P erhaps Tom Lehrer isn’t quite “a riddle wrapped in a mysteryinside an enigma” as Winston Churchill quipped of Russia, butLehrer inspired more than his share of artful lore, much ofwhich turns out to be bogus in an Elvis sighting sort of way.Was some insight to the mystery about to be revealed? At 2
PM last April 3, I heard that familiar voice, a soft-spoken “Hello Roger? TomLehrer.” Lots of thoughts churned up from the good old days. All those clas-sic songs and performances which many of us prized and memorized – thoseprecious few 33s we played and replayed so as to assimilate and regurgitateeach minute inflection of Tom Lehrer’s brilliant comic liturgy. Lehrer exhib-ited impish genius in molding the American popular song form to his ownacerbic theatrical image. Urbane, articulate and omnipotent in the cold war’fifties, he was a welcome alternative to play-it-safe humorists such as SteveAllen and Tennessee Ernie Ford, providing a bard’s-eye-view of a landscapepopulated by duck-and-cover air-raid drill instructors and John Birch Societymembers. In his own exquisitely rational world, Tom Lehrer lampooned big-ots in “I Wanna Go Back To Dixie.” He satirized cultural icons such as
TomLehrer:
Spoken with a mock Russian accent ...
“Who made me the genius I“Who made me the genius I“Who made me the genius I“Who made me the genius I“Who made me the genius Iam todayam todayam todayam todayam today,,,,,
T he mathemat i c i an thatThe mathemat i c i an thatThe mathemat i c i an thatThe mathemat i c i an thatThe mathemat i c i an thatothers all quoteothers all quoteothers all quoteothers all quoteothers all quote,,,,,
Who ’Who ’Who ’Who ’Who ’s the prs the prs the prs the prs the professor thatofessor thatofessor thatofessor thatofessor thatmade me that way?made me that way?made me that way?made me that way?made me that way?
The grThe grThe grThe grThe greatest that eveatest that eveatest that eveatest that eveatest that ever goter goter goter goter gotchalk on his coat.”chalk on his coat.”chalk on his coat.”chalk on his coat.”chalk on his coat.”
“Wernher Von Braun.” Lehrer even romanticized living(and the imminent possibility of dying) with the atombomb in “We Will All Go Together When We Go.” Ar-mageddon with a song and a smile, Mr. Lehrer beltingout ditties and tinkling the ivories as if performing in somewarped, parallel universe MGM musical. He saluted ur-ban America with “The Old Dope Peddler,” “PoisoningPigeons In The Park” and “Pollution.” It was open seasonon American foreign policy with “Send The Marines.” Nosacred cow escaped his barbecue grill, neither the BoyScouts in “Be Prepared” nor the Catholic Church with“The Vatican Rag” – his most controversial song. Yes, heeven turned on the folk music community with “The IrishBallad,” “Clementine,” and “The Folk Song Army”... andrightly so. Here’s the ultimate irony: Although by moststandards not a “folk singer,” the erstwhile mathemati-cian raised the well-crafted topical song to an art form,and out folk-sang the hootenanny crowd when it came tosharp, biting satire.
Then ... Tom Lehrer vanished, and we didn’t know whatto make of his hasty exit. I am reminded of the dramaticscene in the 1953 epic western Shane – a movie releasedthe year of Lehrer’s first studio album and his first ap-pearance in Sing Out! At the close of the film, Alan Laddrides off into the sunset as geeky young Brandon de Wildelongingly, hauntingly pleads for his return, “Shane, comeback.” But Shane wasn’t coming back, and neither wasLehrer. A millennium later (that’s how long it seems) wehave the recently issued three-CD retrospective of TomLehrer’s complete opus, The Re-mains Of Tom Lehrer, released byRhino Records. It’s all there. His ra-pier wit, virtuoso pianisticuffs, on-the-mark sarcastic delivery, and ex-quisitely irreverent lyrics and narra-tion. Listening again, I feel a sense ofloss. I could understand Alan Laddbailing on the homesteaders. Ladd dis-patched Jack Palance and the moviewas over. But Mr. Lehrer, with all duerespect, there were more bad guys togun down. And mathematics, you leftthe allure of show biz to teach freakingmathematics? How many times must webe “treated” to Mark Russell on publictelevision before you feel compelled toreturn to fill this smarmy entertainmentvoid? Besides, who ever heard of the roar of the greasepaint – the smell of the Pythagorean theorem?
