FRED HOLABIRD ON TOM LEHRER, MUSIC AND LAUGHS

 

Tom Lehrer passed away this last week at the great age of 97 years. Those of us "over a certain age" (70) knew of him well, as his music became a part of our lives in the 1960s. I'm not talkin' about rock ‘n roll, I'm talking about humor – a different kind of humor that was certainly appreciated by a bunch of nerdy science-math kids like us in high school and college. Rolling Stone magazine called it a "Cult Following", but I don't agree. It is plain old, good fun humor.

Not everybody has heard of Lehrer. He was a mainstay on an old radio show we got in southern California called "Dr. Demento", put on by Barret Eugene Hanson, which ran for over fifty years. My guess is that it was syndicated all over America, but I never checked. All I ever knew was that we got it, and we were glued to it, on every Friday night, as I recall.

My best friend in high school was Monte Ragland, one of our semi-nerdy group, except that he and I were the athletes. He is one of those special friends you think about every day, and never get to talk to enough as you get older. Our "group" had what later became a really impressive group of professionals – physicist, biochemist, geologist… Monte stayed local at Cal Tech, while I went as far away as possible to Humboldt State. For years my Mom complained bitterly that I didn't go to Cal Tech. Heck, she'd have had me running her errands all day, every day, and I would never have learned anything. The other guys went to Berkeley and UC San Diego.

Monte and I developed an affinity for Lehrer's songs. They made fun of pretty much everything – political, social, religion, music, science, math. You name it, he hammered out something wonderful on the piano with his outrageous lyrics. Lehrer was a math grad student at Harvard when he started. My friend John Schilling, the Director of the Nevada Bureau of Mines for 17 years, was a geology student at Harvard when Lehrer played at the Rathskeller there. When John found out I had two albums of Lehrer's when we met in the mid 1970s, we were off to the races with stories. He attended many of Lehrer's small sessions at Harvard, and had the same two albums as me. Schilling told me that Harvard thought Lehrer was getting distracted by his music, and was told to do one or the other – Math or music. While Schilling said, "so Lehrer simply moved over to MIT and did both," I never found out if that was true or not, but it certainly makes the story more humorous.

 

At Humboldt, my ability to write improved. I had always been a fan of literature and history. In high school, about the mid 1960s, they started these new classes called "Advanced Placement." None of us really knew what they were, but we got put in the few that existed. A bunch of us took the "AP" exams and did well, but it was a whole new thing for the colleges and universities, because they didn't know what to do with us at that level. We were among the first. So the university administrators skipped us out of all the basic lower division general college classes that everybody else had to take. I took every geology class that was offered while I was there. I loved literature, so I took an advanced lit course with a fantastic professor. He helped teach us about better interpretational writing skills. So… you guessed it … I wrote an essay on Lehrer's songs. I got an "F".

Huh? I immediately complained. He said it had to be a copy of a published paper, and therefore an "F." I told him it came from me, …every word, every sentence, every thought. He said "prove it", so I immediately invited him over for dinner that very night at 5pm, and he came. I put on those two albums, and the evening switched to a two hour discussion of Lehrer's work (circa 1971-2) with lots of laughter and fun. Needless to say, he changed my grade to an "A."

Fast forward to today. Well… almost.

Back then I played the guitar. I learned in the style of Lightfoot, Denver and Fogerty (all the same or very similar finger picking patterns). There was a couple of us that played at our geology summer field camp in the Inyo mountains and everybody enjoyed the songs and sing along. Along the way, somehow I found a Lehrer songbook, played a few such as "Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park" and other satirical wonderments during my "courtship" with Robin. But over time, life and work got in the way, and the guitar went into the closet … for the next … 37 years.

Then ten years ago, out it came. It won't go back. "Mr. Martin", my Martin guitar, is too important. Now I have five 6" notebooks full of my regular songs. Doesn't everybody have at least 1000 songs they play? I think so. I've been fortunate enough to play with at least half a dozen groups and do a lot of single or "stand up" performances at saloons, wine bars, and whoever asks nicely, (and even a song following several technical geology lectures. After all, you've got to raise the bar somehow!)

