ALLAN SHERMAN

BORN: November 30, 1924, Chicago, IL

DIED: November 21, 1973, West Coast

Allan Sherman was born Allan Copelon in Chicago on November 30, 1924. His mother was a flapper who had won loving cups at Charleston contests. His father was a stock car racer and mechanic who ran his own garage. His parents were divorced when he was six, and later he took as his surname his mother's maiden name, Sherman. She moved around so often that Sherman attended 21 different public schools in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and New York.

In 1941 he went to the University of Illinois where Sheldon Keller recruited him into a fraternity; and where he met his future wife. In 1942 he enlisted into the United States Army briefly but was discharged due to allergies.

His ambition was to be a serious songwriter, and in 1945 he came to New York with 75 ballads and many parody lyrics. "A Satchel and a Seck," a 1951 duet with comedienne Sylvia Froos satirizing Frank Loesser's "A Bushel and a Peck," went nowhere, and an ambitious attempt to release a full-length Jewish parody of the musical MY FAIR LADY met with legal resistance from the estate of composers Lerner and Loewe. When he didn't succeed with his songs, Sherman became a gag writer for Jackie Gleason, Joe E. Lewis, Lew Parker, Jerry Lester and other comedians.

He drifted into television around 1947 during its formative years and in quick succession became a writer of 1950 television variety shows CAVALCADE OF STARS, BROADWAY OPEN HOUSE and 54TH STREET REVUE.

He co-created the popular I'VE GOT A SECRET CBS TV game show in 1951 which he sold for a dollar to Goodman-Todman, who packaged quiz shows; Garry Moore was the host. Sherman developed the concept and stayed with the show for seven years as producer. In 1958 he also produced two specials for CBS, one starring Victor Borge and another starring Phil Silvers. After he parted company with Goodman-Todman he was producer of MASQUERADE PARTY for two years, which saw its rise into the Top Ten in ratings.

He was head writer on the summer replacement for Perry Como, PERRY PRESENTS, which featured the first performance of a Sherman parody, Gilbert & Sullivan's WHEN I WAS A LAD. In 1959 he was also consulted as a script doctor for the failing TV series THE CHARLEY WEAVER SHOW and THE HERB SHRINER SHOW, but they were both canceled.

In 1961 he co-created YOUR SURPRISE PACKAGE hosted by George Fenneman and moved to L.A. to produce this CBS series. While there he rented a house in Beverly Hills, where Harpo Marx was his next-door neighbor. Harpo heard him singing song parodies at a party and invited him to a party where Sherman sang for Jack Benny and George Burns and other celebrities. Soon Allan was being invited to Hollywood parties and breaking everybody up with his song parodies.

He produced the five-nights-a-week STEVE ALLEN SHOW, but when he was let go in 1961, Sherman found himself on the unemployment line. Louis Quinn suggested he submit his parody lyrics to Warner Records, who were interested, so Sherman called Bullets Durgom, the agent, and asked him to make a deal. Mike Maitland of Warner Brothers suggested the album be folk songs so that there wouldn't be copyright problems. In just three weeks, Sherman thought up all the parodies in MY SON, THE FOLKSINGER. Lou Busch created the wonderful arrangements on these and later songs. When it came time to design the album cover, Sherman saw a laughing bear in a typography book of Ken Kim, Warner Brothers' Art Director and asked him to put 7 of these on the jacket liner. Every album he ever made had those 7 laughing bears for good luck.

Sherman's MY SON, THE FOLK SINGER was issued in October 1962 and became the fastest-selling album in recording history, selling 1,500,000 copies. To the shock of the recording industry, radio quickly picked up on the album despite Sherman's obscurity as a performer; according to legend, even President John F. Kennedy was spotted in a hotel lobby singing the cut "Sarah Jackman" (a parody of "Frere Jacques"), further boosting the record's popularity.

The rotund Sherman capitalized on Jewish suburban humour by turning folk songs such as Harry Belafonte's "Matilda" into "My Zelda", and the folk song "The Streets Of Laredo" into "The Streets Of Miami". The French standard "Frere Jacques" became "Sarah Jackman" and the USA patriotic number "The Battle Hymn Of The Republic" was turned into "The Ballad Of Harry Lewis", the story of a garment salesman.

