Tom Lehrer

I don't have to outline his accomplishments, as I did when the even more venerable and astonishingly similarly-talented Sheldon Harnick died. So instead I'll say these:

1. My parents saw Tom Lehrer perform in person. They went to the hungry i during his residency with the songs that were recorded there and became his album That Was The Year That Was.

2. They also had all his albums. That included his own personal-label 10" issues of his first two albums. Not the original pressings, I'm sure, but those issuings. I still have them all today.

3. But I don't play them, because I bought the CD set The Remains of Tom Lehrer as soon as it was published. That was one of two such collections I bought; the other was of Allan Sherman.

4. As a child, I would have said that I liked Tom Lehrer second among the musical comedians whose records we had. Sherman was first. Third was Stan Freberg. It took me a while to grow into Lehrer's humor.

5. But I had by the time I went to university. It was about then that Lehrer's "The Irish Ballad" became the first original song whose lyrics I memorized.

6. A few years later, of course I went to see the musical revue Tomfoolery when a touring company came to our area.

7. Tom Lehrer trivia item no. 1: He is not the only person to have written a song titled "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." His is, however, the only one worth listening to.

8. Tom Lehrer trivia item no. 2: Here's Lehrer on The Frost Report adapting "New Math" to Britain's conversion to decimal currency.