During performances, I always try to include at least one Tom Lehrer song, and they are always a big hit, especially for those that haven't heard any of them before. One of my favorite stories was playing "Masochism Tango" for a group of doctors and lawyers. Lehrer's words and music had this group in stitches, laughing for at least ten minutes afterward. Later, down the road, every time a particular doctor was in the audience, he'd always ask for that song. This year, I was fortunate enough to be asked to play at another "gig" that he attended, but this time, his health was poor. I'll never forget the smile and joy on his face the whole time. He died just a week later.

I ache for the touch of your lips dear,
But much more for the touch of your whips dear
You can raise welts, like nobody else
As we dance to the Masochism Tango …

Music has an impact on people's lives. Some don't like it at all – any of it. Others are listening constantly, or at least have it in the background. For goofballs like myself and great friends and musicians Bob Evans and Dave Schenkman, music is in our blood. Its not our main occupation by any means, but when Bob and I are together these days, out come the instruments. (If Dave lived out here, we'd be big trouble.) And out come the Tom Lehrer songs. Now and then I'll do a medley of an old folk song and run it right into a Lehrer song, dropping unadulterated humor right into a soft lullaby of a folk song, … and then its too late, "I've gotcha," and the audience goes crazy. I did that a few times with the Token and Medal guys- specifically Jeff's So-Called Dollar group. Pure fun!

Music and laughter go hand in hand. A smile generates warmth. Smiles and laughter generate a special feeling that takes us all away from the realities and tasks of life, if even for a few minutes. If laughter is a "cult," (it's not) I want in!

Thanks Tom Lehrer for the decades of smiles and laughter you've brought us, and in so doing, for making the world a happier place. So while you are perusing our auction lots, google up some Tom Lehrer songs and have some fun. Don't miss "Vatican Rag" or "Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park", just to name a few. But I won't give away some of my other favorites. I'm going to drop them on you like an atom bomb when you least expect it.

If you'd like to learn more about Tom Lehrer and his life, see the wonderful essay just written by Matt Zoller Seitz at Rogerebert.com. I can tell this guy has Lehrer in his blood too.

His song "National Brotherhood Week" 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.

Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born April 9, 1928, in Manhattan, where his father was a necktie manufacturer. He described himself as "Jewish by ancestry — more to do with the delicatessen than the synagogue."

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.

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 bachelor's degree in 1946 and a master's degree the following year.

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 "Songs by Tom Lehrer" 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 — whose alternately prurient and macabre lyrics precluded radio airplay in the United States — gained momentum by word of mouth. He made his first nightclub appearance — at the Blue Angel in New York — the same year.

Mr. Lehrer's nonacademic jobs were few but colorful — 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 "It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier") and worked for the National Security Agency from 1955 to 1957.

To read the complete article, see:
Tom Lehrer, master satirist of Cold War era, dies at 97 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/07/27/tom-lehrer-satire-music-dies/)

His last sustained burst of songwriting came in 1971, when he contributed "Silent E" and other educational ditties to the PBS children's series "The Electric Company."

By 1981 he had fallen so far off the cultural radar that, he told The Harvard Crimson, some people thought he was dead. ("I was hoping the rumors would cut down on the junk mail," he said.)

A new generation was introduced to the Lehrer songbook in 1980 when the British impresario Cameron Mackintosh presented "Tomfoolery," a revue of his songs, in London. The show was a hit there and was later produced in New York, Washington, Dublin and elsewhere.

With characteristic self-deprecation, Mr. Lehrer attributed the show's success to a shortage of new songwriters. "It was inevitable," he said, "that someone would peer into the almost empty barrel and notice me down there."

When "Tomfoolery" played at the Village Gate in New York in 1981, Mr. Lehrer explained to The Times why he had stopped writing. "The Vietnam War is what changed it," he said. "Everybody got earnest. My purpose was to make people laugh and not applaud. If the audience applauds, they're just showing they agree with me." On another occasion he famously offered another explanation: "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

To read the complete article, see:
Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97 (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/arts/music/tom-lehrer-dead.html)

See also:
Life is Like a Piano: Tom Lehrer (1928-2025) (https://www.rogerebert.com/tributes/life-is-like-a-piano-tom-lehrer-1928-2005)

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