The debut and following two albums all reached number 1 in the US album charts. Sherman's success was immediate, with numerous appearances on major USA television programs and a headlining concert at Carnegie Hall. The formula of the first album was repeated on the subsequent MY SON, THE CELEBRITY (1962) (600,000 copies) and MY SON, THE NUT (1963). The third album also produced a number 2 single, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter From Camp)", based on Ponchielli's 1876 composition "Dance Of The Hours". Click here to hear this classic Allan Sherman song.

By 1964 the phenomenal novelty had diminished although Sherman continued to record for Warner Brothers until 1967, hosted television specials and THE TONIGHT SHOW (for a week in which he challenged Cary Grant over who was more adorable), acted on the stage and even wrote humour books, but never regained that initial blast of fame.

If, as legend dictates, President Kennedy helped establish Sherman as a star, he also inadvertently contributed to the comedian's drop-off in popularity: Following Kennedy's assassination in November, 1963, the nation became serious and solemn, with little interest in the breezy fun offered by song parodies. Released in early 1964, Sherman's fourth album ALLAN IN WONDERLAND reached only number 25 on the pop charts; issued later that year at the height of Beatlemania, the concurrent FOR SWINGIN' LIVERS ONLY! and PETER AND THE COMMISSAR (recorded with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops) fared even more poorly, with the latter record failing even to crack the Top 40. 1965's MY NAME IS ALLAN was his last chart effort, reaching only number 88.

Still, Sherman soldiered on, recording LIVE in front of a Las Vegas audience. In 1965 he published his autobiography, A GIFT OF LAUGHTER (Atheneum). After 1966's TOGETHERNESS, he was dropped by Warner Bros., effectively ending his career as a performer. In 1969 he wrote the book and lyrics to the short lived Broadway musical THE FIG LEAVES ARE FALLING, starring Dorothy Loudon, Barry Nelson and David Cassidy to a score by Albert Hague. It ran only 4 days.

Sherman died in California on November 21, 1973 due to respiratory illness caused by his obesity. He was just 48 years old and was survived by his wife, Dolores, and his two children, Robert and Nancy.

In 1992 a revue conceived by Douglas Bernstein and Rob Krausz entitled HELLO MUDDAH, HELLO FADDAH! had a successful run off-Broadway. It had a slim plot following the life of a boy who goes to camp, grows up and gets married, and featured 25 of Sherman's lyrics, including 2 songs from FIG LEAVES. The cast included Stephen Berger, Tovah Feldshuh, Jason Graae, Paul Kreppel and Mary Testa. Jason Graae won the Drama Desk Award for his role in this.

His parodies included "Seventy-Six Trombones" which he turned into an ode to a Jewish country club:
Seventy-six Sol Cohens in the country club,
And a hundred and ten nice men named Levine.

"There Is Nothing Like a Dame" became:
We got herring sweet and sour,
We got pickles old and young
We got corned beef and salami and a lot of tasty tongue,
We got Philadelphia cream cheese in a little wooden box.
What ain't we got?
We ain't got lox!

Jason Ankeny, All-Music Guide, Maurice Willson and Other Internet Sources

Looking back at the parody lyrics of Allan Sherman, I can see now that they were the TV age equivalent of songs from theatrical revues in their wit, cleverness and allusions to then current and recent fads and phenomena. I suppose young people today would listen to some of these songs and not understand the references, but it pleases me to hear them in the year 2000 and remember back to the '60s:

The titles of TV series and television celebrities from AL 'N 'YETTA.
The days when phone numbers had words at the beginning of the exchange, instead of numbers (THE LET'S ALL CALL UP AT&T AND PROTEST TO THE PRESIDENT MARCH).
The John Cameron Swayze "takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'" commercials for Timex watches in the parody of MY GRANDFATHER'S CLOCK.
I remember when transistor radios were so new, the first one I got didn't require batteries but had an alligator clip that you could just clip onto something metal. I even had one "in a leatherette case with holes in it, so you can listen right through the case" like that in the TWELVE GIFTS OF CHRISTMAS.
I recall TV commercials for products with secret ingredients, such as Fluoristan, Hexachlorophene, GL-70, Retsyn, Acrylan, Melmac, Orlon, Teflon, Ban-Lon, Platformate and Naugahyde that Sherman sets to the music of CHIM CHIM CHEREE; but it now brings me no pleasure to remember "that daring young nut who goes flying for Hertz" because it turned out to be O.J. Simpson (although he was not the original performer; he is the one who sticks in my memory). [I was contacted by Jon Francis to point out that Simpson was not the original performer of this, which I already knew, but I have found an ad on YouTube where he does fly]

Something I have noticed when listening to the recordings now is how wonderful the arrangements are. Many of them used what were apparently arrangements from famous "straight" versions of the original songs, like the Herb Alpert and Tijuana Brass version of A TASTE OF HONEY used for A WASTE OF MONEY, the relentless sort of PETER GUNN instrumental that links the verses of YOU WENT THE WRONG WAY, OLD KING LOUIE and the whistling interlude in HEADACHES which is a parody of the Ted Weems cover of HEARTACHES.

