Tom Lehrer

Thomas Andrew Lehrer (; born April 9, 1928) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician, who later taught mathematics and musical theater. He recorded pithy and humorous, often political songs that became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. His songs often parodied popular musical forms, though they usually had original melodies. An exception is " The Elements", in which he set the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the " Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's ''Pirates of Penzance''.

Lehrer's early performances dealt with non-topical subjects and black humor (also known as dark comedy) in songs such as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". In the 1960s, he produced songs about timely social and political issues, particularly for the U.S. version of the television show ''That Was the Week That Was''. The popularity of these songs has far outlasted their topical subjects and references. Lehrer quoted a friend's explanation: "Always predict the worst and you'll be hailed as a prophet." In the early 1970s, Lehrer largely retired from public performance to devote his time to teaching mathematics and musical theater history at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Early life

Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born in New York City on April 9, 1928, to a secular Jewish family and grew up on Manhattan's Upper East Side. He is the son of Morris James Lehrer (1897–1986) and Anna Lehrer (née Waller; 1905–1978) and older brother of Barry Waller Lehrer (1930–2007). He began studying classical piano at the age of seven, but was more interested in the popular music of the age. Eventually, his mother sent him to a popular-music piano teacher.Liner notes, ''Songs & More Songs By Tom Lehrer'', Rhino Records, 1997. At this early age, he began writing show tunes, which eventually helped him as a satirical composer and writer in his years of lecturing at Harvard University and later at other universities.

Lehrer attended the Horace Mann School in the Riverdale, part of the Bronx borough of New York. He also attended Camp Androscoggin, both as a camper and a counselor. Lehrer was considered a child prodigy and, at the age of 15 after graduating from Loomis School, he entered Harvard College, where one of his professors was Irving Kaplansky, As an undergraduate student at Harvard, he began to write comic songs, to entertain his friends, including " Fight Fiercely, Harvard". Those songs were later named collectively the "Physical Revue", a joking reference to a leading scientific journal, the ''Physical Review''.

Academic and military career

Lehrer graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics, ''magna cum laude'', in 1946. At Harvard, he was the roommate of the Canadian theologian Robert Crouse. He received his MA degree the next year and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He later taught mathematics and other classes at MIT, Harvard, Wellesley, and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Lehrer remained in Harvard's doctoral program for several years, taking time also for his musical career and to work as a researcher at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

Lehrer was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1955 and served until 1957, working at the National Security Agency (NSA). Lehrer once stated that he invented the Jello shot during this time, as a means of circumventing the base's ban on alcoholic beverages.
Despite holding a master's degree in an era when American conscripts often lacked high school diplomas, Lehrer served as an enlisted soldier, achieving the rank of specialist third class, which he described as being a "corporal without portfolio". These experiences became fodder for songs, such as "The Wild West is Where I Want to Be" and "It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier". In 2020 Lehrer publicly revealed that he had been assigned to the NSA; since the mere fact of the NSA's existence was classified at the time, Lehrer found himself in the position of implicitly using nuclear weapons work as a cover story for something more sensitive.

In 1960, Lehrer returned to full-time math studies at Harvard. From 1962 he taught mathematics in the political science department at MIT. In 1965 he gave up on his mathematics dissertation on modes in statistics, after working on it intermittently for 15 years.

In 1972, Lehrer joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching an introductory course entitled "The Nature of Mathematics" to liberal arts majors—"math for tenors", according to Lehrer. He also taught a class in musical theater. He occasionally performed songs in his lectures.Lehrer performance excerpt,

In 2001, Lehrer taught his last mathematics class, on the topic of infinity, and retired from academia. He has remained in the area, and in 2003 said he still "hangs out" around the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Musical career

Style and influences

Lehrer was mainly influenced by musical theater. According to Gerald Nachman's book ''Seriously Funny'', the Broadway musical '' Let's Face It!'' made an early and lasting impression on him. Lehrer's style consists of parodying various forms of popular song. For example, his appreciation of list songs led him to write " The Elements", which lists the chemical elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's " Major-General's Song".

