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Allan Sherman
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Allan Sherman (November 30, 1924 – November 20, 1973) was a Jewish American musician, parodist, satirist and television producer.
man took his mother's maiden name after being abandoned in childhood by his father, Percy Copelon, a stock car racer, mechanic, and inventor. Copelon would much later offer to pay for Sherman's education if he would re-take the family name, but when no support was forthcoming, the young man became Allan Sherman once again.
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Allan Sherman (November 30, 1924 – November 20, 1973) was a Jewish American musician, parodist, satirist and television producer.
Early life
Sherman took his mother's maiden name after being abandoned in childhood by his father, Percy Copelon, a stock car racer, mechanic, and inventor. Copelon would much later offer to pay for Sherman's education if he would re-take the family name, but when no support was forthcoming, the young man became Allan Sherman once again. Sherman attended 21 schools. At Fairfax High School, Sherman wrote the senior musical, starring classmate Ricardo Montalban.
Early career: classic albums
Employed as a producer by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, Sherman was the creator and original producer of the popular I've Got a Secret from 1952 to 1958. During this time, he recorded a 78 RPM single, containing "A Satchel And A Seck" (to "A Bushel And A Peck" from Guys and Dolls), and "Jake's Song". This single sold poorly and, when time came to write his autobiography, Sherman didn't even mention it. He also produced a short-lived 1954 game show, What's Going On? Sherman was fired after a particularly unsuccessful episode of I've Got a Secret featuring Tony Curtis that aired June 11, 1958. Later, after becoming a celebrity himself, Sherman would make some return appearances on the program.
Later, he found that the little song parodies he performed to amuse his friends and family were taking a life of their own. Sherman had the good fortune to live in the Brentwood section of West Los Angeles next door to Harpo Marx, who invited Sherman to perform his song parodies at parties attended by Marx's show-biz friends. After one such party, George Burns phoned a record executive and persuaded him to sign Sherman to a contract. The result was an LP of these parodies, entitled My Son, the Folk Singer, in 1962. The album was so successful that it was quickly followed by My Son, the Celebrity. The latter ended with "Shticks of One and Half a Dozen of the Other," fragments of song parodies including Robert Burns': "Dinna make a stingy sandwich, pile the cold cuts high;/Customers should see salami comin' thru the rye."
In 1962, capitalizing on his success, Jubilee Records re-released the 1951 single on the album More Folk Songs by Allan Sherman and His Friends, which was a compilation of material by various Borscht Belt comedians, such as Sylvia Froos, Fyvush Finkle and Lee Tully, along with the Sherman material.
As suggested by the albums' titles, Sherman's first two LPs were mainly Jewish-folk-culture rewritings of old folk tunes. His first minor hit was "Sarah Jackman" (pronounced "Jockman"), a takeoff of "Frère Jacques" in which he and a woman (Christine Nelson) exchange family gossip ("Sarah Jackman, Sarah Jackman, How's by you? How's by you? How's by you the family? How's your sister Emily?" etc.) By his peak with My Son, the Nut in 1963, however, Sherman had broadened both his subject matter and his choice of parody material and begun to appeal to a larger audience.
Sherman wrote his parody lyrics in collaboration with Lou Busch. A few of the Sherman/Busch songs are completely original creations, featuring original music as well as lyrics, rather than new lyrics applied to an existing melody. The Sherman/Busch originals — notably "Go to Sleep, Paul Revere" and "Peyton Place" — are delightful novelty songs, showing genuine melodic originality as well as deft lyrics.
In My Son, The Nut, his pointed parodies of classical and popular tunes savaged encroaching automation in the workforce ("Automation," to the tune of "Fascination"), space travel ("Eight Foot Two, Solid Blue," to "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue"), the exodus to the suburbs ("Here's to the Crabgrass," to the tune of "English Country Garden"), and his own bloated figure ("Hail to Thee, Fat Person," which perhaps only half-jokingly blames his obesity on the Marshall Plan).