In such a short “career” (15 nightclub engagements,104 solo concerts – none since 1967, 50 or so composi-tions and a handful of sound recordings ... one a live ver-sion of a similar studio work, released simultaneously),Lehrer made a penetrating impact. One would be correctto observe that among his devotees, and there still are le-gions who grow melancholy at the mere mention of hisname, he long ago obtained something akin to cult status.But before we start passing out the complimentary Kool-
Aid (offered to show Lehrer’s vitriolic influence on myown breezy writing style), we must accept that what heleft us was substantial. His contribution stands as a sig-nificant milestone for the folk genre ... yet, as he correctlyand emphatically points out, his roots and modus oper-andi were anything but folk. Is Tom Lehrer a “riddlewrapped in a mystery inside an enigma?” With all duerespect to Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, the CIA, KGB,BSA, New Math, Smut, Harvard, Atomic War, OedipusRex, Masochism, Bird Watchers, the Uniformed Services,the Periodic Table of Elements, the Folk Song Army,Christmas, good taste and the long sequestered GrettaGarbo ... look not for intrigue. None exists. Tom Lehreris a man who had a bit of sport, and then just wanted to beleft alone.
MY HOME TOWN
H ere are a few biographical facts: Thomas AndrewLehrer was born on April 9, 1928 in Manhattan, just
a piano’s throw from the neon lights of Times Square andwithin earshot of the exciting music emanating fromBroadway’s legitimate theater houses. Growing up, Lehrersays, he was “ethnically, but not religiously” Jewish. Herecalls, “More to do with the delicatessen than the syna-gogue. My brother and I went to Sunday school, but wehad Christmas Trees, and ‘God’ was primarily an exple-tive, usually preceded by ‘oh’ or ‘my’ or both.” He re-counts that his father was a successful necktie manufac-
turer, whom he characterizes as a “pio-neer and legend in his industry.” His fa-ther started out with very little money,
(Left) Tom, the clean-cut kid with the bowtie and the big smile performed from 1953through about 1967, with two years ofservice in the U.S. Army from ’55 to ’57.(Below) He wrote and performed songsfor a 1967 industrial film for Dodgewhich was shown to car dealers. TheGrand Canyon shot is genuine. Lehrerlater recalled, “Note the seat belt. I wastaking no chances.”
50 Sing Out! • Vol. 45 #1 • Spring 2001
as did countless immigrants, climbed the lad-der of success due in part to his combinationof “business sense and excellent taste” and“his ability to tend to all aspects of his busi-ness.” These are traits imparted to the youngerMr. Lehrer – although his “excellent taste”occasionally eluded the odd music critic. TomLehrer was truly master of the diverse aspectsof songwriting, performing, accompaniment,patter and comic-timing, that facilitate mak-ing a performer a success.
Musically, young Tom was at first enam-ored of Gilbert and Sullivan. He recalls, “Wehad an album of highlights from Gilbert andSullivan that I played constantly, an albumof 78s, of course, which meant that you hadto constantly lift the needle up and put it backdown again.” Lehrer says he was “immersed”in the popular music of the day, particularly“novelty” songs like “Mairzy Doats” as wellas “Gershwin and Kern and the rest.” And humor? Therewere plenty of comedy broadcasts on the radio. His fa-vorite program was the quirky comedy of “Vic AndSlade.” Lehrer also remembers thinking the Ritz Brotherswere the funniest thing he had ever seen. He recalls, “Iused to love that stuff. When you see their old moviesnow, it doesn’t really work, whereas The Marx Brothers,who I also liked, keep rolling along, still holding up form.A lot of Abbott and Costello is funny – not all of it. Iwent to the movies a lot. Probably one double feature aweek. All the kids did. I liked most movies, especiallymusicals.” But Lehrer was most influenced by Broadway.As a boy, he at tended summer camp with StephenSondheim, a man who would someday exert the kind ofmajor impact on the American mu-sical theater that Lehrer wieldedon topical songs and political hu-mor. Musicals impressed Tom.“We lived in New York, and myparents liked musicals too, and soI saw a lot of them.” The DannyKaye influence is audible in songssuch as “Lobachevsky” and “TheElements.” In 1941, Kaye openedon Broadway in Let’s Face It, withsongs by Cole Porter and SylviaFine. Lehrer says he saw the show“many times” and when Columbiareleased an album of four 10-inch78s, Tom purchased the set andplayed it repeatedly, picking outsome of the songs on the piano. “Ofcourse I took piano lessons in thosedays, like a lot of kids.” He says hedidn’t really like classical music,practicing the “absolute minimum.Then I would start picking out popu-lar tunes that I’d heard or found on
sheet music, and my parents caught on.” They relentedand his mother scouted around until she located a rarepopular music piano teacher.