In author and Boston University professor Isaac Asimov's second autobiographical volume, ''In Joy Still Felt'', Asimov recounted seeing Lehrer perform in a Boston nightclub on October 9, 1954. Lehrer sang a song about Jim getting it from Louise, and Sally from Jim, "...and after a while you gathered the 'it' was venereal disease. Suddenly, as the combinations grew more grotesque, you realized he was satirizing every known perversion without using a single naughty phrase. It was clearly unsingable outside a nightclub." (The song was likely " I Got It From Agnes".) Asimov also recalled a song that dealt with the Boston subway system, making use of the stations leading into town from Harvard, observing that the local subject-matter rendered the song useless for general distribution. Lehrer subsequently granted Asimov permission to print the lyrics to "The Subway Song" in his book. "I haven't gone to nightclubs often," said Asimov, "but of all the times I have gone, it was on this occasion that I had by far the best time."

Recordings

Lehrer was encouraged by the success of his performances, so he paid $15 () for some studio time in 1953 to record '' Songs by Tom Lehrer''. The initial pressing was 400 copies. Radio stations would not air his songs because of his controversial subjects, so he sold the album on campus at Harvard for $3, , while "several stores near the Harvard campus sold it for $3.50, taking only a minimal markup as a kind of community service. Newsstands on campus sold it for the same price."
After one summer, he started to receive mail orders from all parts of the country, as far away as San Francisco, after the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' wrote an article on the record. Interest in his recordings spread by word of mouth. People played their records for friends, who then also wanted a copy.Jim Bessman. "Rhino Reissues Lehrer's Seminal 'Songs' Albums". ''Billboard''. June 21, 1997. Lehrer recalled, "Lacking exposure in the media, my songs spread slowly. Like herpes, rather than ebola."

The album included the macabre "I Hold Your Hand in Mine", the mildly risqué "Be Prepared", and " Lobachevsky" regarding plagiarizing mathematicians. It became a cult success by word of mouth, despite being self-published and without promotion. The limited distribution of the album led to a knock off album by Jack "Enjal" (a pseudonym of Jack Nagel) being released in 1958 without Lehrer's approval, where some of the lyrics were mistranscribed.

Lehrer embarked on a series of concert tours and recorded a second album in 1959. He released the second album in two versions: the songs were the same, but '' More of Tom Lehrer'' was a studio recording and '' An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer'' was recorded live in concert. In 2013, Lehrer recalled the studio session for "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park", which referred to the practice of controlling pigeons in Boston with strychnine-treated corn:

Touring

Lehrer had a breakthrough in the United Kingdom on December 4, 1957, when the University of London awarded a doctor of music degree ''honoris causa'' to Princess Margaret, and the public orator, Professor J. R. Sutherland, said it was "in the full knowledge that the Princess is a connoisseur of music and a performer of skill and distinction, her taste being catholic, ranging from Mozart to the calypso and from opera to the songs of Miss Beatrice Lillie and Tom Lehrer." This prompted significant interest in Lehrer's works and helped to secure distribution in Britain for his five-year-old debut album. It was there that his music achieved real sales popularity, as a result of the proliferation of university newspapers referring to the material, and inadvertently due to the BBC, which in 1958 banned from broadcast 10 of the 12 songs on the album. By the end of the 1950s, Lehrer had sold 370,000 records.

''That Was The Week That Was''

In 1960, Lehrer essentially retired from touring in the U.S. The same year, he toured Australia and New Zealand, performing a total of 33 concerts to great acclaim and controversy. While in New Zealand, he penned lyrics critical of the All Blacks' upcoming tour of Apartheid-era South Africa and Prime Minister Walter Nash's stance on it. Lehrer's tours occurred during a time in which he was, he said, "banned, censored, mentioned in several houses of parliament and threatened with arrest". In particular, "Be Prepared" drew advance resistance in Brisbane from the commissioner of police. He performed several songs in Australia that were still unreleased, including "The Masochism Tango". In the early 1960s, he was employed as the resident songwriter for the U.S. edition of ''That Was The Week That Was'' (TW3), a satirical television show.

A greater proportion of his output became overtly political, or at least topical, on subjects such as education (" New Math"), the Second Vatican Council (" The Vatican Rag"), race relations ("National Brotherhood Week"), air and water pollution ("Pollution"), American militarism ("Send the Marines"), and nuclear proliferation ("Who's Next?" and "MLF Lullaby"). He also wrote a song satirizing rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, who worked for Nazi Germany before working for the United States. Lehrer did not appear on TW3; vocalist Nancy Ames performed his songs (to Lehrer's chagrin), and lines were often cut from his songs. Lehrer later performed nine of these songs at the Hungry i nightclub in San Francisco, and this became the album '' That Was the Year That Was'' (1965).

