I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living

[sovay]

Tom Lehrer had entered my household's dialect before I was born. That's not my department. I am never forget the day. Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Only be sure always to call it please research. More, more, I'm still not satisfied. Lucky Pierre! Who's next? Songs not on rotation in my parents' record collection could be encountered lyrically and traumatically in Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer with Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle (1981). One could in fact call him one of my idols since childbirth. With just a handful of music, he touched the hearts of millions, and in the spirit of his own liner notes, I hope he died mad about it.

Comments

[a_reasonable_man]

The tributes I've been seeing online show that even now, generations after he stopped writing and performing, a great many people, even young ones, know most of his songs by heart. You could mount a spontaneous Tom Lehrer revue tomorrow, and the performers would show up off book, and the audience would gleefully sing along.

[sovay]

You could mount a spontaneous Tom Lehrer revue tomorrow, and the performers would show up off book, and the audience would gleefully sing along.

It's true and someone should do it!

(I liked your writing in remembrance of him, especially your note that he looked exactly the way he sounded. spatch and I were talking about his presentation last night: sort of the Zeppo Marx effect. A conservative suit and tie, the dryest and most academic voice, all signs of a normal person to a square present and correct, and you're listening to "I Got It from Agnes.")