I’d like to continue the theme from my last blog about comedians and their role in bringing us the news, albeit with a certain slant. But first humor me with a brief departure, still in the realm of popular culture, to this season’s premier of TV’s Mad Men. In this episode the creative director of a new, breakaway advertising firm blows an opportunity to promote his company in a magazine interview. When he defends himself before his board by saying that his work speaks for itself, he is told, “turning creative success into business is your work and you failed”. I took this harsh criticism personally and wondered if by writing a blog “with no agenda”, I am in essence failing. Samuel Johnson, a great writer and a man of many quotes said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”. To me, unlike to admen and pundits, it’s not that black and white. Admen love to force us into clear cut choices, their brand or brand X. One of the best ad campaigns ever, the one in the 70s for Miller Lite, took two choices and pointed them both to their product: “Tastes great…Less filling”. It was a heads I win, tails you lose angle that caught on and led to America’s acceptance of light beer. Interestingly, the advertising firm responsible for the campaign, McCann Erickson, was also the firm that, in Mad Men, made the hostile takeover at the end of last season. No takeovers here. I plan to keep writing without monetizing or expecting anything in return except your (mostly) kind comments.In 1964 David Frost imported a comic news hour from England, That Was The Week That Was. Despite a solid core group of comics plus guests such as Woody Allen, Steve Allen, Bill Cosby, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, the show only lasted one year. Instead of using skits as SNL would later do, TW3, as it was called, used songs to comment on current events. The main songwriter was a Harvard graduate and math instructor, Tom Lehrer. He got his start as an undergraduate where he wrote “Fight Fiercely, Harvard”. He entertained classmates, performed at clubs, eventually recorded an LP and had 300 made for sale around Harvard. (This was just like Bert and I at Yale. See 11/09 blog, Cay-ent Get They-uh From He-uh.) In 1955 he was drafted and served two years at the NSA. His big contribution to army cryptography was the invention of Jell-o shots. He continued his songwriting and performing but never gave up his day job. His songs were clever, in the vein of Cole Porter or Yip Harburg. When he heard that TW3 was looking for songs he wrote one for National Brotherhood Week:
Oh, the white folks hate the black folks,
And the black folks hate the white folks.
To hate all but the right folks
Is an old established rule.
The TW3 regulars performed this song and 8 others including his best known "New Math":
When TW3 ended, Lehrer was left with enough proven songs to make a second album, That Was The Year that Was. This was released by a major label, promoted nationwide including appearances on the Tonight Show, and made it into the Benjamin household where it joined Allan Shermans’ My Son The Folk Singer and Nut in our collection of comedy albums.
Though both Lehrer and Sherman sang funny songs, they were very different. While Lehrer was clever and precise, Sherman was Hamish and a bit of a slob. He was an LA TV producer who wrote humorous lyrics to popular tunes and performed them for his friends. He lived next door to Harpo Marx, whose friend George Burns heard Sherman’s songs and got him a record contract. His themes were those of 1960s American Jewry. His first album, My Son The Folk Singer, parodied our imperfect assimilation into American society where we retained our old world speech patterns, strong family ties, boorish manners and thrifty ways:
Shake hands with your Uncle Max, my boy
And here is your sister Shirl
And here is your cousin Isabel
That's Irving's oldest girl
And you remember the Tishman twins Gerald and Jerome
We all came out to greet you
And to wish you welcome home
The juxtaposition of these lyrics and Sherman’s accent with the melody of an old Irish tune was hysterical. It was pure side splitting shtick when he replaced “Meet Branigan, Fannigan, Milligan, Gilligan,Duffy, McCuffy, Malachy, Mahone,” etc. with
Meet…
Merowitz, Berowitz, Handelman, Schandelman
Sperber and Gerber and Steiner and Stone
Boskowitz, Lubowitz, Aaronson, Baronson,
Kleinman and Feinman and Freidman and Cohen.
His next album, with its hit song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" made him a star. Even JFK went around singing his songs. Sadly, he died at the age of 48, having too well assimilated into a life of overeating, smoking and booze.
So, what was it for me as a kid, Lehrer or Sherman? Yankees or Mets? Flintstones or Jetsons? Tastes Great or Less Filling? Vicki’s Manhattan or Marty’s Brooklyn? The answer? “Oh, Boy!” I liked them all. That was the real new math, “So very simple, That only a child can do it!”