In 1966, BBC TV host David Frost returned to the UK with the BBC program '' The Frost Report''; alongside Julie Felix, Lehrer provided musical satire on the weekly subject. The show was transmitted live, and he pre-recorded all his segments at one performance. Lehrer was not featured in every edition, but his songs featured in an appropriate part of each show. At least two of his songs were not included on any of his LPs: a reworking of Noël Coward's "That is the End of the News" (with some new lyrics) and a comic explanation of how Britain might adapt to the coming of decimal currency. The record deal with Reprise Records for ''That Was The Year That Was'' also gave Reprise distribution rights for his earlier recordings, because Lehrer wanted to wind up his own record imprint. The Reprise issue of ''Songs by Tom Lehrer'' was a stereo re-recording. This version was not issued on CD, as Lehrer was unhappy with this version. The live recording included bonus tracks "L-Y" and "Silent E", two of the ten songs that he wrote for the PBS children's educational series ''The Electric Company''. Lehrer later commented that worldwide sales of the recordings under Reprise surpassed 1.8 million units in 1996. That same year, ''That Was The Year That Was'' went gold. The album liner notes promote his songs with self-deprecating humor, such as quoting a ''New York Times'' review from 1959: Mr. Lehrer's muse is "not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste".

Lehrer toured Sweden, Norway and Denmark in 1967; his concert in Oslo was recorded for Danish television and subsequently released on DVD some 40 years later. He performed as a prominent international guest at the ''Studenterforeningen'' (student association) in Copenhagen, which was televised, and he commented on stage that he might be America's "revenge for Victor Borge". He performed original songs in a Dodge automobile industrial film distributed primarily to automobile dealers and shown at promotional events in 1967, set in a fictional American wild west town and titled ''The Dodge Rebellion Theatre presents Ballads For '67''. He attempted to adapt Sweeney Todd as a Broadway musical, working with Joe Raposo, to star Jerry Colonna. They started a few songs but, as Lehrer noted, "Nothing ever came of it, and of course twenty years later Stephen Sondheim beat me to the punch."

Departure from the music scene

In the 1970s, Lehrer concentrated on teaching mathematics and musical theater, although he also wrote ten songs for the educational children's television show ''The Electric Company''. His last public performance for many years took place in 1972, on a fundraising tour for Democratic US presidential candidate George McGovern.

When asked why he had abandoned his musical career in an interview for the booklet accompanying his CD boxed set, '' The Remains of Tom Lehrer'' (2000), Lehrer replied: "If an idea came to me, I'd write, and if it didn't I wouldn't—and, gradually, the second option prevailed over the first. Occasionally people ask 'If you enjoyed it'—and I did—'why don't you do it again?' I reply, 'I enjoyed high school but I certainly wouldn't want to do ''that'' again.

Though Lehrer was "a hero of the anti-nuclear, civil rights left" and covered its political concerns in many of his songs and, even though he shared the New Left's opposition to the Vietnam War, and advocated for civil rights, he disliked the aesthetics of the counterculture of the 1960s and stopped performing as the movement gained momentum.

Lehrer's musical career was relatively brief. He once mentioned that he performed a mere 109 shows and wrote 37 songs over 20 years. Nevertheless, he developed a significant following in the United States and abroad.

Revivals and reissues

Lehrer's music became a staple of the Doctor Demento Show when it began national syndication in 1977.
In 1980, Cameron Mackintosh produced '' Tomfoolery'', a revue of Lehrer's songs that was a hit on the London stage. Lehrer was not initially involved with the show, but he was pleased with it; he eventually gave the stage production his full support and updated several of his lyrics for the show. ''Tomfoolery'' contained 27 songs and led to more than 200 productions, including an Off-Broadway production at the Village Gate which ran for 120 performances in 1981. Lehrer made a rare TV appearance on BBC's '' Parkinson'' show in conjunction with the ''Tomfoolery'' premiere in 1980 at the Criterion Theatre in London, where he sang "I Got It from Agnes". There were "Tomfoolery" performances in San Francisco about 1982 and in 2018–19. "Tomfoolery" was performed at the Arena Stage Theater in Washington, DC, in 1982. In 1993, he wrote "That's Mathematics" for the closing credits to a Mathematical Sciences Research Institute video celebrating the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.

