Categories: Music

My Top Ten Tom Lehrer Songs

A few weeks ago, when I wrote the article about My Top (Baker’s) Dozen Novelty Songs, I said that I was not going to include a few composers whose sole business was novelty songs. Out of that group, the least deserving of being shunted aside was surely Tom Lehrer. To rectify that wrong, I am giving Mr. Lehrer his own article.

Many of you may not recognize the name because, though he is still among us and, presumably of sound mind (he has a profile on the phiz book, not that that means a whole lot), he stopped writing and playing songs long ago. When asked why this was the case, Lehrer’s serious answer was that he really hated touring, but his better answer was to ask what were laurels for, if not to rest on. In general, it seems that, when he felt like writing songs, he wrote songs, and when he didn’t, he didn’t. That makes sense to me.

The main body of his work is in three albums that came out between 1953 and 1965. He actually began writing songs as a student at Harvard in 1945 (“Fight Fiercely Harvard” was the first.), but those early songs did not get compiled into an album ( Songs by Tom Lehrer) until 1953. And, at that, he had to self-publish it…or whatever it is you do with albums. He would later start getting noticed for those songs when Mad magazine began publishing his lyrics. Now Mad magazine is not typically your font of sophisticated humor. I have always felt, the farther away you got from being a twelve-year-old Jewish boy in New York city, the less you got it. But the editors certainly got this bit right.

The one album he made in the 1960s was a compilation of the songs he had contributed to the cutting-edge show, That Was the Week That Was, or, at any rate, the American version of it. In it, a number of creative people from the previous decade, like Lehrer and the puppeteer, Burr Tillstrom, got a shot at a brief comeback and, in general, made the most of it. The show only lasted two years here, unfortunately. This, Lehrer’s third album, was titled That Was the Year That Was, and it came out in 1965.

In between those two records came An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer, which turned out to be, far and away, the best of the three, not that the other two are exactly chopped liver. (They really are not-take the taste test, and you’ll see.). This second record is a concert album, while the others are studio albums. As a result, we get to hear Lehrer’s introductions to all the songs, and we learn he is not some idiot-savant who has the uncanny ability to write clever songs, but, in fact, is a witty raconteur with an excellent sense of comedic timing. Personally, I think the introductions are the best part of the album, and the album contains some of his best songs, as we shall see.

All right, then, here are my top ten songs. Please do not consider the stuff left off the list to be unworthy. Maybe it’s not all good, but it’s mostly, and by a huge margin.

10. BrightCollege Days, from An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer

I think this song would be funny, even if you didn’t go to college, or to an Ivy League school, as he did. The song gleefully exposes all the not-so-noble clichés of college life in the 1950s, winding up with a wonderful spoof of “The Wiffenpoof Song.” Though my college years were a generation after his, not that much had changed, so I had no trouble at all “getting” it.

9. A Christmas Carol, from AEWWTL

Before we had “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” to mock the Christmas season, we had this hilarious song, which brings out the true spirit of the season in a big and very funny way.

8. In Old Mexico, from AEWWTL

Slowly but, I hope, surely, the civilized world is coming to its senses about the desirability of banning blood sports, but, in the 1950s, bullfighting was part of the very essence of Mexico. And Lehrer exploits that fully in this hilarious paean to our neighbor to the south. Not that I want to seem anti-Hispanic, but, I’m sorry, this song cracked me up.

7. Smut, from That Was the Year That Was

Usually, when Tom Lehrer writes a song, he is against something. I know of only one song he wrote because he was clearly for something. We’ll get to that in a bit. This one, though, it’s hard to tell. It is a celebration of smut, of course, but then Lehrer’s style is chiefly sarcasm. I am guessing, from this very droll song, he would consider someone like Larry Flynt a parasitic lowlife, but would be glad the parasitic lowlife has the right to publish his trash.

6. The Vatican Rag, from TWTYTW

And here we are, right at the one song where the artist is for the subject of his song. The Vatican Rag” was written shortly after the Ecumenical Council, in which Pope John XXIII, perhaps the greatest and most significant pope of the twentieth century or modern times in general, not only liberalized the strict doctrine of the Catholic Church, but reached out in a spirit of comradeship to spiritual people of all faiths. It was he who proclaimed that Christians should no longer condemn the Jewish people for the killing of Jesus Christ. So much had he changed the strict rituals of the church (including saying mass in the vernacular, rather than Latin), Lehrer wrote this celebratory song, “The Vatican Rag.” In it, he proclaims, “You can do any step you want if you’ve cleared it with the Pontiff.” Oh, yes, and, musically, it is actually a rag.

