American musician and satirist Tom Lehrer has died on the age of 97, in keeping with US media reviews.
Lehrer, a Harvard-trained mathematician, wrote darkly humorous songs, usually with political connotations, that turned widespread within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties.
Fashionable comedians equivalent to Bizarre Al Yankovich mentioned they’ve been influenced by Lehrer’s work.
His dying was confirmed to the New York Instances by David Herder, a good friend.
Born in Manhattan in 1928, Lehrer was a classically educated pianist. However regardless of his musical success, he spent most of his life pursuing academia.
His educating posts included spells at Harvard College, the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT), and the College of California.
He graduated early from the Loomis Chaffee Faculty in Connecticut, in keeping with the New York Instances, after which went to Harvard, the place he majored in arithmetic and acquired his bachelor’s diploma in 1946 aged 18. He accomplished a masters there and in addition pursued a PhD at Columbia College, which he by no means accomplished.
He started writing lyrics whereas at Harvard to entertain mates.
Lehrer’s most enduring songs embrace The Parts, an inventory of the chemical components set to the tune of I Am the Very Mannequin of a Fashionable Main-Normal from The Pirates of Penzance, Gilbert and Sullivan’s comedian opera.
Different fan favourites embrace The Masochism Tango, during which the singer extols his beloved’s violent passions with the lyrics, “I ache for the contact of your lips, expensive / However way more for the contact of your whips, expensive…”
He was famend for his darkly comedian ballads, together with the necrophiliac epic I Maintain Your Hand in Mine, I Bought It From Agnes – the place he sang concerning the transmission of a venereal illness – and Poisoning Pigeons within the Park, which detailed the birds’ obvious urge for food for “peanuts coated with cyanide”.
In 1953 he launched Songs by Tom Lehrer, a report that was bought by means of the submit. It turned a phrase of mouth success and bought an estimated half one million copies. The BBC banned most of Songs from the airwaves the next yr.
Following the success of the album, Lehrer started taking part in in nightclubs in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and at occasions for anti-war and left-wing teams.
He wrote songs for the US version of the satirical British present That Was the Week That Was, which have been have been made into an album in 1965.
The extremely controversial Vatican Rag, a Catholic hymn set in ragtime that mocked the Church, was featured amongst different songs that condemned nuclear weapons.
Essentially the most notable of those was We Will All Go Collectively When We Go, which incorporates the lyrics “Oh, we’ll all fry collectively once we fry / We’ll be French-fried potatoes by-and-by / There shall be no extra distress / When the world is our rotisserie / Sure, all of us will fry collectively once we fry.”
He wrote for the Nineteen Seventies instructional youngsters’s present, The Electrical Firm, and in 1980 his songs loved a revival when theatre producer Cameron Waterproof coat staged the musical revue “Tomfoolery” that includes his work.
He additionally taught maths and musical theatre programs on the College of California from 1972 to 2001, in keeping with the New York Instances.
In 2020, Lehrer positioned his music writing copyrights within the public area, permitting anybody to carry out, report or interpret his work totally free. He additionally relinquished all rights to his recordings.
In an announcement on his web site on the time, he wrote: “Briefly, I now not retain any rights to any of my songs. So assist yourselves, and do not ship me any cash.”
He additionally warned the web site could be “shut down at some date within the not too distant future”. The web site was nonetheless reside on the time of writing.