FIGHT FIERCELY, HARVARD
Y et, it was mathematics and the Ivy League that wouldultimately land Tom Lehrer in the middle of a “music
career.” He was good with “logic puzzles” and figuring outthe answers to math problems, “even as a little kid.” Lehrerskipped a couple of grades in grammar school and attendedHorace Mann High School and a prep school in Connecticutcalled Loomis. Tom’s parents divorced when he was 14. Atthe age of 15 he was accepted to Harvard, “thanks to skip-ping those grades. At that time it wasn’t such a big deal,” he
reflects, “This was because of what wecalled ‘The War’ ... WWII. Everybodyover eighteen was drafted. So, many ofus were young. They were very happyto get any warm body that would paytuition.” Choosing a major was a bitof a trial. In high school he had donewell in pretty much every subject. Heeventually gravitated toward math-ematics. “I was good at a number ofthe sciences, but the labs were just tooonerous, I couldn’t deal with that, andmath was wonderful ... I was throughwith my work by noon.” Lehrer wasat Harvard two years when he wrote“Fight Fiercely, Harvard” a song thateventually made him a local hero. Henotes that as a young undergraduate,he didn’t write and sing to be ac-cepted. “Oh, no. I mostly thoughtthese songs weren’t of interest toanyone! I wrote ‘Fight Fiercely,Harvard’ in 1945. That’s the earli-
(Left) Lehrer at a 1967performance inCopenhagen. (Below)A poster for the 1980London production ofTomfoolery conceivedand produced byCameron Makintosh,who later producedCats.
continued on Page 52 ...
52 Sing Out! • Vol. 45 #1 • Spring 2001
est song on any of my records. Theothers were written a little later. Iwrote a lot of songs for special oc-casions ... silly songs, songs aboutmath, and so on, but nothing elsethat would be recordable until1948.”
By then the long-playing recordwas introduced. One LP might con-tain as much music as six or more78-rpm records. Recording, pressingand shipping could be done at amuch more reasonable cost, andLehrer soon became one of the firstsinger-songwriters to successfullyexploit a self-created sound record-ing. “My first public performance wasin 1952, at a Boston nightclub calledAlpini’s Rendezvous in KenmoreSquare. With me as bait, the ownerwas hoping to lure the Harvard crowd from across theCharles River to patronize the place. He started me at $15 anight, and I would play intermission piano as well. I got afew $5 raises, and when I finally got up to $30 a night, hesaid that was too much, so I quit.” But by then Tom hadwritten a dozen songs he felt were “keepers,” enough to fillone small, 10-inch LP. After checking out the two studioshe found in the Boston yellow pages, and rejecting the firstbecause “they were rude,” Lehrer settled on the second. OnJanuary 22, 1953 Tom went into a studio and recorded SongsBy Tom Lehrer, a little gem that ran 22 minutes. “It took meonly about an hour to record it. I had performed all the songsmany times, so most of them required only one take. Nosplicing was needed, and by the end of the hour we had acomplete edited tape.” Lehrer continues, “I went into thestudio for $15. There was a piano and a microphone. To-day, there is a producer and board with buttons and lightsand everything. Today it costs thousands of dollars just todo a single. I never could have afforded to do that albumtoday. It’s a whole different world out there.”
