Alan Sherman (the Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah guy)

Oh, God...major mistake it should be ALLan Sherman

I searched high and low throughout the web for a vinyl copy of "My Son the Nut". Well worth the effort and expense. I'm surprised there's never been a revival of his work.

He wave very funny in a 1960s kind of way- my grandparents loved him

[quote]Well worth the effort and expense. I'm surprised there's never been a revival of his work.

Maybe because there's so little video footage. Hard to revive someone who you can't see, in this day and age.

Maybe if he'd had a TV show

In 2010, eight of Allan Sherman's Warner Brothers albums were individually released on CD:

My Son, The Folk Singer

My Son, The Celebrity

My Son, The Nut

Allan in Wonderland

For Swingin' Livers Only!

My Name is Allan

Live! (Hoping You Are The Same)

Togetherness

Sad -- he was only 48 when he died

[quote]I'm surprised there's never been a revival of his work.

There's a 'Best Of...' CD on amazon with 113 reviews.

So, he clearly hasn't been forgotten.

Did you read his biography?

Like all the big American stars they sent him to Swinging London in 1966, to check out the scene.

[quote]Did you read his biography?

I'd like to. Why's the kindle version $28?

I don't get it.

Allan Sherman was the creator and original producer of I've Got a Secret. But he had a bad habit of staging stunts that he thought would be funny without rehearsing or researching them well enough to make sure they would be funny. I believe the final straw was when he released 100 white rabbits on stage and invited 100 Boy Scouts in the audience to catch and keep them. The results were chaotic and destructive to the theater, without even the side benefit of being good television. Goodson and Toddman fired him for gross incompetence, figuring that if he hadn't caught on to how live television worked after five seasons, he would never improve.

The firing reduced Sherman to a state of financial hardship that was not erased until his surprise success with My Son, the Folk Singer. When he was welcomed back to I've Got a Secret as a bona fide celebrity, he seemed somber and unhappy to be there. Apparently he was too embittered by his firing to savor the victory he scored over his former employers.

He was so upset about the demise of the old TElephone EXchange names he wrote a protest song about it.

I guess by "revival" I meant better availability of his recordings. The Amazon offerings are very high-priced. I was lucky to get my "Nut" for $20.

OT: My other reissue dream is Peter Allen and the Rockettes at Radio City--I saw this on Showtime in the early 80's and managed to tape it; said tape died about 10 years ago. I have been on the hunt for it on digital ever since. When The Boy from Oz came out I hoped it might surface, no luck though. Any PA fans who have seen it know what I am talking about.

I have My Son, the Nut on vinyl (it was my parents).

My Indian bf loves and sings Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah all the time in his Hindi accent. It cracks me up.

R10, that stunt could get him an show at the Whitney.

We had his album in the house, along with Tom Lehrer's. I still automatically hear "My Zelda" for "Matilda".

He was the animated voice of [italic]The Cat in the Hat[/italic] long before that Mike Myers/Alec Baldwin atrocity ever littered our screens:

Allan with Herman, improvising.

It's actually pretty good.

Allan was a terrible singer, but that made it even funnier.

[quote]Allan was a terrible singer

He wasn't so bad!

**sorry...Miller**

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OP, you are killing DataLounge. You know that, don't you?

Is that all you bring to DL, R22?

I loved "God Rest Ye Jerry Mendelbaum".

[quote]OP, you are killing DataLounge. You know that, don't you?

No, I'm keeping it very much alive. What are you doing?

As a well-hung child, I used to listen to Ratfink and Hello Muddah constantly. It cracked my shit up.

Now as a well-hung man, I don't listen to that horrid crap anymore.

[quote]OP, you are killing DataLounge.

At least it'll die laughing.

He was only funny if you were Jewish.

[quote] He was only funny if you were Jewish

Not necessarily. President Kennedy found Sherman's work very funny.

One of the things that made Allan Sherman's parodies work was the fact that the melodies were recognizable by just about everyone, no matter what generation. At age 7, I may not have known 'Green Eyes' as a big hit, but I'd heard the melody enough to appreciate the fun of Sherman's parody 'Green Stamps'. Today, music tastes are so segmented that there are no longer those songs that everybody knows. Plus, IMHO, songs today don't have melodies anyway, so how can you parody a tuneless song?

BTW, according to the aforementioned biography, the audience invited for the recording session for 'My Son The Folk Singer' was given pre-recording cocktails in order to loosen them up. Judging from some of the hysterical laughter, the drinks did their job.

Yes, R29, what is more, I think the hysterical audience reaction on My Son the Folk Singer was "sweetened" in a recording studio after the fact. Not that Sherman didn't get tons of real laughs with his material; but the audience response on the album is almost too good. They never miss a joke and they howl at every bad pun.