On June 7 and 8, 1998, Lehrer performed in public for the first time in 18 years at the Lyceum Theatre, London as part of the show '' Hey, Mr. Producer!'' celebrating the career of Cameron Mackintosh, who had produced ''Tomfoolery''. The June 8 show was his only performance before Queen Elizabeth II. Lehrer sang "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and an updated version of the nuclear proliferation song "Who's Next?".

In 2000, Lehrer commented that he doubted his songs had any real effect on those not already critical of the establishment: "I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted ... I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin Kabaretts of the 1930s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War."

Lehrer has said, jokingly, of his musical career: "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while."
In 2003, Lehrer commented that his particular brand of political satire is more difficult in the modern world: "The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban land mines ... I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them." Earlier, he had said: "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize."

In 2000, the boxed CD set ''The Remains of Tom Lehrer'' was released by Rhino Entertainment. It included live and studio versions of his first two albums, ''That Was The Year That Was'', the songs that he wrote for ''The Electric Company'', some previously unreleased material, and a small hardbound lyrics book with an introduction by Dr. Demento. In 2010, Shout! Factory launched a reissue campaign, making Lehrer's out-of-print albums available digitally. The CD/DVD combo ''The Tom Lehrer Collection'' was also issued, including his best-known songs, with a DVD featuring an Oslo concert.

In a February 2008 phone call, Gene Weingarten of ''The Washington Post'' interviewed Lehrer off the record. When Weingarten asked if there was anything he could print for the record, Lehrer responded "Just tell the people that I am voting for Obama."

In 2012, rapper 2 Chainz sampled Lehrer's song " The Old Dope Peddler", on his 2012 debut album, '' Based on a T.R.U. Story.'' In 2013, Lehrer said he was "very proud" to have his song sampled "literally sixty years after I recorded it". Lehrer went on to describe his official response to the request to use his song: "As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?"

Comedy label Stand Up! Records released Lehrer's holiday songs "(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica" and "A Christmas Carol" as a seven-inch single in 2024. The limited-edition release also included sheet music for both songs.

All songs in the public domain

In October 2020, Lehrer transferred the music and lyrics for all songs he had ever written into the public domain. In November 2022, he formally relinquished the copyright and performing/recording rights on his songs, making all music and lyrics composed by him free for anyone to use, and established a website from which all of his recordings and printable copies of all of his songs could be downloaded. His statement releasing all his works into the public domain concludes with this note: "This website will be shut down at some date in the not too distant future, so if you want to download anything, don't wait too long." As of June 2025, the website is still online.

Musical legacy

In 1967, Swedish actor Lars Ekborg, known outside Sweden for his part in Ingmar Bergman's '' Summer with Monika'', made an album called ''I Tom Lehrers vackra värld'' ("In the beautiful world of Tom Lehrer"), with 12 of Lehrer's songs interpreted in Swedish. Lehrer wrote in a letter to the producer Per-Anders Boquist that, "Not knowing any Swedish, I am obviously not equipped to judge, but it sounds to me as though Mr. Ekborg is perfect for the songs", along with further compliments to pianist Leif Asp for unexpected additional flourishes.

In 1971, Argentinian singer Nacha Guevara sang Spanish versions of several Lehrer songs for the show/live album ''Este es el año que es''.

Composer Randy Newman said of Lehrer, "He's one of the great American songwriters without a doubt, right up there with everybody, the top guys. As a lyricist, as good as there's been in the last half of the 20th century." Singer and comedian Dillie Keane has acknowledged Lehrer's influence on her work.

Dr. Demento praised Lehrer as "the best musical satirist of the twentieth century." Other artists who cite Lehrer as an influence include "Weird Al" Yankovic, whose work generally addresses more popular and less technical or political subjects, and educator and scientist H. Paul Shuch, who tours under the stage name Dr. SETI, and calls himself "a cross between Carl Sagan and Tom Lehrer: He sings like Sagan and lectures like Lehrer." Yankovic saw Daniel Radcliffe (who called Lehrer his "hero") perform "The Elements" on ''The Graham Norton Show'' in his native United Kingdom, which led to Radcliffe starring in '' Weird: The Al Yankovic Story''.