The resourceful undergraduate then became a cottageindustry – or perhaps the correct term should be “col-lege industry.” Lehrer felt he could sell 300 albums, sohe ordered 400 reasoning he’d break even on the 300and still have “a little profit left over to order somemore.” At first, Tom delivered the albums to local storeshimself ... the wholesale price being $3 with the shopsnear Harvard selling the album for $3.50. He recalls,“The first pressing had my home address on it. Later Igot a post office box address and a few part time assis-tants. I also raised the price to $3.95, which was thenthe going rate for 10-inch LPs.” The record quickly be-came a hit within the locale of Harvard. As students car-ried the albums home on breaks and played them for theirfriends, word spread. Orders started coming in fromaround the country. “Mostly college towns at first,” noted
Lehrer. “I could tell from the postalzones. This was before zip codes.For example, Chicago 37 was theUniversity of Chicago. Today al-most everyone I know seems tohave their own CD. To sell one to-day, the way I did, would be im-possible. And today, if you sell100,000 copies, you are a flop,when to me, that took me yearsto do. It’s the longest it ever tookto get a gold record (certified bythe RIAA) – 31 years for ThatWas The Year That Was. Theearly ones I can’t get certifiedbecause I was my own label.The first record sold by itself. Ididn’t push it, I didn’t advertiseit, and I didn’t play it on the ra-dio. The word just spread. Youcouldn’t do that today.”
IT MAKES A FELLOW PROUD TO BE A SOLDIER
T he core of Tom Lehrer’s performing period dates from1953 and lasted through about 1967 – with two years
of pleasant diversion in the U.S. Army from January 1955to January 1957. “Believe it or not, I enjoyed the Army”he confesses. “Earlier I had dodged the draft by getting ajob that would defer me until I could get all this recordbusiness settled.” When Tom returned to Cambridge in1957, his album sales were stronger than ever. Rather thangoing back to teaching, he headed for the concert hall.There was an important gig at the Blue Angel in the springof 1957. Then, because he didn’t yet have enough mate-rial for an entire long concert evening, he accepted a splitbill to perform with Odetta at the Hunter College audito-rium. More shows followed these, five in 1957 and 16 in1958, including concerts at Orchestra Hall in Chicago andCarnegie Hall in New York City. Lehrer observes, “I neverdid it full time – even when I did it full time. There wasn’ta college concert circuit then. That’s before the KingstonTrio broke the mold. The only musical humorists doingconcerts were Victor Borge and Anna Russell.”
As to Lehrer’s view of his own performer persona, he ob-serves, “I wanted people to say ‘weren’t those songs funny,’not ‘wasn’t he funny.’ That’s not modesty. I just sat there atthe piano ... dead pan, sang the songs, delivered the lines. Iacted a little of course. I was really demonstrating the songs. Inever wanted to be a funny person – I didn’t fall off the pianoor make faces. I wasn’t trying to be ingratiating. My attitudewas, ‘How could you people be so sick as to like these songs.’Remember – I was the clean-cut kid with the bow tie and thebig smile, so I could get away with it. Basically, I’m not say-ing these songs are funny – you’re the one who is laughing!” Iask Lehrer his opinion of contemporary piano-based politicalhumorist Mark Russell, someone who, at least superficiallyappears to be carrying the mantle. “Well, let’s just pass on thatone,” is Lehrer’s response, in mock maternal tone, chiding “If
‘Iwanted people to say
‘weren’t those songs
funny,’ not ‘wasn’t he
funny.’ That’s not modesty.
I just sat there at the piano
... dead pan, sang the
songs, delivered the lines.
I acted a little of course. I
was really demonstrating
the songs.” — Tom Lehrer
... continued from Page 50
Spring 2001 • Vol. 45 #1 • Sing Out! 53
wouldn’t warm to the new sound, thedifferent effect of Tom on stage. So, asonly he might do, on July, 8, 1959, heremade all eleven of the new songs in astudio version ... and unlike the barebones first album, enlisted the best engi-neers and state-of-the-art sound equip-ment at RCA Victor Studios in New YorkCity. Give the public what they want,even if they aren’t sure that’s what theywanted. Fans could choose the studio al-
bum, More Of Tom Lehrer (that looked like the first albumexcept for the blue cover rather than red, and a new 12-inchformat), or the live version, An Evening Wasted With TomLehrer, with introductions and audience reaction, take yourpick for $4.95. Of course, most purchasers had to have both.And you could even buy newfangled stereo versions for adollar more. Tom’s “farewell concerts” were at London’sRoyal Festival Hall, and lastly, on July 2, 1960 at the EmpressTheater in Glasgow. A reprise of sorts was the artist’s associa-tion with the television program That Was The Week That Was
you can’t say something nice aboutsomebody ...”