He was so popular he inspired at least one imitator. I was looking through some old records at an antique and came across My Son, The Copycat by Stan Ross.

Antique store, that is.

Sherman's "I'm Dr. Prentiss, the Painless Dentist," sung to the tune, 'The Continental,' is one of his better parodies. And yes, there's a video. I like Sherman's work, many of his songs have recognizable tunes. Lehrer's tunes are, IIRC, mostly his own compositions.

[quote]He was only funny if you were Jewish.

I can't imagine the average gentile in Middle America getting this one.

Actually, maybe it's not so hard.

But, hysterics? No.

He's funny the same way Joan Davis is America's Queen of Comedy

That is a brilliant observation, R36.

Sarah Jackman was his biggest hit on the actual music charts -- obviously it wasn't only Jews who found it funny!

r34 Jewish has next to nothing to do with the humor. That BIG initial laugh you hear was the audience recognizing and responding to the tune. "Frere Jacques" was a very recognizable song, although very kiddie-oriented. It was the incongruity of a child's song, aimed at adults, that helped make the lyrics even funnier than they would've been otherwise.

R39 it was also very topical, with references to the Peace Corps, John O'Hara, and freedom riders

Sarah Jackman was his biggest hit on the actual music charts -- obviously it wasn't only Jews who found it funny!

Nonsense. His biggest hit was Hello Muddah.

Sarah Jackman was never a hit song....probably not even a single.

r40 I quite agree. Sherman had a laundry list there that would be easily recognizable to a broad cross-section of the American public.

Avant moi, le deluge.

Another great comedy record of that era was "Hello Ceil, It's Me' by Betty Walker.

I have a copy and it's still brilliant when you hear it today. Betty on the phone to her yenta girlfriend.

Betty Walker was part of this gang.

[quote]it was also very topical, with references to the Peace Corps, John O'Hara, and freedom riders

Not to mention Vic Tanny's gym. "Sarah Jackman" was so popular it caused a great spike in sales of John O'Hara's books, to the author's and his publisher's delight.

I guess Jackie Mason is the modern day equivalent.

Welcome to the B'nai Brith chapter of DataLounge. OY!

And here you are, queen of the welcoming committee

[quote]Today, music tastes are so segmented that there are no longer those songs that everybody knows. Plus, IMHO, songs today don't have melodies anyway, so how can you parody a tuneless song?

Tell me about it!

Whenever I hear "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," I invariably think of his parody which included the line "where the drapes of Roth are stored."

The fact there are 50 replies to an Allan Sherman thread warms my heart!

He was one of a group of comedians in the early 60s who began to make Jewish humor visible and accessible to mainstream American audiences after it had been forced to the sidelines in the 1950s. When national TV began airing live in the 1940s, most of it came from NYC and many on-air opportunities were given to Jewish performers, not the least of whom were Milton Berle and Sid Caesar.

But a number of people in showbiz who had their careers unjustly ruined by the McCarthy Communist witch hunts were Jewish. Moreover, when Jews like George S. Kaufman or Hal Block slipped up and said something controversial in the early days of live TV, many of the nation-wide complaints phoned in to the networks were virulently anti-Semitic. This led the networks to conclude that Americans disliked Jews, who were then seen less and less on TV as the 50s progressed.

Younger writers and comedians emerged from that era like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Alan King, Shelly Berman, Woody Allen, and Allan Sherman who formed a second wave of fresher, sharper comics whose national popularity made the airwaves far more friendly to Jewish humor in the swinging 60s than they had been in the button-down 50s. A "New York" sensibility swept back into American TV, particularly in comedy, throughout the 60s. When Norman Lear came along in 1971, the USA was finally ready for him.

I'm amazed (well, not amazed exactly, I'm making a point) by Fiddler On The Roof & its massive success in the '60s. It's so Jewish.

[quote] I guess Jackie Mason is the modern day equivalent.

At age 84, Jackie Mason isn't the modern-day equivalent of anything.

Perhaps the ABC comedy "The Goldbergs' could be considered the modern-day equivalent, although their Jewishness is pretty tame.

[quote]At age 84, Jackie Mason isn't the modern-day equivalent of anything.

In comparison to Allan Sherman, he's the modern day equivalent.

🐑🐽🐨🍃🌷🐰🐤🐒🌻🌺 🐚🐡🐠🐟🐙

Sorry about the above, I never noticed I had this facility on my iPad before...

Hate Jackie Mason.

He's a cartoon Jew. Never liked him. I don't care how old he was or is.

Jews have always been in comedy always will.

He was gay

I liked "Jump down, spin around, pick a dress o' cotton" about a gaggle of Jewish shoppers descending on a sale table at a department store.

Marge, is Lisa at Camp Grenada?