Allan Sherman - My Son, the Folksinger (1962)

At his best, Allan Sherman was as perceptive an observer of the American Jewish experience as Philip Roth or Saul Bellow, and when he was on a roll he was a lot funnier than either, and that's certainly the case with 1962's My Son, the Folk Singer, Sherman's first album and the record that made him an overnight success, selling over a million copies within a few months of its release. Musically, Sherman's shtick was to take familiar melodies and fuse them to new lyrics that offered a very funny and openly Semitic take on contemporary American life, as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was transformed into the tale of a tailor named Harry Lewis, "The Streets of Laredo" became "The Streets of Miami," and the French ditty "Frere Jacques" accompanied a telephone conversation with "Sarah Jackman." While My Son, the Folk Singer was the most openly "Jewish" of Sherman's albums, the bulk of Sherman's humor was recognizable to anyone familiar with the absurdities of suburban life in the Kennedy era, and while many Jewish humorists treated their material as some sort of inside joke, by marrying his lyrics to songs familiar to everyone he gave them a universal appeal – and it certainly didn't hurt that most of the numbers on his debut album are howlingly funny. My Son, the Folk Singer remains both funny and potent more than four decades after it was recorded. – Mark Demming

SIDE ONE:
1. The Ballad Of Harry Lewis
Parody of The Battle Hymn Of The Republic
2. Shake Hands With Your Uncle Max
Parody of Shake Hands With Your Uncle Mike
3. Sir Greenbaum's Madrigal
Parody of Greensleeves
4. My Zelda
Parody of Ma-tilda by Harry Belafonte
5. The Streets Of Miami
Parody of Streets of Laredo

SIDE TWO:
1. Sarah Jackman 2:30 (with Christine Nelson)
Parody of Frere Jacques
2. Jump Down, Spin Around (Pick A Dress Of Cotton)
Parody of Jump Down, Spin Around (Pick A Bale O' Cotton)
3. Seltzer Boy
Parody of Water Boy
4. Oh Boy 4:00
Parody of The Hand Clapping Song
5. Shticks And Bones
Parody of:
Blue Tail Fly by Burl Ives & The Andrews Sisters
Jamaican Farewell by Harry Belafonte
Little David, Play On Your Harp
St. James' Infirmary by Louis Armstrong & His Savoy Ballroom Five
God Rest Ye, Merry
When The Saints Go Marching In
Joshua Fit The Battle Of Jericho
I Will Give My Love An Apple
The Camptown Races (Gwine To Run All Night) by Stephen Foster
The Yellow Rose OF Texas by Mitch Miller
Shortenin' Bread

Recorded: Live on August 6, 1962 in Hollywood California.
Released: October, 1962
Gold Album: Over 1,250,000 Copies Sold
Written and Performed by Allan Sherman
With Christine Nelson
With Orchestra and Chorus under
the direction of Lou Busch

