Half-century old reel-to-reel tapes stored in an East Coast basement recently surfaced, and they held three lost Allan Sherman parodies. I was tempted to say they are legendary, but they are too obscure for that. Nobody knew of them, and so no legends could be promulgated.
Two of the songs parody tunes from Porgy and Bess. They are “Summertime” and “There’s a Jaguar Leaving Soon for the Concord.”
The third Sherman song is, “You’re a Nudnick, Sondara Goldfarb.” It is a parody of “You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan,” from Carousel.
Thank you, Mark! (Not myself. Another Mark)
Comments
Is there any chance these tapes will be made available. Mr. Sherman played at Monticellos in Framingham Mass. My parents saw him and said it was hysterically funny. They promised they would take me next time through. I heard of his passing on the Jess Kane show. I was in ninth grade. IT was the first of many depressions. Thanks for updating one of my only heros.
Apologies for the ridiculously long delay, and thank you for your interest in Sherman.
As you may know, his parody of My Fair Lady was finally released in 2005 on My Son, the Box, from Rhino, but the additional material I found — parodies of songs from Carousel, Camelot, South Pacific, Porgy and Bess, and more — well, who knows. It is a long shot, due to the cost of securing permissions and the sometimes inferior sound quality. But the good news is that my biography of Sherman prints the lyrics to these songs for the first time.
Thanks for writing!