One track from the album, a spoof of summer camp entitled "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh," became a surprise novelty hit, reaching #2 on the national Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks in late 1963. The lyrics were sung to the tune of one segment of Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours". That December, Sherman's "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas" single appeared on Billboard's separate Christmas chart. Sherman had one other Top 40 hit, a 1965 take-off on Petula Clark hit "Downtown" called "Crazy Downtown", which spent one week at #40. Two other Sherman singles charted in the lower regions of the Billboard charts: an updated "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh" (#59 in 1964), and "The Drinking Man's Diet" (#98 in 1965).
Sherman's 1965 album My Name Is Allan, which bears a childhood photograph of Sherman on the jacket sleeve, is something of a theme album. (The cover was a sly dig at Barbra Streisand, whose contemporary album My Name is Barbra featured a cover photograph of the singer as a young girl.) Except for a couple of original novelty songs with music by Sherman and Busch, all the songs on this album are parodies of songs that had won the Academy Award for Best Song, including "That Old Black Magic," "Secret Love," and "The Continental."
During his brief heyday, Sherman's parodies were so popular that he had at least one contemporary imitator: My Son the Copycat was an album of song parodies performed by Stanley Ralph Ross, co-written by Ross and Bob Arbogast. Lest there be any doubt of whom Ross is copying, his album's cover bears a crossed-out photo of Allan Sherman. One of the songs on this album is a fat man's lament, "I'm Called Little Butterball", parodying "I'm Called Little Buttercup" from HMS Pinafore. Sherman would later parody this same song as "Little Butterball" — with the same subject matter — on his album Allan in Wonderland. The song may have had more poignancy for Sherman, as he, unlike Stanley Ross, was genuinely overweight. Sherman also parodied Gilbert and Sullivan's "Titwillow" from The Mikado (as "The Bronx Bird-Watcher") and several other G&S numbers.
Later work
At the height of his popularity in 1965, Sherman published an autobiography, A Gift of Laughter. For a short period, Sherman was culturally ubiquitous.
He sang on and guest-hosted The Tonight Show, appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and narrated his own version of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler. (This concert was released as the album Peter and the Commissar.) The concert also included "Variations on 'How Dry I Am'" (with Sherman as conductor) and "The End of a Symphony". In "Variations", Fiedler was the guest soloist, providing solo hiccups.
A children's book version of Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!, with illustrations by Syd Hoff, was released.
Later albums grew more pointedly satirical and less light-hearted as the decade lost its innocence, and Sherman took up his pen to skewer protesting students ("The Rebel"), consumer debt ("A Waste of Money", based on "A Taste of Honey"), and the generation gap ("Crazy Downtown" and "Pop Hates the Beatles").
Sherman inspired a new generation of developing parodists such as "Weird Al" Yankovic, who pays homage to Sherman on the cover of his own first LP. Sherman was involved in the production of Bill Cosby's first three albums and guest-hosted when Cosby first appeared on The Tonight Show.
Sherman sang "The Dropouts' March" on the March 6, 1964, edition of the NBC-TV satirical program That Was The Week That Was (1964–1965).
Sherman was often tapped to produce specialty song parodies for corporations. An album of six paper-cup and vending machine related songs ("Music to Dispense With") was created for the Scott Paper Company for distribution to its vendors and customers, and Sherman created a group of eight "public education" radio spots for Encron carpet fibers, singing their praises to the tunes of old public-domain songs.
"Hello Muddah" has been translated into other languages. In one notable example, the Dutch-Swedish poet Cornelis Vreeswijk has translated the song into Swedish and adopted it as his own.
Decline
Sherman's creative career was rather short. After its peak in 1963, his popularity declined during 1964. After the JFK assassination, impersonator Vaughn Meader vowed to never again do a Kennedy impression, and perhaps because of this ominous shadow (Meader was a very popular parody impressionist of the day) and the resulting reluctance to book such acts, the public saw less of Sherman's type of comedy. By 1965, he had released two albums that did not make the Top 50. In 1966, Warner Brothers dropped him from the label.
Sherman's last album for Warner Brothers, 'Togetherness', was released in 1967 to poor reviews and poorer sales. All of Sherman's previous releases had been recorded in front of a live studio audience (or in the case of Live, Hoping You Are The Same, recorded during a Las Vegas performance), but Togetherness was not, and the lack of an audience and their reactions severely affected the result, as did the nondescript backup singers and studio orchestra.
