From Newsgroup: alt.obituaries
On 7/27/2025 1:59 PM, Invalid wrote:
<https://variety.com/2025/music/obituaries-people-news/tom-lehrer-dead-satirist-topical-singer-songwriter-1236471506>
Enjoy the sloppy errors in the above obituary.
Fewer errors in this one (but, disturbingly,
my Thunderbird spell checker keeps trying to
"correct" every 'Lehrer' to 'Fuehrer'):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/07/27/tom-lehrer-satire-music-dies/
Tom Lehrer, master satirist of Cold War era, dies at 97
In song, he brilliantly skewered clich|-s about romance, patriotism and small-town life.
Washington Post, July 27, 2025 at 2:40 p.m. EDT
By Nicole Arthur / Sophia Nguyen contributed to this report
Tom Lehrer, a social and political satirist who amassed a devoted
following in the 1950s and 1960s for routines featuring blithely
subversive musical numbers such as rCLSo Long Mom (A Song for World War III),rCY rCLNational Brotherhood WeekrCY and rCLThe Vatican Rag,rCY died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 97.
His death was confirmed by his friend, David Herder, who said that the
cause was unknown.
Mr. Lehrer rCo an Ivy League mathematics teacher who spent his early
academic career on the periphery of show business rCo created a repertoire
of songs that subverted saccharine clich|-s about romance, patriotism and small-town life when they werenrCOt skewering the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America or the U.S. Army.
Once characterized as rCLa Charles Addams of the keyboard,rCY after the dark-humored illustrator, Mr. Lehrer perfected the musical bait-and-
witch, pairing genteel, almost prissy tunes with lyrics that were
gruesome, risqu|- or irreverent. rCLAll the world seems in tune/ On a
spring afternoon/ When werCOre poisoning pigeons in the park,rCY he warbled
to the one-two-three of a tinkling waltz titled rCLPoisoning Pigeons in
the Park.rCY
Sentimentality was Mr. LehrerrCOs favorite musical target. Other songs
were gleefully sacrilegious rCo rCLThe Vatican Rag,rCY his most controversial composition, was a tuneful take on the impact of Vatican II reforms on
Catholic ritual.
Get in line in that processional
Step into that small confessional
There, the guy whorCOs got religionrCOll
Tell you if your sinrCOs original
His astute social commentary, verbal dexterity and often academic
subject matter differentiated him from mere novelty acts.
His song rCLNational Brotherhood WeekrCY was a send-up of platitudes about racial conciliation during bloody civil rights encounters and famously envisioned Black singer and civil rights activist Lena Horne and
segregationist Alabama sheriff James Clark dancing cheek to cheek. He
concludes of such feel-good efforts:
ItrCOs only for a week, so have no fear
Be grateful that it doesnrCOt last all year
Mr. Lehrer was not the only social satirist of the post-World War II
period rCo Stan Freberg and Mort Sahl were contemporaries, and it was the heyday of Mad magazine rCo but he is the only one still widely known.
Many of his topics, among them the military-industrial complex, the
threat of nuclear Armageddon, xenophobia and environmental catastrophe,
still resonate with pointed lyrics about moral ambiguity and ethical compromise. His ballad rCLWernher von Braun,rCY focused on the Nazi Germany missile scientist who later worked for NASA: rCLOnce the rockets go up,
who cares where they come down?rCO/rCyThatrCOs not my department,rCO says Wernher von Braun.rCY
All four of the LPs that Mr. Lehrer made in the 1950s and 1960s are
still in print, with one, 1964rCOs rCLThat Was the Year That Was,rCY earning a gold record a remarkable 31 years after its release.
rCLIt has spread not like Ebola, but like herpes,rCY Mr. Lehrer liked to say
of his renown. rCLSo slowly.rCY
One of Mr. LehrerrCOs biggest promoters over the years was the disc jockey Barry Hansen, better known as Dr. Demento, who called the songwriter
rCLthe most brilliant song satirist ever recorded.rCY (Mr. Lehrer holds the dubious distinction of being the second-most-requested artist on Dr. DementorCOs radio show, the first being another avowed Lehrer fan, rCLWeird AlrCY Yankovic.)
Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born April 9, 1928, in Manhattan, where his
father was a necktie manufacturer. He described himself as rCLJewish by ancestry rCo more to do with the delicatessen than the synagogue.rCY
He began studying classical piano at 7 but soon abandoned it in favor of learning the popular songs of the day. He frequently credited his
parents with introducing him to musical theater as a child.
He grew up with Tin Pan Alley classics, Gilbert and Sullivan, and
Rodgers and Hammerstein. His most-cited musical influence was
entertainer Danny Kaye, whose delivery in rCLTchaikovskyrCY rCo a rhyming list of 50 Russian composers recited at breakneck speed rCo he quickly learned
to imitate.
After graduating from the Loomis Chaffee prep school in Connecticut, Mr.
Lehrer was admitted to Harvard University in 1943 at age 14. He had
written his admissions essay in rhyming verse.
He studied mathematics, completing a bachelorrCOs degree in 1946 and a masterrCOs degree the following year. As an undergraduate, he wrote the
college fight song send-up rCLFight Fiercely, HarvardrCY (rCLAlbeit they possess the might/ Nonetheless we have the willrCY) that remained a staple
of the universityrCOs football games for decades.
In 1950, he began singing his humorous songs at university parties and functions. Three years later, having realized with some surprise that he
had accumulated enough material to make a record, he paid $15 for an
hour of studio time and recorded the dozen tunes that comprise rCLSongs by
Tom LehrerrCY in one sitting.
He had 400 copies pressed, which he sold on the Harvard campus for $3
each. Mr. Lehrer had taken care to make only as many copies as he
thought he could sell without losing money, but he soon began to get
mail orders from across the country. The record rCo whose alternately
prurient and macabre lyrics precluded radio airplay in the United States
rCo gained momentum by word of mouth. He made his first nightclub
appearance rCo at the Blue Angel in New York rCo the same year.
In 1953, while studying for a PhD in mathematics at Harvard, Mr. Lehrer recorded another batch of songs.
ItrCOs easy to imagine why Mr. Lehrer, at once brainy and naughty,
appealed to collegiate audiences rCo he once rhymed rCLphilatelyrCY and rCLLady ChatterleyrCY rCo but harder to imagine the shock value that his lyrics, be they sacrilegious, suggestive or just plain perverse, must have had at
the time.
As Mr. Lehrer told The Washington Post in 1982, rCLI was often accused of
bad taste in the rCO50s and rCO60s, but the songs which prompted that accusation seem positively genial today.rCY
He was a peculiarly 1950s figure rCo a well-mannered iconoclast, the antiestablishment figure operating within the establishment. Lean and bespectacled in a suit and tie, Mr. Lehrer was his own straight man;
much of his musicrCOs appeal lay in the deadpan introductions that
accompanied his jocose delivery.
The professorial mien evinced at Mr. LehrerrCOs performances was no
put-on. He demonstrably loved academia: He began teaching mathematics
when he was still a teenager and continued to do so after he (mostly)
walked away from show business in 1960.
In addition to teaching at Harvard, Wellesley College and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology rCo at one point concurrently rCo he spent 16 years pursuing a PhD that he never completed, and remained a
familiar campus figure even during his brief stint in the limelight.
Sometimes the pedagogue and the songwriter collided, as in rCLNew Math,rCY rCLLobachevskyrCY or rCLThe ElementsrCY (in which Mr. Lehrer recites every element in the Periodic Table to the tune of Gilbert and SullivanrCOs rCLI
am the Very Model of a Modern Major-GeneralrCY).