As to the reality of live performing,Tom admits, “I didn’t like looking at theaudience. I always made it a point thatthe light should be shining in my eyes,because it was very distracting to havesomeone in the front row stop smiling.I’d start directing the show towards him.The faces I didn’t see looked very intel-ligent though.” Tom says that by 1959his mind began to wander during per-formances (34 in all that year, including10 in England), he was even having abit of trouble with his oft sung “FightFiercely, Harvard” at a Town Hall con-cert. “The performance had been on au-tomatic pilot, and I had been thinkingabout what I was going to have for din-ner afterwards or something like that, so I thought, ‘OK, thetime has come.’” At the age of 31 he made a decision to call ahalt to touring and returned to Harvard Graduate school. He didaccept a few bookings that were too good to refuse that tookhim into 1960 – a scant 33 concerts on a tour of Australia andNew Zealand, and would appear here and there up until 1967.
Tom had also recorded a live (second) album on two con-secutive evenings in March 1959 in Sanders Theater atHarvard. Lehrer wasn’t certain live was the way to go, sinceSongs By Tom Lehrer had done so well and maybe his fans
The success of the play Tomfoolery,which opened in London in 1980 ledto the publication the following yearof a songbook called Too ManySongs By Tom Lehrer, containing 34of his songs.
54 Sing Out! • Vol. 45 #1 • Spring 2001
the People.’ In fact, ‘the people’ elected Ronald Reagan ...screw ‘the people,’ I say.”
Lehrer was not in a shell politically. He performed benefitsfirst for Eugene McCarthy, then switched and signed on to dothe California fundraising for Bobby Kennedy (“McCarthy wassuch a jerk”), and worked for McGovern. “The Democratic Partyasked me if I wanted to be a commentator on the side. I saidonly if you change the theme song to ‘Send In The Clowns.’When McGovern came to town, they called and asked if I wantedto meet him. I answered, ‘No. I’ll either meet him or work forhim – but not both.’” Lehrer adds, “I worked for a lot of losingcandidates and hapless causes. Only one candidate I ever workedfor won, that’s Father Drinan who ran for congress in Massa-chusetts. That scared me. I thought, ‘Wait a minute, somethingis going wrong here. So, at these rallies, SNCC or any of those,I would meet Phil Ochs and Peter, Paul and Mary. To shakehands and say ‘Hello,’ but not to hang out with them ... we didn’tplay the same places. Occasionally, I was on the bill with afolksinger, such as Ian and Sylvia, but mostly it was pop sing-ers. I was familiar with them, they with me. I met Judy Collins... but not to swap songs. That was another difference betweenthem and me. You’d do a concert and go to a party afterwards,and they’d sing more songs at this party. I felt I did my part.That’s over. I wanted to get out.”
