Many fields have within their ranks someone of accomplishment whose reputation rests on a slim body of work. For example, Ralph Ellison’s literary reputation rests on Invisible Man, the one novel he published during his lifetime, and Evariste Galois’s mathematical fame comes mainly from calculations he wrote down in one night of frantic activity, the day before he was killed in a duel.
The closest example in musical satire is that of Tom Lehrer, whose entire comedic output consists of three albums (recorded between 1953 and 1965) and a few uncollected songs, totaling about two hours of playing time. He gave up recording 40 years ago, and except for a few songs written for "The Electric Company" and one trip to the studio in 1996 to record one of his old songs, has stayed out of the public eye ever since. (He once wrote that when in the 1970s people suggested political topics for him to write songs about, he felt rather like a resident of Pompeii who was asked for some humorous comments about lava.) He released very few pictures of himself (he told me many years ago that he wanted to be just famous enough that people would recognize his name but not his face), and as far as I know only one video of him performing exists, lasting about 13 minutes. (It’s downloadable here.)
Yet many of his songs continue to be listened to and sung, ranging from "The Hunting Song," a staple of campfire singalongs ("I went and shot the maximum the game laws would allow / Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow"), to "Pollution," a favorite of environmentalists of a certain age ("See the halibuts and the sturgeons / Being wiped out by detergeons. / Fish gotta swim, and birds gotta fly / But they don’t last long if they try"), to his tongue-twister "The Elements," being the names of the 102 elements then known set to the tune of the Major-General’s song from "The Pirates of Penzance." The title of this post is the last line of the song.
Today marks Mr. Lehrer’s 78th birthday. Best wishes to you, sir, and if in your musical trunk there should be a few more songs "that haven’t been discavard," your fans hope that you’ll share them soon.
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We’re all huge fans of Tom Lehrer here – and my son now knows all of the elements (or used to) ’cause he insisted on memorizing ‘The Elements’ song a few years ago.
Happy birthday, sir…!
Our family is also hooked on Tom Lehrer, and for my birtday about five years back My husband got me 3CD set of his songs, from Dr. Demento. One of my fondest memories of my late husband was him singing the Elements song to our kids. The CD is out in a box as we are moving so I can’t go check right now, but I believe it was called the Remains of the Day, I would bet you can still get it from Demento. Another favorite is Poisioning Pigeons in the Park, the CD’s are great.
It’s called “The Remains of Tom Lehrer,” and it’s delightful, in a ghastly sort of way.
I came across this story about “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” In about 1960, Mr. Lehrer recorded four of his songs with an orchestral background. The orchestra was given scores without the titles and words, sheet music that simply said “Song 1,” “Song 2,” and so on. On the first take of the first song, when Mr. Lehrer got to the line “As we poison the pigeons in the park,” several of the orchestra, who had no idea what was coming, burst out in laughter, and it took several minutes for them to regain their composure and rerecord the song.