One of the great delights of listening to these recordings is the fun that both Sherman and the audience seem to be having. I am not Jewish and know next to no Yiddish, but just to hear the screams of the audience when he exhorts "members of Hadassah" to sing along to MY ZELDA adds to my pleasure. I don't think these recordings would be as enjoyable if they did not have this audience feedback.

Finally, while the lyrics themselves are wonderful, if you are at all familiar with the original lyrics, I believe it adds to the humor and appreciation of the words Sherman chose. For instance, in A TASTE OF HONEY, the lyric is "I will return"; in the parody, when Sherman is singing about all the foolish ways he's spent his money to impress girls, he sings "They were returned", a line which in itself is not funny, but is humorous in its echo of the original lyric. Even better is the parody lyric "Oh, Harry Lewis perished in the service of his lord; he was trampling through the warehouse where the drapes of Roth are stored" compared to the original lyrics from THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming o the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored."

Judy Harris - visit my homepage at http://judyharris.net/index.htm or email me at foosie@bestweb.net

The following MY SON, THE CELEBRITY lyrics were entered by Bill Kinnersley (billk@cs.ukans.edu)

Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila,
Oh, the day they met.
Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila,
No one will forget.
Harvey's a CPA.
He works for IBM.
He went to MIT and got his PhD.
Sheila's a girl I know,
At B.B.D.& O.
She works the PBX,
And makes out the checks.

Then came one great day when
Harvey took the elevator,
Sheila got in two floors later,
Soon they both felt they were falling,
Everyone heard Sheila calling,
"Ring the bell,"
But they fell.
Harv and Sheila fell in love.

Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila,
Chose a wedding ring.
Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila,
Married in the spring.
She shopped at A & P.
He bought a used MG.
They sat and watched TV
On their RCA.
Borrowed from HFC,
Bought some AT&T,
And on election day, worked for JFK.

Then they went and got a
Charge-A-Plate from R.H. Macy,
Bought a layette, pink and lacy,
Then they had twin baby girls,
Both with dimples, both with curls,
One named Bea,
One named Kay,
Soon they joined the PTA.

Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila,
Moved to West LA.
Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila, Harvey and Sheila,
Flew TWA.
They bought a house one day,
Financed by FHA.
It had a swimming pool, full of H2O.
Traded their used MG
For a new XKE.
Switched to the GOP,
That's the way things go.

Oh that Harvey he was
Really smart, he used his noodle.
Sheila bought a white French poodle,
Went to Europe with a visa,
Henry's rich, they say that he's a
VIP!
This could be,
Only in the USA!

Won't You Come Home, Disraeli

(Parody of "Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home" by Arthur Collins)

When Benjamin Disraeli was Prime Minister of England,
And good old Queen Victoria was the Queen,
Whenever she would need him for official palace business,
Disraeli, he was nowhere to be seen.
She went down to 10 Downing Street,
The doorbell there she rang,
And when there was no answer,
This is what the good Queen sang:

Won't you come home, Disraeli. Won't you come home.
Come home to Queen Victoria.
Don't leave that House of Commons, and that House of Lords.
Just sittin' waitin' for ya.
I'm gettin' awful lonesome, 'cause all I do
Is sit here reading Ethan Frome.
Now don't leave me flat,
The key to the palace is under the mat.
Disraeli, won't you please come home.

Won't you come home, Disraeli. Won't you come home.
Come home to Queen Victoria.
Don't leave that House of Commons, and that House of Lords.
Just sittin' waitin' for ya.
You claim official business took you away
To Egypt, and Bombay, and Rome.
Well, I ain't so certain,
'Cause you're the Nineteenth Century Richard Burton,
Disraeli, won't you please (I miss you, Dizzy)
Disraeli, won't you please,
Disraeli, won't you please,
Disraeli, won't you please come home.

