This post was inspired by the Library of Congress researcher excited to learn about the Allan Sherman biography.
“There Is Nothin’ Like A Lox” is one of Sherman’s unreleased parodies of Broadway show tunes, in this case, “There Is Nothin’ Like A Dame,” from South Pacific.
Sherman called such parodies “Goldeneh Moments from Broadway.” Here’s a good example of [...]
“There Is Nothing Like a Lox”
Another Allan Sherman fan says, “at last!”
This has happened before, but I’m always surprised and wowed when it does.
I emailed the Library of Congress to see if I needed its permission to quote Allan Sherman items I found there. Not necessary, emailed a reference assistant.
And then he added,
“Incidentally, I am happy to hear that Allan Sherman is finally going to be [...]
Allan Sherman’s 50th anniversary
That’s right, this is the 50th anniversary of Sherman’s big year, when between August 1962 and July 1963 he recorded and released My Son, The Folk Singer, My Son, The Celebrity, and My Son, The Nut.
All went gold, “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!” won a Grammy, and Sherman was a major star.
Good year for an Allan [...]
First biography of Allan Sherman
Overweight Sensation: the life and comedy of Allan Sherman (Brandeis University Press) will be published in the spring of 2013.
Song parodist Allan Sherman has been called “arguably the most successful musical humorist in pop history.” Not many have argued otherwise. Between the summers of 1962 and 1963, Sherman recorded and released My Son, The Folk Singer, [...]
Jerry Seinfeld on Allan Sherman
Well, that was something.
You know how it is when you really get deep into some idea or subject, devote a lot of time to it, and just when you’re sure you’re a bona fide crank you discover that other people are also thinking about it?
Well, yesterday was the first time I watched Jerry Seinfeld’s excellent [...]
The Basement Tapes — Allan Sherman version
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 [...]
Allan Sherman gets a nod from the Times
Which made this article about him in the Forward even more timely than when I first thought of it.
Thanks, guys.
Allan Sherman’s judaizing impulse—the case of David Susskind
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. [...]
Allan Sherman’s family lived as non-Jewish Jews among Jews
When Sherman began 8th grade in Los Angeles in the fall of 1936, his mother Rose had recently been married — for the fourth and last time — to a Jewish conman and gangster. I have his FBI file. It’s big. (Mostly he liked to burn down businesses, usually his own. But the file suggests [...]
continue reading >>Allan Sherman didn’t attend 21 schools (but he early had a way with words)
One of the tidbits that Allan Sherman fans have heard is that he attended 21 schools before college. The figure comes from his entertaining but not wholly reliable autobiography, A Gift of Laughter.
Well, that’s not right.
For my biography of Sherman I have done some prodigious digging, and as I gathered information I became embarrassed that [...]
