Posted on 07/27/2025 11:54:05 PM PDT by Cronos
A mathematician by training, he acquired a devoted following with songs that set sardonic lyrics to music that was often maddeningly cheerful.
Tom Lehrer, the Harvard-trained mathematician whose wickedly iconoclastic songs made him a favorite satirist in the 1950s and ’60s on college campuses and in all the Greenwich Villages of the country, died on Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97.
Lehrer’s lyrics were nimble, sometimes salacious and almost always sardonic, sung to music that tended to be maddeningly cheerful. Accompanying himself on piano, he performed in nightclubs, in concert and on records that his admirers purchased, originally by mail order only, in the hundreds of thousands.
But his entertainment career ultimately took a back seat to academia. In his heart he never quit his day job; he just took a few sabbaticals.
He stopped performing in 1960 after only a few years, resumed briefly in 1965 and then stopped for good in 1967. His music was ultimately just a momentary detour in an academic career that included teaching posts at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, and even a stint with the Atomic Energy Commission.
In the tasteless world he evoked, a seemingly harmless geezer turned out to be “The Old Dope Peddler” and spring was the time for “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.”
...one of his early songs, “The Elements,” was a list of the chemical elements set to the tune of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” from “The Pirates of Penzance.” (Years later “The Elements” would be performed by the young scientist played by Jim Parsons on the hit sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My parents had that album and I played it more than a few times when I was a kid. Very clever! The song I remember most is “Pollution”:
POLLUTION
words and music by Tom Lehrer
If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air!
Pollution, pollution!
They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap
And get hot and cold running crud!
See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergeons.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don’t last long if they try.
Pollution, pollution!
You can use the latest toothpaste,
And then rinse your mouth
With industrial waste.
Just go out for a breath of air
And you’ll be ready for Medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill —
If the hoods don’t get you, the monoxide will.
Pollution, pollution!
Wear a gas mask and a veil.
Then you can breathe,
Long as you don’t inhale!
Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink!
[1]The breakfast garbage that you throw into the Bay
They drink at lunch in San Jose.
So go to the city,
See the crazy people there.
Like lambs to the slaughter,
They’re drinking the water
And breathing [cough] the air!
Bummer. He was one of my favorite satarists.
“It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier!”
Most memorable song - didn’t know he was still alive
My favorite:
National Brotherhood Week
Oh, the white folks hate the black folks,
And the black folks hate the white folks.
To hate all but the right folks
Is an old established rule.
But during National Brotherhood Week,
National Brotherhood Week,
See Cassius Clay and Mrs. Wallace dancing cheek to cheek.[1]
It’s fun to eulogize
The people you despise,
As long as you don’t let ’em in your school.
Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks,
And the rich folks hate the poor folks.
All of my folks hate all of your folks,
It’s American as apple pie.
But during National Brotherhood Week,
National Brotherhood Week,
New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans ’cause it’s very chic.
Step up and shake the hand
Of someone you can’t stand.
You can tolerate him if you try.
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews.
But during National Brotherhood Week,
National Brotherhood Week,
It’s National Everyone-smile-at-one-another-hood Week.
Be nice to people who
Are inferior to you.
It’s only for a week, so have no fear.
Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year!
BFL
So many wonderful songs by Tom Lehrer. He got his point across without resorting to calling people fascists or weaklings.
He was a very talented individual. I wish I had seen him on his old TV show. Maybe on YouTube!
The man was my hero. The only man whose work I considered worthy of memorizing. (Of course I can sing “The Elements”.) Today is a sad, sad day. And what makes it even more sad is that everything he said back then is just as relevant and true today as it was when he said it. A sad, sad day.
"You can do anything you want, if
First you clear it with the Pontiff
. . .
There the man who's got religion'll
Tell you if your sin's original"
Two, four, six, eight. Time to transubstantiate.
God has a sense of Yuma.
Not sure if that was supposed to be “dark humor” about the supposed state of the environment, or a biting satire if the budding “environmental” movement.
You’re on a roll. You know how this stuff always mushrooms.
“Who’s Next?”
First you get down on your knees
Then fiddle with your Rosary
Pay the Virgin your respect
Hey...!
Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect...
You must be a BALL at parties....
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