
Back when the earth was still cooling, I had a friend (Jack Carter) who belonged to a fraternity (Lambda Alfa?) During the summers in the mid 1950s, the fraternity house closed down - except that Jack, who was taking courses in summer school, stayed at the house to provide security. As I was also taking summer school classes, I was invited to hang out with Jack and others of his friends at that house. It was during the first of those hangout sessions that Jack played some Tom Lehrer recordings (33 1/3 rpm vinyl). I immediately developed a taste for Lehrer's satirical music, passing that taste along to Elder Brother (Sigma Nu) and Younger Brother.
On the rare occasions on which we three siblings were together, there was bound to be singing of Lehrer's songs. Alas, Jack died many years ago in a tragic fire and Younger Brother chose to leave us several years ago; but, Elder Brother and I still observe the tradition - much to Hunky Husband's dismay. It isn't that HH isn't a Lehrer fan. He is. It's that he doesn't appreciate Elder Brother's and my fine singing voices. I think HH was spoiled by the fact that his mother and one of his sisters had wonderful voices.
HH's mother, as a young woman, earned money by singing at weddings and such and his sister sang in amateur opera productions in Phoenix, Arizona. I've never heard HH sing, so I cannot attest to his voice. He played clarinet and saxophone in high school, including in a jazz band; but, he tells me that he cannot carry a tune, vocally. On occasion, just to twit him, I sing "Do You Love ME?" from Fiddler on the Roof to him. He invariably answers me "Yes" in his speaking voice.
Back to Tom Lehrer: For your enjoyment, below are mp3 files of three of our sing-along favorites:
The Wild West Is Where I Want To Be
Tom Lehrer-We Will All Go Together When We Go (2)
Tom Lehrer-So Long Mom (A Song For World War III)
To see Tom Lehrer's declaration abdicating rights to royalties from his lyrics, go to Tom Lehrer's website. I won't benefit from Lehrer's action - I've never used his lyrics except for my own enjoyment, plus the fact that I own books of his sheet music. In addition, I write non sequitur-ally, over the years I've bought all of his vinyl and CD recordings that I've been able to find.
I hasten to add that I learned of the news through News for Nerds.
92-Year-Old Songwriter Tom Lehrer Releases All His Lyrics Into the Public Domain (tomlehrersongs.com) 11
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday October 24, 2020 @10:34AM from the national-brotherhood-week dept.
Marketplace reports: Songwriter Tom Lehrer became a star in the 1950s and '60s writing and performing satirical songs that skewered just about everything... Lehrer, 92, announced Tuesday via his website that he's effectively putting everything he ever wrote into the public domain. That means his lyrics and sheet music are available for anyone to use or perform, without having to pay royalties or deal with lawyers... [Most of Lehrer's music "will be added gradually later with further disclaimers," according to Lehrer's web site.]
Lehrer's giving up those royalties. But in exchange, he's trying to give his work a new lease on life, said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia. "Lehrer, in this case, is basically saying, 'Hey everybody, come revisit my material, come do with it what you want,'" he said... That could mean we'll be hearing more of Tom Lehrer's work, said Jennifer Jenkins, who runs the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. "There is empirical research showing that when material enters the public domain, it actually gets used more," she said.
Lehrer's lyrics touched on geeky subjects including nuclear weapons, Wernher von Braun, and one song where he set the names of the chemical elements to a tune by Gilbert and Sullivan.
Wikipedia notes he "largely retired" in the 1970s to become a mathematics teacher at the University of California, Santa Cruz (also teaching the history of musical theatre). In the same decade he also wrote ten songs for The Electric Company, an educational TV show about reading broadcast on America's public television, singing two of the songs himself — L-Y and Silent E.
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