Everything about Allan Sherman totally explained
Allan Sherman (sometimes incorrectly
Alan or
Allen),
November 30,
1924 –
November 20,
1973, was an
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'd re-take the family name, but when no support was forthcoming, the young man became Allan Sherman once again. His mother married four times, with numerous relationships in-between. 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 78RPM 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 acknowledge 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. But 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,
My Son, the Folk Singer, in 1962. The album was so successful that it was quickly followed by
My Son, the Celebrity.
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, his "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas" single appeared on Billboard's separate Christmas chart. Sherman had one other Top 40 hit, a 1965 version of
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'd 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 — with the same title and 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 "Tit-Willow" 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," to "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.
Like his contemporary
Tom Lehrer, Sherman wrote satirical songs for the two-year-long "highbrow" satire program (the American version)
That Was The Week That Was (1964–1965), including his "Dropout's March."
Unfortunately, his topics were often relevant only to his own time and place; unlike most of Lehrer's, Sherman's parodies generally didn't date or travel very well. A typical example: the folk song "Where Have You Gone, Billy Boy?" was parodied by Sherman as "What Have You Done, Billy Sol?" This song is now incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't recall the brief 1962 scandal involving a fertilizer company owned by
Billy Sol Estes. Another example is 'Lets All Call Up AT&T & Protest to the President' march, which bemoans the end of telephone prefixes in favor of all-digit dialing!
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: Sweden, for example—represented by Dutch-Swedish poet
Cornelis Vreeswijk—has translated and adopted the song as its own.
Decline
Sherman's creative career was rather short. After its peak in 1963, his popularity declined during 1964. Some have attributed this decline, in part, to the Kennedy assassination, as the public felt less open to Sherman's type of comedy. By 1965, he'd released two albums that didn't 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 affects the result, as does the nondescript backup singers and studio orchestra. In addition, the quality of the parodies is somewhat poor ('Strange Things in my Soup', Down the Drain'), and it's clear that Sherman was, at this point, past his prime. The cover picture, with Sherman minus his characteristic glasses and crew cut, doesn't even resemble him.
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 in
Dr. Seuss' animated specials. 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
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 Mudduh, Hello Fadduh," while Al Sherman also fathered a son named "Robert."
In his autobiography, A Gift of Laughter, Sherman explained, among other things, how to decode the classified ads in the real estate section of the newspaper. He said:
- If an ad says "unusual," that means the house has a weird architectural design.
- If it says "quaint," the house is extremely old.
- If it says "charming," it's the size of a doll house.
- And if it says "interesting," don't even bother!
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. 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 a tape in a copy of his "Camp Granada" album, noting that "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)
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
Further Information
Get more info on 'Allan Sherman'.
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