From January 16 to February 25, 2006, the play '' Letters from Lehrer'', written and performed by Canadian Richard Greenblatt, ran at CanStage in Toronto. It followed Lehrer's musical career, the meaning of several songs, the politics of the time, and Greenblatt's own experiences with Lehrer's music, while playing some of Lehrer's songs.

In the March 16, 2006, issue of ''New York'' magazine, Donald Fagen of Steely Dan named Tom Lehrer among the writers who had influenced him and his songwriting partner Walter Becker. "We also liked comic songwriting, like Tom Lehrer. He was a piano player and songwriter who wrote these grim, funny songs."

In 2010, the German musician-comedian Felix Janosa released an album with the title "Tauben vergiften: Die bösen Lieder von Tom Lehrer" ("Poisoning pigeons: The Evil Songs of Tom Lehrer"), with German versions of some of his best-known songs.

In 2024, Francis Beckett wrote a play ''Tom Lehrer Is Teaching Math and Doesn't Want to Talk to You'', which features Lehrer's music and was performed with Lehrer's tacit approval at the Upstairs at The Gatehouse theatre in Highgate, London.

Performers influenced by Lehrer's style include American political satirist Mark Russell, Canadian comedian and songwriter Randy Vancourt, and the British duo Kit and The Widow. Composer/cabarettist Leonard Lehrman extended three of Lehrer's songs, writing a new verse 4 to "Clementine", a new verse 2 to "Hanukkah in Santa Monica", and a new verse 3 to "The Elements".

Lehrer has been referred to as the "King of Satire" by fans.

Discography

;Studio albums
* '' Songs by Tom Lehrer'' (1953), re-recorded in 1966
* '' More of Tom Lehrer'' (1959)

;Live albums
* '' An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer'' (1959)
* '' Revisited'' (1960)
* ''Tom Lehrer Discovers Australia (And Vice Versa)'' (1960; Australia-only)
* '' That Was the Year That Was'' (1965)

; Compilation albums
* ''Tom Lehrer in Concert'' (1994; UK compilation)
* '' Songs & More Songs by Tom Lehrer'' (1997; US compilation of his first two studio albums with additional songs)
* '' The Remains of Tom Lehrer'' (2000)
* ''The Tom Lehrer Collection'' (2010)
* ''The Conducted Tom Lehrer'' (2023; Adds instrumental versions of four songs, with an additional song, 'Trees', that was never released before)

; Singles
* "(I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica"/"A Christmas Carol" ( Stand Up! Records, 2024)

Many of Lehrer's songs are performed by others in ''That Was The Week That Was'' (Radiola LP, 1981).

The sheet music of many songs is published in ''The Tom Lehrer Song Book'' (Crown Publishers Inc., 1954; Library of Congress Card Catalog Number 54-12068) and ''Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer: With Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle'' (Pantheon, 1981, ; Methuen, 1999, ). A second song book, ''Tom Lehrer's Second Song Book'', is out of print, .

Publications

The American Mathematical Society database lists him as co-author of two papers:

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Two of Lehrer's songs were reprinted, with his permission, in ''Mad'' magazine:

* ''Tom Lehrer Sings "The Wild West is Where I Want To Be"'' (illustrated by George Woodbridge, ''MAD'' #32, April 1957)
* ''Tom Lehrer's "The Hunting Song"'' (illustrated by George Woodbridge, ''MAD'' #35, October 1957)

References

External links

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Tom Lehrer and The Topp Twins - ABC Radio National
(podcast). ''Interview''. Conversation recorded in 2000, re-broadcast in 2021
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lehrer, Tom

1928 births
Living people
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American mathematicians
20th-century American pianists
21st-century American male musicians
21st-century American pianists
American agnostics
American comedy musicians
American satirical musicians
American lyricists
American male comedians
American male non-fiction writers
American male pianists
American male singer-songwriters
American novelty song performers
American parodists
American political music artists
American satirists
Comedians from Manhattan
Harvard College alumni
Horace Mann School alumni
Jewish agnostics
Jewish American comedians
Jewish American songwriters
Jewish male comedians
Loomis Chaffee School alumni
Mathematicians from New York (state)
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty
National Security Agency people
Parody musicians
People from the Upper East Side
Reprise Records artists
Singer-songwriters from New York (state)
Singers from New York City
United States Army soldiers
University of California, Santa Cruz faculty
Wellesley College faculty