Mr. LehrerrCOs nonacademic jobs were few but colorful rCo and proved to be excellent songwriting fodder. In the summer of 1952, he worked at Los
Alamos for the Atomic Energy Commission, and he was employed as a
theoretical physicist for Baird Atomic the following year. Rather than
wait to be drafted, he enlisted in the Army (inspiration for his tune
rCLIt Makes a Fellow Proud to be a SoldierrCY) and worked for the National Security Agency from 1955 to 1957.
In the years that followed his military service, Mr. Lehrer undertook a
series of concert performances, recording his second album rCo twice rCo in 1959. rCLMore of Tom LehrerrCY was recorded in a studio, while rCLAn Evening Wasted With Tom LehrerrCY featured the same songs recorded live.
Afterward, he abruptly abandoned show business and once again took up
his doctoral studies. Mr. Lehrer was famously ambivalent about
performing, and many factors influenced his decision to quit: He
eschewed the rCLanonymous affectionrCY offered by audiences and took a
cynical view of his function as an entertainer. rCLI wasnrCOt preaching to
the converted,rCY he frequently said, rCLI was titillating the converted.rCY
Mr. Lehrer became nearly as famous for stepping out of the spotlight as
he had been during his brief period in it. rCLIrCOve always considered him
the J.D. Salinger of demented music,rCY Yankovic once said, referring to
the recluse author of rCLThe Catcher in the Rye.rCY
Yet Mr. LehrerrCOs songwriting skills remained in demand. In 1964, he was
hired to write topical tunes for the short-lived NBC program rCLThat Was
the Week That Was.rCY He did not perform on the show, whose regulars
included David Frost, Buck Henry and Alan Alda; his songs were sung on
the air by folk singer Nancy Ames.
Mr. Lehrer complained that the showrCOs producers took out all the best
lines and replaced them with rCLsomething vapid,rCY so the following year he performed them himself on his third and final album, rCLThat Was the Year
That Was.rCY
Many of his most trenchant songs hail from this period: rCLThe Folk Song Army,rCY rCLSend the MarinesrCY and rCLNational Brotherhood Week.rCY
Mr. LehrerrCOs career took an unpredictable turn in 1970, when his Harvard friend Joe Raposo tapped him to write 10 songs for the ChildrenrCOs
Television Workshop show rCLThe Electric Company.rCY Today the best-known of these is rCLSilent ErCY (Who can turn a cub into a cube?/ Who can turn a tub into a tube?).
He said afterward that his authorship of rCLSilent ErCY was the only one of
his achievements that truly impressed his college students.
Around this time, Mr. Lehrer rCo who never married and ascribed the fact
to his short attention span rCo began to divide his time between Cambridge
and Santa Cruz, California, where he joined the University of California
at Santa Cruz faculty.
He spent January through June in California, teaching, among other
things, mathematics to liberal arts students, a class he jokingly
referred to as rCLMath for Tenors.rCY He also taught a popular workshop in
the history of musical theater.
He evaded the limelight until 1980, when theater impresario Cameron
Mackintosh (later of rCLCatsrCY fame) mounted rCLTomfoolery,rCY a four-person musical revue of Mr. LehrerrCOs compositions, in London. The production, a modest success that was later performed in New York, occasioned a burst
of rCLWhere Is He Now?rCY press coverage rCo a burst that was repeated in
2000, when Rhino Entertainment released a comprehensive three-disc box
set of Mr. LehrerrCOs works wryly titled rCLThe Remains of Tom Lehrer.rCY
Mr. LehrerrCOs reflections on his own career were mostly limited to
denying that herCOd had one.
rCLThirty-seven songs in 20 years is hardly what IrCOd call a career,rCY he quipped. He did wax philosophical on the subject at least once.
Writing in the liner notes to the 1997 compilation rCLSongs & More Songs
by Tom Lehrer,rCY he said, rCLIf, after hearing my songs, just one human
being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to
strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.rCY
--1996-2025 The Washington Post
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