No One's Perfect

(Parody of "Annie Lisle" a/k/a "The Cornell Alma Mater (Far Above Cayuga's Waters)")

We would now like to salute all of the beautiful singing groups all over the world.

When the Norman Luboff Chorus
Sings a song like this (like this, like this, like this)
Every single note is gorgeous,
But they sometimes miss.

No one's perfect, no one's perfect, no one's perfect, and
That includes Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, and The Ray Charles Singers who were made famous by their frequent appearances on The Perry Como Show, and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and The Robert Shaw Chorale.

When the chorus sings behind you,
All they do is hum (hum)
Every hum is like an angel,
Then one hum goes bumm!

Far above the other singers,
In the treble clef,
A soprano sings in B flat,
But the key is F.

No one's perfect, no one's perfect,
We have learned tonight,
So you'll be astounded,
When we hit this last note right.

When I Was A Lad

(Parody of "Ruler Of The Queen's Navy" from Gilbert & Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore")

When I was a lad I went to Yale,
And I knew then that I could never fail.
For I studied very hard and furthermore,
I polished up the apple for the professor.
(He polished up the apple for the professor)
I polished up the apple so frequently,
That soon I had a Phi Beta Kappa Key.
(He soon had a Phi Beta Kappa key,
From polishing the apple very frequently.)

On graduation day I made a stop
At a very exclusive clothing shop.
I opened up a charge account and asked them for
The best grade flannel in the clothing store.
(The best grade flannel in the clothing store.)
That suit was a part of a great intrigue,
For it proved I was a member of the Ivy League.
(It was part of a great intrigue,
For it proved he was a member of the Ivy League.)

Then I got a crew cut and a sincere tie,
And for my first job I did apply.
A job in an advertising agency,
Sharpening the pencils of a big VP.
(Oh he honed a lot of pencils for a big VP)
I sharpened all the pencils so pointedly,
That now I am a partner in the agency.
(He sharpened all the pencils so pointedly,
That now he is a member of the agency.)

I kept my ears open and my big mouth shut,
And I learned all the agency's scuttlebutt.
I learned who was going out with whom,
And who had the keys to the powder room.
(And who had the keys to the powder room.)
For the key to the powder room you see,
Is the key to the structure of the agency.
(The key to the powder room is the key
To the structure of the agency.)

I worked real hard for the dear old firm,
I learned most every advertising term.
I said to the men in the dark gray suits,
"Let's run it up the flagpole and see who salutes."
(Let's run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.)
I ran it up the flagpole perfectly,
So now I am a partner in the agency.
(He ran it up the flagpole perfectly,
So now he is a partner in the agency.)

Now I have a big office at the end of the hall,
With very fancy carpeting from wall to wall.
I keep my mouth open and I keep my ears shut,
And I've got a little palace in Connecticut.
(And he's got a little palace in Connecticut.)
So I thank old Yale, and I thank the Lord,
And I also thank my father who was Chairman of the Board,
(And he's grateful to his father,
Yes he's grateful to his father,
Yes he's grateful to his father,
Who was Chairman of the Board.)

Me

(Parody of "Come Back To Sorrento")

Counting both feet, I have ten toes,
They're not lady toes, they're men toes.
And I keep them as mementoes,
For I love them tenderly.

All my hands are full of fingers,
Very good as doorbell ringers.
And the thought of fingers lingers
In my haunted memory.

In the middle is my carcass,
And I always dress my carcass
In the best from Neiman-Marcus.
That's a big store in Big D.

There are other things about me,
Which I'll show you if you doubt me.
Things that would not work without me,
Like my elbow and my knee.

On my face, two eyebrows,
They're not your brows, they're my brows.
Behind those eyebrows,
That's where you'll find me.

Shticks Of One Kind And Half A Dozen Of The Other

[parody of "Molly Malone"]
She wheels her wheelbarrow
Through streets that are narrow,
Her barrow is narrow, her hips are too wide.
So wherever she wheels it,
The neighborhood feels it,
Her girdle keeps scraping the homes on each side.

In Dublin's fair city,
Where girls are so pretty,
My Molly stands out 'cause she weighs 18 stone.
(That's 256 pounds.)
I don't mind her fat--but,
It's not only that--but,
She's cockeyed and muscle-bound, Molly Malone.

[parody of "Auld Lang Syne"]
I know a man, his name is Lang,
And he has a neon sign.
And Mister Lang is very old,
So they call it Old Lang's Sign.

