Tom Lehrer died at 97 Saturday

National Brotherhood Week, the Vatican Rag, and Alma are my favorites of his. He was brilliant, in many senses of the word: he graduated from Harvard at 18, had a long career as a professor, and composed these wonderful ditties.

ETA a fun fact I learned from his obituary: Sondheim had Lehrer as a camp counselor at a camp in Maine.

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caflowerluver
Original Author

last year

Lots of articals on him. I didn't know he graduated from Harvard at 18.

My favorite song is The Masochism Tango. With so many songs, its hard to pick a favorite.

bpath

last year

I could swear we had a record of him, when I was a little kid, that we played a lot. Was ot children’s songs? But I don’t see such a record on the discography I looked at.

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lat62

last year

I had't heard, 97 is hard to complain about !! We loved loved his music, us science nerds just appreciated it so much , RIP, you cool cat

Hard to pick the right goodbye song, there are so many !

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salonva

last year

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I learned many of his songs when I went to summer camp, back in the 60's. I especially remembered National Brotherhood Week and find it fits today.

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lat62

last year

My fave might be we'll all go together when we go, I was afraid it was too dark for my kids as I recall.

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floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

last year

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He was extremely well known and popular over here. His reputation was international.

Tom Lehrer, acclaimed musical satirist of cold war era, dies aged 97 | Music | The Guardian https://share.google/O7Mn5qXuFUQIn8FpR

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Elmer J Fudd

last year

I've read with interest a number of articles that I found. It looks like the high point of his performing career happened when I was a kid. That's probably why I wasn't familiar with him.

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Bookwoman

last year

His records were how I knew of him, although who told me about him I have no recollection. I got That Was the Week that Was when I was in high school, so sometime in the early '70s.

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HU-127064464

last year

Thanks lat62 and floral for your helping us see him in action once again.

Often it's helpful to be enabled to see ourselves in a different light, if we so choose.

ole joyful

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Annie Deighnaugh

last year

We listened to his stuff as teens and enjoyed it. He was very talented.

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laceyvail 6A, WV

last year

The Vatican Rag is still an ear worm for me sometimes. Now it will be for days.

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Lars

last year

I had never heard of Tom Lehrer, but I'm familiar with Jim Lehrer, who died a few years ago.

I first visited Santa Cruz in 1973, a year after Tom Lehrer moved there - it is one of my favorite places, and I tried to get a job at the university library in the mid 1970s, but there were 43 people applying for only two positions. I was one of the four finalists but was not chosen because I did not already live in Santa Cruz, although I wanted to move there from San Francisco. It is probably better than I did not, however.

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lat62

last year

Lars, if you had been at the library, you might have met my husband who was in the math program at the time, Peter. He doesn't remember knowing about Tom Lehrer back then

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Bookwoman

last year

An appreciation of Lehrer by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker: https://archive.ph/U0j8t

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carolb_w_fl_coastal_9/10

last year

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I'm not sure when I started hearing his songs, at least since I was a teen. My dad was a fan - and I do recall hearing some of them on the radio in the 70s, 80s and 90s He may have stopped recording in the 60s, but his songs lived on well past that. They're evergreen 🙂

Thanks for that Guardian article, floral - I didn't realize he was on The Electric Company - I loved that show

And I appreciated that detail about Boston poisoning pigeons with strychnine at the time.

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floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK

last year

I heard the songs later too. They were much played when I was at university.

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Sempervirens

last year

I was introduced to Tom Lehrer's music through my fother's records. When in the math program at UCSC in the mid seventies, I didn't know Tom had moved from MIT to Santa Cruz.

From Wikipedia,

In 1972, Lehrer joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching an introductory course titled "The Nature of Mathematics" to liberal arts majors—"Math for Tenors", according to Lehrer.

Genuflect!

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colleenoz

last year

I suddenly remembered a time when I went to visit a friend who had recently converted to Catholicism. She told me that she had plans to go to the local church's Benediction service soon and asked if I would like to accompany her. Having been raised Catholic I had no problem with this as I wanted to continue my visit after the service, so we went together.

Halfway through the service, as the priest raised a monstrance containing the Host to bless the congregation with it, I had to stifle an attack of the giggles as one of the lines from The Vatican Rag popped into my head:

"Two, four six eight, Time to transubstantiate!"

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Tom Lehrer died at 97 Saturday

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