It’s a seeming throwaway on Allan Sherman’s first album, My Son, The Folk Singer,
Little David Susskind, shut up
Please don’t talk, please don’t talk
Little David Susskind, eat first
Then you’ll talk
David Susskind came to public fame in the late 1950s with the talk show Open End, which sometimes ran for hours. It had no predetermined time slot. It began at 11pm “and ran until the topics–or the participants–were exhausted.” An idea that makes me giggle with delight. The show was a manic talk-fest that was nicknamed Open Mouth.
Sherman’s friend Dick Gehman, known as The Factory for his tremendous writing output, in 1963 wrote that “until recently David Susskind was the least controversial personality in the television industry. Nearly everyone hated his guts.”
Love it.
But Sherman did something brilliant in that 1962 Susskind ditty that anticipated by 10 years Jewish social studies, the approach to studying Jewish history that allows a broader look at the Jewish experience by including in that experience people, events, and movements that are not explicitly or self-consciously Jewish.
Sherman took a look at Susskind and placed him within Jewish life, within Jewish culture, and identified him as a motormouth Jewish type that his audience instantly recognized. At its worst, this approach can deteriorate into a kind of Herzogian Reality Instructor approach that reduces individuals of great energy and talent and (why not?) madness to a common denominator low enough for anyone to reach.
But that’s not what Sherman does here. He shrewdly calls attention to something important that was overlooked by everyone.
Comments