BE PREPARED
L ehrer spoke of his songwriting process and the pianobased performances of his songs. He said nothing
was left to chance, as there is mathematical pre-cision to all aspects of the package. “I was
immersed in popular songs of the time, ofthe ’30s and ’40s. I was writing songs, mak-ing fun of the attitudes of those songs, inthe musical style of the songs themselves;love songs, folk songs, marches, football.There was never any intention to spread
the word. I am embarrassedthat so much of it is a-a-b-a,where you switch to the sub-dominant and the bridge, it’sjust the same cliché. On the
other hand, I was supposed tobe making fun of those clichés
– so I guess it’s okay. The latersongs were a little more imaginative
musically. It’s all those songs that Iused to play on the piano, and the chordswere in my fingers.” I ask Lehrer hisopinion of writing and performing fromthe piano versus the guitar. “The guitaris a whole different world. I notice howmusic changed when the guitar tookover. For one thing the chords. You don’tsee a diminished 7th chord much on theguitar, which is very popular on the pi-
ano. There are certain chords that your fingers would hiteasily on the piano that would be hard to do on the guitar.Also on the guitar, you would pick out a riff – strum some-
that aired in 1964. They used a fair number of the topical songshe submitted, although he did not perform them on the air.Another album, That Was The Year That Was got recorded in1965. There followed isolated television and concert appear-ances thereafter, tweaking and reissuing of albums and vari-ous other ramifications, even a review of his material insti-gated by the noted producer Cameron Mackintosh called Tom-foolery, which opened in London in 1980. The success of theplay led to the publication the following year of a songbookcalled Too Many Songs By Tom Lehrer, containing 34 of hissongs. Much more history is covered in the excellent liner notes,“Too Many Facts About Tom Lehrer,” written by Barry Hansen(aka Dr. Demento) in the nifty book supplied with the newRhino box set. You also get all of the recordings, includingthree tracks unique to this collection – “Selling Out,” “(I’mSpending) Hanukkah In Santa Monica,” and “Trees,” as wellas children’s material written and performed for PBS’s TheElectric Company, plus the complete lyrics to all songs.
THE FOLK SONG ARMY
A s to his association with the folk crowd way back when,Lehrer says he never thought of himself as a folk singer,
and points out that the folkies really never claimed him as theirown, either. “I don’t think they did. I heard severalobjections to my song called ‘The Folk SongArmy,’ although that song was not really againstfolk music. ‘The Irish Ballad’ was definitely in-tended to make fun of folk songs, the length ofthem. In those days the people would bring theirguitars to the party and whoever knew the mostverses won ... and if you could sing along in aforeign language – a song such as ‘Every-body Loves Saturday Night’ – oh boy, youwere really the hit. So, this was a self-defense. But ‘The Folk Song Army’ wasmore against the folksingers who weretaking themselves so seriously – the ageof Aquarius ... and everything’s goingto change because we’re singing. Theywould talk about the ‘people,’ always the‘people,’ when they were really talkingabout fellow college students. It’s theway we used to sing union songs, notmockingly, but certainly tongue in cheek(‘There once was a union maid ...’) The‘people’ that went to hear Joan Baez were reallynot the people, I think they were the college stu-dents. There was always that talk about ‘Power to
Tom says of this photo, taken at a picnic inRockport, Massachusetts, “My best guess is thatthis was taken in 1952. (The saddle shoes might
provide a clue.) In any event it was beforeanyone had ever heard of Elvis Presley.” The
guitar was donated to the New York productionof Tomfoolery in 1981 for use in the “Folk Song
Army” number, “... on one condition: that theypromise never to return it to me. That promise
was kept.” he adds.
Spring 2001 • Vol. 45 #1 • Sing Out! 55
thing and sing along to it as opposed to playing the melody.So the songs become different. I gave a lot of thought to howI used the piano. It was always much easier. I tried to playthe guitar, when everybody had to. I learned a few chords soI could sing a folk song once in a while. I did the ‘The IrishBallad’ to shut everybody up. I like the idea that the noteswere all in a row on a keyboard, where in a guitar, they hopall over the place.
“I’m pretty much left brain, I think. The music is workedout like a puzzle ... I mean a crossword puzzle. Everythinghas to go in its place and I spent a lot of time agonizing overa particular note, when it comes to writing it out. It’s all verylogical, as opposed to painting or sculpture. I would be hope-less at that. I couldn’t do that at all. I certainly tried to makeit a little more interesting, in the style of the songs that I wassupposed to be making fun of. I certainly tried to make it alittle more interesting than just oompah, oompah.” As to theideas for a song, Lehrer stresses, “It’s impossible to say. Inthose days I would hear a song on the radio, such as, ‘I KissYour Hand, Madam,’ and so I thought, ‘what if he only hadthe hand?’ or a song about the South, or about football. I’dhear a particular song and thought, ‘What about the realitybehind those songs? Do people really care if Harvard beatsYale at the big game? No. But they sing the song just as ifthey did.’ It was easier to make fun of those things, sincethey were silly to begin with.”