D/L Link:
http://rapidshare.com/files/298838683/AllanSFolkieSon62.rar

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Profiles in Dementia: Allan Sherman Adapted from an article originally written by the Doctor for Waxpaper, a Warner Bros. Records promotional magazine. "His needle goes deep but leaves no scars." Daily Variety, May 3, 1963. It'd be hard to think of the Dr. Demento Show without Allan Sherman. He was, quite simply, the greatest musical parodist who ever wrote in English. There were other talented people who preceded Sherman (1924-1973) in the art of setting funny new words to familiar tunes. One thinks of Homer & Jethro, and especially of Mickey Katz whose half-English, half-Yiddish rewrites of 1940's and 1950's pop tunes undoubtedly influenced Sherman. But Sherman at his best was peerless. His "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh" (the "Camp Granada" song, set to the tune of Ponchielli's "Dance Of The Hours") is very likely the best known parody in all of American pop music. Unlike other parodists who so often run out of ideas after the first verse, Sherman added new layers of hilarity with every line. He was as perceptive an observer of human foibles as ever there was and a master lyricist whose turns of phrase rivaled the best of Cole Porter. He was a huge influence on, among others, "Weird Al" Yankovic, who has essentially done for rock music what Sherman did for the familiar songs of his time. One hearing of a new song was all Sherman needed to inspire one of his unique rewrites. He used puns, asides and outrageous rhymes to make devastating fun of the song's original lyric message, or some previously unrelated subject, or both, while retaining the original melody (or as much of it as his perfect shower baritone could accommodate). For many years Sherman's parodies were strictly a hobby for him. Born November 30, 1924, in Chicago, he began singing twisted tunes at private parties while pursuing a career in New York as a gag writer for comedians such as Joe E. Lewis, Frances Faye and Jackie Gleason. In 1951 he recorded a solitary 78, coupling parody versions of two then-current hits, "Sam's Song" and "A Bushel And A Peck". The latter became "A Satchel And A Seck", with Sherman singing key words in Yiddish a la Mickey Katz. Sales were minimal, but Sherman quickly found success in another medium. In that same year, 1951, Sherman and a friend developed the idea for the game show I've Got A Secret, which premiered on CBS-TV June 26, 1952, and was a great success. For the next six years Sherman was the show's producer, moving in 1958 to similar responsibilities with The Steve Allen Show. In 1961, though, he found himself out of a job, living on $55 a week unemployment. All the while he had continued to sing parodies at parties. Several friends, including Harpo Marx, encouraged him to try making records again. Another friend, "Bullets" Durgom, got Sherman an unusual gig: he had Sherman tape an obscene song about an official at Warner Bros. Records, which was then played at a stag dinner honoring the man's retirement. That was Sherman's introduction to the record label where he spent nearly all the rest of his career. Sherman was signed to Warner Bros. in June 1962. It was decided that his first album would consist of parodies of traditional folk songs. That way, he wouldn't have to seek permission from publishers to do his parodies, and he would also be capitalizing on the folk music revival which was then at its peak. My Son the Folksinger was recorded at a Hollywood studio on the evening of August 6, 1962 (the day after Marilyn Monroe's death, incidentally). After a three-hour rehearsal, a bar was set up, the doors opened, and in came 100 of Allan's closest friends, including Harpo, Theodore Bikel, and famed songwriters Johnny Mercer, Harry Warren and Leo Robin. It was the perfect party. The entire album was recorded in one take -- about 45 minutes! It didn't take much longer than that for Folksinger, which included his classic "Sarah Jackman", to become the #1 LP in America. It sold over 900,000 copies, a phenomenal figure in those days. When the printing plant couldn't keep up with orders for covers, some copies of the LP were sold without them, with a slip entitling the bearer to claim his cover at a later date. Ed Sullivan wanted Sherman right away for his top-rated TV variety show. When Sherman opted instead for the rival show hosted by his old friend from I've Got a Secret, Garry Moore, Sullivan played the record of "Sarah Jackman" on his show with actors mouthing the lyrics. Sherman did a brief but wildly successful East Coast tour, playing Carnegie Hall on New Year's Eve, singing the My Fair Lady parodies he couldn't record, with the New Christy Minstrels as the opening act. Jubilee Records unearthed Sherman's 1951 recordings and combined them with vintage Borscht Belt humor by other artists on a quickie album called More Folk Songs by Allan Sherman and His Friends. Meanwhile Warner Bros. lost no time in rushing out a legit Sherman sequel, My Son the Celebrity. Recorded at Sherman's 38th birthday party, Celebrity included such gems as "Harvey and Sheila," "Won't You Come Home, Disraeli" and "The Let's All Call Up A.T. & T. And Protest To The President March." For the third LP, whose full title is My Son The Nut/Allan Sherman Sings Nutty Things, This Time with Strings, musical director Lou Busch and producer Jimmy Hilliard augmented their forces with strings and horns. This summer 1963 release not only reached #1 on Billboard's LP charts a mere three weeks after its initial entry, and stayed #1 for eight weeks...it also spawned Sherman's biggest single and most enduring song, "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh." Sherman's next three albums are more uneven, but each has its highlights. Best of the three is Songs for Swingin' Livers (that's the album with "Pop Hates the Beatles" and "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas"). During this period (1964) Warner Bros. lent Sherman to RCA Records, enabling him to fulfill a longtime dream by recording his full-length parody of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with the Boston Pops Orchestra -- Peter and the Commissar. He then returned to Warners for two more albums, Allan Sherman Live and Togetherness, which yielded noticeably fewer laughs and still fewer sales. On the cover of his swan song, Togetherness (1967), Sherman looks remarkably slim. He was not able to maintain that shape for long after the photo session, alas. A lifelong victim of obesity, Sherman may have seemed the ultimate rolypoly teddy bear to his fans. The reality is recalled by Jerry Hopkins, biographer of Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and a close friend of Sherman's during the comedian's last years. He recalls Sherman commenting with much pain: "Somebody once said that inside every fat person there's a thin person trying to get out. It's true..." Sherman's weight problem, together with chronic emphysema, made him physically miserable, and compounded what Hopkins called "the horror show success became." The emotional changes wrought by sudden stardom led to the breakup of his family. The loss of that stardom, or most of it, with the declining sales of his albums and the failure of his 1968 Broadway musical The Fig Leaves Are Falling was even harder on him. He found some satisfaction in writing. He produced two fine books, his autobiography A Gift of Laughter, and one of the best books ever written about sex and other human obsessions, The Rape of A-P-E (American Puritan Ethic). Both are out of print but well worth combing used bookstores for; both were published in paperback as well as hardcover. He kept his show-biz juices flowing by doing an occasional Tonight Show, directing a few TV shows for Bill Cosby (whose first LP he'd produced for Warner Bros.) and developing a set of stand-up comedy routines about golf. Warner Bros. Records was impressed enough with the golf stories to sign Sherman to a new contract in 1973. But, alas, he died before the album could be completed, suffering a heart attack while being driven home from a recording session. It was November 20, 1973, ten days short of his 49th birthday.

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