has an honored place amongst the novelty songs of the world, and deserves it.
"Harvey and Sheila" is a slice-of-life to the tune of the Jewish celebratory song "Hava Nagila." It explores the intrusion of letters, abbreviations,and acronyms into everyday life. But it also gives the listener an opportunity to understand a snapshot of American culture of the period. It was entertaining for me to have to explain all the abbreviations to the kids.
She shopped at A & P/he bought a used MG
They sat and watched TV/on their RCA
Borrowed from HFC/bought some AT&T
And on election day/worked for JFK
...
Traded their used MG/for a new XKE
Switched to the GOP/that's the way things go.
"Al and Yetta" similarly outlines the TV programming of the day to the tune of "Alouette"
Al 'n' Yetta/fans of Art Linkletta
And they love to/sing along with Mitch
They just found in TV Guide/reruns of December Bride.
(December Bride) TV Guide
(Mister Ed) Stay in bed
(Dorothy Gish) What a dish
Ohhhh......
I still need to look up (or ask my folks) who Loretta was and what door she came through.
In "Chim Chim Cheree" we learn of chemicals and mass marketing:
There's Tufsyn, and Retsyn, and Acrylan too,
And Marfac and Melmac and what else is new?
There's Orlon and Korlan, and there's Accutron,
And Teflon, and Ban-Lon, and so on and on.
These wonderful words spin around in my brain;
Each one is a mystery I cannot explain.
Like what does that Blue Magic whitener do --
Does it make blue things white, or make white things blue?
Putting them all together, I found myself thinking of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," a musical history lesson, which even came with educational guides for teachers.
Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs Invasion
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston Beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician Sex
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?
And I started thinking, as a good sociologist might, that perhaps there was something to using song lyrics as cultural history lessons. Other songs I thought of that call out for an educational guides include Peter Gabriel's "Jeux Sans Frontier" and Tim Curry's "I Do the Rock."
Yet the oddest connection I made while reveling in Allan Sherman was about "Sarah Jackman," a parody of two old friends catching up on the phone, to the tune of "Frere Jacque."
Sarah Jackman, Sarah Jackman/How's by you? How's by you?
How's your brother Bernie/He's a big attorney.
How's your sister Doris/Still with William Morris.
How's your cousin Shirley/She got married early.
How's her daughter Esther/Skipped a whole semester.
Was this the precursor to the Nails' "88 Lines About 44 Women?"
Debbie-Rae had no such problems,perfect Norman Rockwell home.
Nina sixteen had a baby, left her parents lived alone.
Bobbie joined a new-wave band, and changed her name to Bobbie-sox.
Eloise who played guitar, sang songs about whales and cops.
And the one song that I came away from with new respect was "One Hippopotami," which tells us about the differences in word forms between singulars and plurals, and of course does a great butcher job on the English language, in particular words about pairs.
A paranoia is/a bunch of mental blocks
And when Ben Casey meets Kildaire/that's called a paradox
...
A paramecium/is not a pair
A parallelogram/is just a crazy square
Nobody knows just what/a paraphernalia is
And what is half a pair of scissors/but a single sciz?
In the end, go listen to some Allan Sherman. Have a few laughs and see what you learn! Maybe someday we'll start putting together lesson plans!
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