I love you Tom Lehrer: your music, social criticism and maths

Lehrer singing and playing the piano, 1960

Nature  

Tom Lehrer (born 1928-) grew up in Manhattan, the son of a Jewish clothes manufacturer. While at primary school, he started learning classical piano at 7. Later he moved towards more contemp­orary music, studying piano and writ­ing Cole Porterish show tunes. At school, Lehrer was seen as a child prodigy; he entered Harvard University at 15! He graduated with an undergrad maths degree, then a Master’s.

He began recording comic songs in 1953. Although US radio stations ref­used to play controversial material, his fame still spread. In Britain, the royal approval of Princess Mar­g­aret and the sup­p­ort of the BBC sig­nificantly raised Leh­rer’s prof­ile, and he cons­idered aband­on­ing academe. Still he returned to Harvard in 1960, aiming to comp­lete a maths doctorate on modes in stat­istics. It didn’t happen.

Lehrer was a self-promoter, hiring a studio to record his first LP, Songs by Tom Lehrer (1953), designing the cover with a dev­il at a piano, and distributing it himself to Harvard colleagues and students. He was a fav­ourite at smok­ers and parties, before being invited into his first paid show bus­in­ess gig at a Boston restaurant. Lehrer’s LP took off in 1953 when British DJs began playing his songs on the air; American radio stat­ions considered the songs in bad taste but a few DJs smuggled them on the air. But he wasn’t alone with satire in the 1950s: consider Mort Sahl, Stan Freberg, Ernie Kovacs, Mike Nich­ols and Elaine May etc.

His first LP, Songs by Tom Lehrer (1953), 

Note the cover design with a dev­il at a piano

Lehrer’s big hit Fight Fierce­ly Harvard (1953), a rousing pep song for intellectuals, is still played at Harvard games today. Another album was called An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer (1959) and featured his worst reviews, boldly emblazoned on the cover.

Everyone heard Tom Lehrer songs on the stereo, but the mark of in­t­ell­ect­ual prowess was quoting Lehrer’s ruder lyrics eg I Got It from Agnes (1953 STDs) and The Masochism Tango (1959), marking him as a proponent of sick humour. Before political incorrectness had a name, Tom Lehrer per­s­onified it and celebrated it. In the paranoid cold war era, Lehrer’s social criticism touched a chord with many young people in the US. So fans would have been surprised to learn that he worked for the National Security Agency as a con­sc­ripted army soldier from 1955-7.

Lehrer continued to write songs that dealt with current social and pol­itical is­sues. His song I Wanna Go Back to Dixie (early 1960s), mock­ing southern rac­ism before the civil rights movement took off. Other not­able tunes in­cluded: National Brotherhood Week, Pois­oning Pigeons in the Park (1960), Be Prepared (1960 safe sex for Boy Sc­outs), The Vatican Rag (1965) and Smut (1965). His biggest hit, the album That Was The Year That Was (1965), cov­ered a range of them. These were the songs that Lehrer wrote for That Was The Week That Was, the satirical American television show based on the BBC orig­inal. Who’s Next? (1965) exposed the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Pollution (1965) highlighted environmental crises building at the time eg undrinkable water and unbreathable air.

The rousing ballad Wernher von Braun (1965) undermined the former Nazi who had designed the V-2 ballistic missile in WW2 and later became a key engineer in the US Apollo space programme. In Lehrer’s view, it was acc­eptable for NASA to hire von Braun, but making him into an Amer­ican hero was grotesque. “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,” said Wernher von Braun. Oh dear.

Because the excellent History Girls blog concentrated on Lehrer’s Cold War efforts, see the link to So Long Mom (1965), a song from her flier son going to drop the bomb. When a nuclear holocaust was a real­ity, those were the times that made Lehrer's dark satire a telling voice. Send the Marines (1965) lampooned American foreign policy that was based on reflex military responses. Overseas people who feared American mil­­­it­ary interventions played it over and over again. Yet with all this creat­ivity, there were only 37-50 songs in Lehrer’s rich but brief career.

From the early 1970s, Lehrer gave up song writing and perform­ing, and devoted himself to teaching maths to und­er­graduates. He taught class­es at MIT and Harvard and, in 1972, he joined the Uni of California Santa Cruz. There he taught The Nature of Math­ematics course to liberal arts majors. But note that he also taught classes in Mus­ical Theatre at Santa Cruz.

After the Nobel Peace Prize went to US Sec­ret­ary of State Henry Kis­singer in 1973, Lehrer commented: “Pol­it­ical satire became obsolete. Things I once thought were funny are scary now. This is no time for satire,” believing that reality had out-distanced his creative powers to mock it. Re US President Trump’s polit­ical chaos, Lehrer was silent.

Lyrics of Vatican Rag (1965)
First you get down on your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect

Get in line in that processional
Step into that small confessional
There the guy who's got religion'll
Tell you if your sin's original

Make a cross on your abdomen
When in Rome do like a Roman
Ave Maria, gee it's good to see ya
Gettin' ecstatic and sorta dramatic and
Doin' the Vatican Rag

And to be even-handed, here is his Jewish Yuletide carol, 

Han­ukkah in Santa Monica.
I'm spending Hanukkah, in Santa Monica,
Wearing sandals lighting candles by the sea.
I spent Shavuos, in East St Louis,
A charming spot but clearly not the spot for me.

Those eastern winters, I can't endure 'em,
So every year I pack my gear
And come out here to Purim.

Rosh Hashona, I spend in Arizona,
And Yom Kippa, way down in Mississippa.
But in Decemba, there's just one place for me.
'Mid the California flora,
I'll be lighting my menorah.
Every California maid'll
Find me playing with a dreidl.
Santa Monica, spending Hanukkah by the sea