5. Be Prepared, from Songs by Tom Lehrer

In a way this first album was the most shocking of the three. It came out in the stodgiest part of the stodgy 1950s and attacked all sorts of institutions held to be sacred, including the Boy Scouts. Some of the stuff in this album was even a little too shocking for me, and I am not easily shocked. In one song, (“I Wanna Go Back to Dixie”), meant to debunk the smarmy sentimentality of the Al Jolson/ Irving Berlin-type songs about the south, he has the lyrics: “I want to talk with southern gentlemen, want to put my white sheet on again; I ain’t seen one good lynchin’ in years.” Yikes!

On the other hand, “Be Prepared” is a hilarious litany of advice to the budding scout about what his oncoming teen years are really going to be about. It too is pretty edgy. It’s the only song I’ve ever sung in public where people complained to me about the lyrics, although far more people loved it.

4. We Will All Go Together When We Go, from AEWWTL

Tom Lehrer objected to many objectionable things in our society, including militarism (“Send the Marines”), censorship (the aforementioned “Smut”), drugs (“The Old Dope Peddler”), prejudice (We’ll get to that.) and self-righteousness (“The Folk Song Army”), but all those things were minor irritants compared to how he felt about the bomb. He has anti-nuclear songs on all three of his albums, some better than others. This one is, to my way of thinking, the best of the lot.

It is similar in theme to the British duo Flanders and Swann’s “Twenty Tons of TNT,” but, while that song is quite lugubrious (Strange word, what made me think of it?), this song is bright, lively and, were it not for the horrid subject matter, downright inspirational, which is exactly what Lehrer was shooting for. The juxtaposition between the melody and tempo, on one hand, and the theme, on the other, make this a fascinating and memorable song.

3. The Irish Ballad, from SBTL

There is no windmill to tilt at here. This is simply a very amusing take on what would otherwise sound like an authentic Irish ballad. Please do not hold your breath waiting for the beans to spill. You will have to find this one out for yourselves. You’ll be glad you did.

2. National Brotherhood Week, from TWTYTW

Keep in mind, Tom Lehrer, at this point in his career, was a staff songwriter for the aforementioned show, so, most of the songs he wrote tied in with stories the program wanted to highlight. Some of the events the show took on were quirky and little-known outside their locales (My school, Kenyon College, even got a brief dig.), but the story behind this song was a biggie: the assassination of Malcolm X, the co-leader of the newly-emerging Nation of Islam. It so happened, he was killed during National Brotherhood Week.

Of course, it was not a pack of Klansmen or neo-Nazis who gunned him down. It was his ostensible co-religionists who did the deed. Malcolm X had just returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca and then had the audacity to preach the sick, perverted doctrine that Islam might-just might, mind you-be about something other than hatred. Blasphemy!

This is almost certainly the cleverest song Lehrer wrote for the TV show in its entire two-year run. Though white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are, by implication, the prime targets of this song about prejudice and the blatant hypocrisy of the week in question, his words apply to the hostility in all people, whatever their race or creed.

1. Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, from AEWWTL

I had you at the title, didn’t I? This is not only my favorite Tom Lehrer song to listen to, it is my favorite to sing. It starts off in praise of the spring, then the introduction ends with: “But there’s one thing that makes spring complete for me and makes every Sunday a treat for me…” From there, the tempo ratchets up as we explore the joys of feeding our feathered friends “peanuts when coated with cyanide” and other such delicacies. I do not know any Tom Lehrer aficionado who does not consider this song to be his best.

There you have my list. If you have never heard of this gentleman or his music, I strongly recommend that, at the very least, you treat yourself to An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer. Sure, a lot of things have changed in our world since that album came out, but you will be pleasantly surprised to find out how, even in the 1950s, some people were pretty hip.

Sources

Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer (songbook for the revue, Tom Foolery)

Wikipedia

Own collection