Tom Lehrer, the smarty-pants comedy pianist known for his hits "The Masochism Tango," "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," and "The Elements" has died. He lived to be 97 years old.
Billboard reports longtime friend David Herder announced Lehrer's passing. He died Saturday (July 26) at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Herder did not specify a cause of death.
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Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format without any fee in return.
Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born in New York City on April 9, 1928. He was raised by a secular Jewish family and lived in Manhattan's Upper East Side. He began studying classical piano at the age of seven, but was more interested in the popular music of the age. His mother sent him to a piano teacher, and he began writing show tunes - which eventually helped him as a satirical composer. He later became a Harvard prodigy (Lehrer earned a math degree from the institution at the age of 18), and soon began songwriting about old traditions and current events.
Besides the previously-mentioned tracks, other hilarious songs by Lehrer included “The Old Dope Peddler” (set to a tune reminiscent of “The Old Lamplighter”), “Be Prepared” (in which he mocked the Boy Scouts) and “The Vatican Rag,” in which Lehrer, an atheist, poked fun at the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. (“Get down on your knees, fiddle with your rosaries. Bow your head with great respect, and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.”)
Lehrer performed his songs in a colorful style reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan and Stephen Sondheim - the latter being a lifelong friend. Lehrer was often likened to such contemporaries as Allen Sherman and Stan Freberg for his comic riffs on culture and politics, and was cited by Randy Newman and “Weird Al” Yankovic as an influence.
Lehrer got into performing accidentally when he began composing songs in the early 1950s to amuse friends. Soon, he was playing his show tunes at coffeehouses around Cambridge, while he remained at Harvard to teach and obtain a master’s degree in math.
He cut his first record in 1953, Songs by Tom Lehrer, which included “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,” lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and “Fight Fiercely, Harvard,” suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood might sing a football fight song. After a two-year stint in the Army, Lehrer performed concerts of his material in venues worldwide. In 1959, he released another LP called More of Tom Lehrer and a live recording called An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer. The latter was nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960. That same year, he quit touring altogether, and returned to teaching math. (Although he did some writing and performing on the side.)
He then produced one political satire song each week for the 1964 television show That Was the Week That Was. (It was a trailblazing topical comedy show that anticipated Saturday Night Live a decade later.) He released his songs from the show the following year in an album titled That Was the Year That Was. After that, he wrote songs for the 1970s educational children’s show The Electric Company. His numbers were revived in the 1980 musical Tomfoolery, and he made a rare public appearance in London at a 1998 celebration honoring that musical’s producer, Cameron Mackintosh.
Lehrer's musical genius came in his delivery. He mocked genres he didn’t like (modern folk songs, rock ‘n’ roll and modern jazz), laughed at the threat of nuclear annihilation and denounced discrimination. But he criticized in such an erudite and polite manner that almost no one objected.
“Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,” musicologist Barry Hansen once said. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed set of Lehrer’s songs The Remains of Tom Lehrer and had featured Lehrer’s music for decades on his syndicated “Dr. Demento” radio show.
Lehrer’s body of work was actually quite small, amounting to about three dozen songs. “When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn’t, I didn’t,” Lehrer told The Associated Press in 2000 during a rare interview. “I wasn’t like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit. … It wasn’t like I had writer’s block.”
Lehrer never married and had no children. He taught part-time at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the 1970s - mainly to escape the harsh New England winters. Every now and then, a student would enroll in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs. “But it’s a real math class,” he admitted. “I don’t do any funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly.”
Listen to more of Lehrer's songs below.
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Article Image: Tom Lehrer sits at a piano, performing in Cophenhagen in 1967. (Available through Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)
