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 ...
All these accolades : NONE of this matters now !!
He’s made his decision, but
WHERE will YOU spend eternity?
Duplicate post
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4331069/posts
Daniel Radcliffe ("Harry Potter") also does a version of "The Elements" song
And just what the hell does that have to do with this post? Anyone?
CC
‘’... fracture my spine and swear that mine...’’ RIP Tom Leher.
‘’... fracture my spine and swear that your mine...’’ RIP Tom Leher.
typo.
Super lefty academic.
I loved him when I was a kid into comedy records.
Ivy League liberal.
BTTT
well, a bigt of a dark streak when commenting on modernity is not entirely lacking in relevancy
but at any event, yes... he could be very entertaining and we will surely miss him
typo.
Love, M
Duplicate, agreed, but he was so wonderful I’d be happy to see this thread repeated for days.
His laughter made the world a better place. Thank goodness recordings let his memory never die.
So many great people left us before that invention. I wanted to actually HEAR Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Or SEE an original Shakespeare play. Or HEAR 5th great grandfather reciting a new poem to his family.
At least we still have Tom Lehrer lightening our world for all the time to come. I’m so grateful for that.
We are the folk song Army
every one of us cares
we all hate poverty War and Injustice
unlike the rest of you squares
RIP TOM!
“We’ll All Go Together When We Go” is another favorite!!!
First we got the bomb and that was good,
'Cause we love peace and motherhood.
Then Russia got the bomb, but that's O.K.,
'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way!
Who's next?
I don’t know what’s in the rest of the article — it’s blocked — but I do recall that several few years ago he put all of his work into the public domain.
Vatican Rag just might be a real cult classic “up there”.
Meanwhile, how about the best works of the religious merchants? Will they make it through the screening process?
How many “acts of God” weather catastrophes are due to all that toxic stuff (along with its peddlers) being heaved out by security at the gates of heaven, only for it to come raining back down on Earth. Not all of it burns up on reentry..
“Vut goes up….must also come down….where? Is not my problem” says Werner Von Braun
He had a TV show called, “That Was the Week That Was”
I watched it in 62-63 as a 10 - 11 year old and loved it.
He also put out an Album called “That Was the Year That Was” in 65 - I found it out on Newsgroups and downloaded it.
He was a prescient comic.....and maybe the Godfather of memes with his lyrics.
My fave!
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