[parody of "Billy Boy"]
Oh what have you done, Billy Sol, Billy Sol.
Oh what have you done, charming Billy.
You took almost every cent
From the U.S. Government,
Which you spent on fertilizer, which is silly.

[parody of "Mary-Anne"]
All day, all night, Cary Grant.
That's all I hear from my wife, is Cary Grant.
What can he do that I can't?
Big deal, big star, Cary Grant.

[parody of "On The Banks Of The Wabash" by George J. Gaskin]
Oh the moon is bright tonight upon the car wash.
So I'm having my Volkswagen washed again.
But the way things go with me, the way my luck is,
Just as soon as they're finished, it will rain.

[parody of "On Top Of Old Smokey" by The Weavers]
On top of Old Smokey,
All covered with hair,
Of course I'm referring
To Smokey The Bear.

[parody of "Aura Lee"]
Every time you take vaccine,
Take it orally.
As you know the other way
Is more painfully.

[parody of "Grandfather's Clock" by The Haydn Quartet]
My grandfather's clock was the best ever made
By the Timex company.
Just like the clock John Cameron Swayze displayed
Last night on the old TV.

Oh it works under water so perfectly,
And still makes a ticking sound.
Which my grandfather tried only this afternoon,
And that's how the old man drowned.

[parody of "Comin' Thru' The Rye" by Nellie Melba]
Do not make a stingy sandwich.
Pile the cold cuts high.
Customers should see salami
Coming through the rye.

[parody of Stephen Foster's "Polly Wolly Doodle"]
Oh I diet all day and I diet all night,
It's enough to drive me bats.
Got no gravy or potatoes,
'Cause the whole refrigerator's
Fulla polyunsaturated fats.

Fare thee well, Metrecal,
And the others of that ilk.
Let the diet start tomorrow,
'Cause today I'll drown my sorrow
In a double malted milk.

[parody of "Down By The Riverside"]
When you go to the delicatessen store,
Don't buy the liverwurst.
Don't buy the liverwurst.
Don't buy the liverwurst.
I repeat what I just said before,
Don't buy the liverwurst.
Don't buy the liverwurst.

Oh buy the corned beef if you must,
The pickled herring you can trust,
And the lox puts you in orbit AOK.
But that big hunk of liverwurst
Has been there since October First,
And today is the Twenty-Third of May.

So when you go to the delicatessen store,
Don't buy the liverwurst.
Don't buy the liverwurst.
Don't buy the liverwurst.
It'll make your insides awful sore.
Don't buy the liverwurst.
Don't buy the liverwurst.

Call Me

(parody of "Call Me Irresponsible" by Frank Sinatra, from the movie "Papa's Delicate Condition")

Call me Efrem Zimbalist,
Get me Bobby Kennedy,
Then call Dave Ben-Gurion, too.
Then tell Carol Baker I'm home, now;
Tell her Mastroianni sends love from Rome now.

Then get Hank Mancini
And tell him Fred Fellini is waiting;
Where the heck is the song?
Order Scotch and ice and then
Ring up Barbra Streisand and
Then set up a conference call
With Sammy Davis and Charles de Gaulle.

Call me Walter Cronkite
And tell him Nancy Dickerson said
That David Brinkley was wrong.
Then get Conrad Hilton in Bombay;
Tell him Tuesday night I want peaches flambe.

Call Chief Justice Warren
And tell him Sophie Loren is worried;
Is she married or not?
Then call Arthur Schlesinger;
No, no, send a messenger
With the saddest news of the bunch:
Tell Lady Bird I'll be late for lunch.

Dial up Liberace
And, while up, Joe Valachi
And tell him Lucky sends his regards.
Find out where Onassis' barge is;
Call him, ship-to-shore, and reverse the charges.

Locate Melvin Belli
And tell Mel when I fell I was scratched
By Princess Margaret's rose.
Then call Lollabrigida,
This week she's in Wichita,
And then, when you reach Cary Grant,
Tell him I'd love to, but I just can't.

Tools services webmasters counters
generators scripts tutorials free

ALLAN SHERMAN

Contents:

Al 'N' Yetta

Barry Is The Baby's Name/Horowitz/Get On The Garden Freeway

Mexican Hat Dance

The Bronx Bird Watcher

The Let's All Call Up AT&T And Protest To The President March

Harvey And Sheila

Won't You Come Home, Disraeli

No One's Perfect

When I Was A Lad

Me

Shticks Of One Kind And Half A Dozen Of The Other