Why no more songs? Well, there are reasons. “It’s hardto know where one stands now,” laments Lehrer, “I wasan unrepentant old fashioned liberal, and I knew exactlywhere I stood, I still do, but there’s always a ‘however’and ‘on the other hand’ ... Affirmative action versus quo-tas, feminism versus pornography, Israel versus the Ar-abs. It’s hard to come right out and say something.” I askif there are burning issuesthat compel him to write asong. “Only angry,” he re-flects. “But not funny. Idon’t want them to applaudthe way they do whensomeone does a politicaljoke on one of these talkshows. ‘Dan Quayle isdumb ... Bob Dole is old... Bill Clinton is promis-cuous’ ... it’s too easy.’Every now and then I canthink of a one liner. Itcomes out angry – likePhil Ochs. I really wantthe audience to laugh.” Imention that the patterand introductions are al-ways on the mark. “Oh,yes ,” he responds ,“that’s an interest ingthing to work out – theword order. The goodcomedians know how to
do that. I’m sure you’ve heard a person tell a very funnyjoke badly, because they got the words wrong. I’ve hadthat experience seeing other actors, in a review of mystuff, doing the same lines. They don’t quite get it, andthen you have to tell them. It involves saying the lineover and over and over in various word order until itsounds right to you.” And what about hearing other peopledo his material? “It doesn’t happen often. They either doit exactly like me – so what’s the point? Sometimes theydo it differently. The Reverend Billy C. Wirtz has re-corded ‘I Hold Your Hand In Mine.’ It’s really good. Hemakes it very sick.”
THAT’S MATHEMATICS
F or more recent history, Tom Lehrer has assumed therole of a bi-coastal mathematician. He resides half
the year in Cambridge Massachusetts (he hasn’t in-structed a course at MIT since 1971) and then, to avoidthe harsh New England winters, gads off to Santa Cruz,where since 1972 he has taught at UC-Santa Cruz. “It’snot too taxing, I have a light load” – his “load” is oneclass. At MIT his favorite section was “MathematicalModels in the Social Sciences,” today, “Infinity” delightsthe non-majors. Oh yes, contrary to popular misconcep-tion, he was never sued by Wernher Von Braun. “That’sa common rumor, that I was forced to retire becauseWerner Von Braun took all my royalties. But, it’s veryclear cut. You can say things about a public figure thatyou can’t say about a private person.” Another is thatLehrer received his Ph.D. “I never got my Ph.D. I wantedto be a graduate student all my life and they wanted meto be a Ph.D. The two goals were incompatible.” He isalso perplexed that many of the reference books misquote
him. “It’s so strange to me, be-cause it’s a matter ofpub l i c r e c o r d . ” F i -n a l l y , w a s h e f i r e df rom Harvard? “ I ’veoccasionally heard thatI was k icked ou t fo rbeing a Communist, fordealing drugs, for cor-rupting minors, or ford i v e r s e o t h e r i n f r a c -tions of local decorum.Unfortunately, none ofthese rumors are t rue.The one I’ve heard mostoften is that I’m dead.That one I encouraged,h o p i n g i t w o u l d c u tdown on the junk mail. Itdidn’t.”
Roger Deitz is a regular con-tributor to these pages as wellas a singer, songwriter andhumorist in his own right.
DISCOGRAPHY
A ll of Tom Lehrer’s recordings are currently availableon CD. You can get them individually:Songs & More Songs By Tom Lehrer, 1997, Rhino #72776(Reissuing Songs by Tom Lehrer, 1953, Trans-Radio#740/Lehrer #101, and More Of Tom Lehrer, 1959, Lehrer#102, with a couple bonus tracks.)
An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer, 1959, Warner/Reprise #6199 (Originally Lehrer #202)Revisted, 1960, Warner/Reprise #26203 (Originally Lehrer #201)That Was The Year That Was, 1965, Warner/Reprise #6179
Or get the whole shebang, everythingLehrer ever wrote and recorded plus agreat hard-cover booklet with notes fromDr. Demento and Lehrer, himself, com-plete lyrics, cool photos and more:The Remains Of Tom Lehrer, 2000,Rhino #79831 (Three discs plusbooklet.)