Sherman also abused himself with heavy drinking and overeating, which resulted in a dangerous weight gain, later developing diabetes. Dee, his wife, filed for divorce, and had full custody of their son and daughter. He finally moved into the Motion Picture Hospital, near Calabasas, California.
Sherman wrote the script and lyrics (but not the music) for The Fig Leaves Are Falling, a flop Broadway musical that lasted only four performances in 1969.
Disillusioned but still creative, in 1973 Sherman published the controversial The Rape of the A*P*E*, which detailed his point of view on American Puritanism and the sexual revolution.
In 1971, he was the voice of the Cat in the Hat from the television special. His last film before his death was Dr. Seuss on the Loose.
Personal life and legacy
Sherman struggled with lung disease and died of emphysema ten days before his 49th birthday.
A biographical article details his rise and fall, as well as the follow-up story of his son, Robert Sherman, who was the original "Boy from Camp Granada".
He is entombed in Culver City, California's Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.
A "Best of" CD was released in 1990 and a musical revue of his songs titled Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah opened off-Broadway in 1992 and had a run of almost a year; another production later toured in 2003. A box set of most of his songs was recently released under the title My Son, The Box.
On March 14, 2006, National Public Radio profiled Sherman on All Things Considered.
Brief discography
Work for Broadway
- The Fig Leaves Are Falling (1969) - musical - lyricist and book-writer
- Songs: "All Is Well in Larchmont," "Lillian," "All of My Laughter," "Give Me a Cause," "Today I Saw a Rose," "We," "For Our Sake," "Light One Candle," "Oh, Boy," "The Fig Leaves Are Falling," "For the Rest of My Life," "I Like It," "Broken Heart," "Old Fashioned Song," "Lillian, Lillian, Lillian," "Did I Ever Really Live?" The music was composed by Albert Hague.
Trivia
- Allan Sherman is often confused with Tin Pan Alley songwriter Al Sherman, but the two men were not related. Both men, however, had sons named Robert: Allan's son Robert was the inspiration and subject of Allan's signature song, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", while Al Sherman also fathered a son named "Robert". They also both died in 1973.
- The American release of the British comedy "Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" was retitled "My Son the Vampire", with the title credits song performed by Sherman.
- Sherman's song "Rat Fink" was covered by punk rock band The Misfits as "Ratt Fink", on their 1979 single "Night of the Living Dead". It was also covered by Ex-Misfits guitarist Bobby Steele by his band The Undead. Sherman wrote the song as a parody of "Rag Mop", originally performed by The Ames Brothers in 1950.
- In an episode of The Simpsons, "Weird Al" Yankovic makes a guest appearance. When Homer asks Yankovic if he got the two songs he recorded and sent in, Yankovic replies that he did. When Homer asks which he liked better, Yankovic replies, "They were pretty much the same, Homer." Homer then mutters angrily, "Yeah, like you and Allan Sherman." Sherman also was shown in the episode "Marge Be Not Proud" when Bart hid an answering machine tape in a copy of his Camp Granada album -- "where no one would ever listen to it."
Bibliography
- Instant Status (or Up Your Image) (G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1964) (tear-out pages of celebrity thank you letters you can address to yourself and leave around your home or office to impress people)
- I Can't Dance! (children's picture book, illustrated by Syd Hoff) (Harper & Row, 1964)
- A Gift of Laughter: The Autobiography of Allan Sherman (Atheneum, 1965)
- The Rape of the A*P*E* -- The Official History of the Sex Revolution 1945-1973: The Obscening of America. An R*S*V*P* Document
- ISBN 0-87216-453-5, Playboy Press, 1973.
- (The title page notes that "APE" stands for American Puritan Ethic and "RSVP" for Redeeming Social Value Pornography -- depending on their points of view, readers may find the book wildly funny, wildly offensive, or both.)
- Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, (children's picture book)
- ISBN 0-525-46942-7, Dutton Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2004)
- Hardcover: 32 pages
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