Tom Lehrer, the favored and erudite track satirist who lampooned marriage, politics, racism and the Chilly Warfare, then largely deserted his music profession to return to instructing math at Harvard and different universities, has died. He was 97.
Longtime pal David Herder stated Lehrer died Saturday at his dwelling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He didn’t specify a reason for dying.
Lehrer had remained on the mathematics college of the College of California at Santa Cruz nicely into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his personal copyright, granting the general public permission to make use of his lyrics in any format with none price in return.
A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math diploma from the establishment at age 18), Lehrer quickly turned his very sharp thoughts to outdated traditions and present occasions. His songs included “Poisoning Pigeons within the Park,” “The Outdated Dope Peddler” (set to a tune paying homage to “The Outdated Lamplighter”), “Be Ready” (wherein he mocked the Boy Scouts) and “The Vatican Rag,” wherein Lehrer, an atheist, poked on the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. (Pattern lyrics: “Get down in your knees, fiddle together with your rosaries. Bow your head with nice respect, and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.”)
Accompanying himself on piano, he carried out the songs in a colourful type paying homage to such musical heroes as Gilbert and Sullivan and Stephen Sondheim, the latter a lifelong pal. Lehrer was typically likened to such contemporaries as Allen Sherman and Stan Freberg for his comedian riffs on tradition and politics and he was cited by Randy Newman and “Bizarre Al” Yankovic amongst others as an affect.
He mocked the types of music he didn’t like (trendy folks songs, rock ‘n’ roll and trendy jazz), laughed at the specter of nuclear annihilation and denounced discrimination.
However he attacked in such an erudite, even well mannered, method that nearly nobody objected.
“Tom Lehrer is essentially the most good track satirist ever recorded,” musicologist Barry Hansen as soon as stated. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed set of Lehrer’s songs The Stays of Tom Lehrer and had featured Lehrer’s music for many years on his syndicated “Dr. Demento” radio present.
Lehrer’s physique of labor was truly fairly small, amounting to about three dozen songs.
“After I received a humorous concept for a track, I wrote it. And if I didn’t, I didn’t,” Lehrer advised The Related Press in 2000 throughout a uncommon interview. “I wasn’t like an actual author who would sit down and put a chunk of paper within the typewriter. And after I stop writing, I simply stop. … It wasn’t like I had author’s block.”
He’d gotten into performing unintentionally when he started to compose songs within the early Fifties to amuse his mates. Quickly he was performing them at coffeehouses round Cambridge, Mass., whereas he remained at Harvard to show and acquire a grasp’s diploma in math.
He lower his first file in 1953, Songs by Tom Lehrer, which included “I Wanna Go Again to Dixie,” lampooning the attitudes of the Outdated South, and “Struggle Fiercely, Harvard,” suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood would possibly sing a soccer battle track.
After a two-year stint within the Military, Lehrer started to carry out live shows of his materials in venues world wide. In 1959, he launched one other LP referred to as Extra of Tom Lehrer and a reside recording referred to as An Night Wasted with Tom Lehrer, nominated for a Grammy for greatest comedy efficiency (musical) in 1960.
However across the identical time, he largely stop touring and returned to instructing math, although he did some writing and acting on the facet.
Lehrer stated he was by no means snug showing in public.
“I loved it up to a degree,” he advised The AP in 2000. “However to me, going out and performing the live performance each evening when it was all accessible on file can be like a novelist going out and studying his novel each evening.”
He did produce a political satire track every week for the 1964 tv present That Was the Week That Was, a groundbreaking topical comedy present that anticipated Saturday Evening Reside a decade later.
He launched the songs the next 12 months in an album titled That Was the 12 months That Was. The fabric included the track “Who’s Subsequent?” that ponders which authorities would be the subsequent to get the nuclear bomb … maybe Alabama? (He didn’t want to inform his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation on the time.) “Air pollution” takes a take a look at the then-new idea that maybe rivers and lakes must be cleaned up.
He additionally wrote songs for the Seventies academic kids’s present The Electrical Firm. He advised The AP in 2000 that listening to from individuals who had benefited from them gave him way more satisfaction than reward for any of his satirical works.
His songs had been revived within the 1980 musical revue Tomfoolery and he made a uncommon public look in London in 1998 at a celebration honoring that musical’s producer, Cameron Waterproof coat.
Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York Metropolis, the son of a profitable necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan’s Higher West Aspect that included attending Broadway reveals along with his household and strolling by way of Central Park day or evening.
After skipping two grades in class, he entered Harvard at 15 and, after receiving his grasp’s diploma, he spent a number of years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate.
“I spent many, a few years satisfying all the necessities, as a few years as doable, and I began on the thesis,” he as soon as stated. “However I simply wished to be a grad pupil, it’s a beautiful life. That’s what I wished to be, and sadly, you may’t be a Ph.D. and a grad pupil on the identical time.”
He started to show part-time at Santa Cruz within the Seventies, primarily to flee the tough New England winters.
Infrequently, he acknowledged, a pupil would enroll in one in every of his lessons primarily based on data of his songs.
“However it’s an actual math class,” he stated on the time. “I don’t do any humorous theorems. So these folks go away fairly shortly.”
