Allan Sherman was an American musician, comedian, and television producer who became known as a song parodist in the early 1960s. In 1951, Sherman recorded a 78-rpm single with veteran singer Sylvia Froos that contains “A Satchel and a Seck”, parodying “A Bushel and a Peck” from Guys and Dolls, coupled with “Jake’s Song”, parodying “Sam’s Song”, a contemporary hit for Bing Crosby and his son Gary. The single sold poorly and when Sherman wrote his autobiography, he did not mention it. Later, he found that the song parodies he performed to amuse his friends and family were taking on a life of their own. Sherman lived in the Brentwood section of West Los Angeles next door to Harpo Marx, who invited him to perform his song parodies at parties attended by Marx’s show-biz friends. After one party, George Burns phoned an executive at Warner Bros. Records and persuaded him to sign Sherman to a contract. The result was an LP of these parodies, My Son, the Folk Singer, released in 1962. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. The album was very successful and was quickly followed by My Son, the Celebrity.
Capitalising on his success, in 1962 Jubilee Records re-released Sherman’s 1951 single on the album More Folk Songs by Allan Sherman and His Friends, which compiled material by various Borscht Belt comedians such as Sylvia Froos, Fyvush Finkel and Lee Tully. Sherman’s first two LPs were mainly reworkings of public domain folk songs to infuse them with Jewish humour. His first minor hit was “Sarah Jackman” (pronounced “Jockman”), a takeoff of “Frère Jacques” in which he and a woman (Christine Nelson) exchange family gossip. The popularity of “Sarah Jackman” (as well as the album My Son, the Folk Singer) was enhanced after President John F. Kennedy was overheard singing the song in the lobby of the Carlyle hotel. By his peak with My Son, the Nut in 1963, however, Sherman had broadened both his subject matter and his choice of parody material and begun to appeal to a larger audience.
Sherman wrote his parody lyrics in collaboration with Lou Busch. A few of the Sherman/Busch songs are completely original creations, featuring original music as well as lyrics, rather than new lyrics applied to an existing melody. However, Sherman had trouble in getting permission to record for profit from some well-known composers and lyricists, who did not tolerate parodies or satires of their melodies and lyrics, including Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Ira Gershwin, Meredith Willson, Alan Jay Lerner, and Frederick Loewe, as well as the estates of Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Kurt Weill, George Gershwin and Bertolt Brecht, which prevented him from releasing parodies or satires of their songs.
In the late 1950s, Sherman was inspired by a recording of a nightclub musical show called My Fairfax Lady, a parody of My Fair Lady set in the Jewish section of Los Angeles that was performed at Billy Gray’s Band Box. Sherman then wrote his own song parodies of My Fair Lady, which appeared as a bootleg recording in 1964, and were officially released in 2005 on My Son, the Box. Alan Jay Lerner did not approve of having the parody being performed; however, he reluctantly settled to allow the performances of “Fairfax Lady”, on the strict conditions that the show could be allowed to be performed only inside the Fairfax Theater, without any touring company, and that the musical could not be videotaped or recorded for any album.
Although Sherman believed that all the songs parodied on My Son, the Folk Singer were in the public domain, two of them, “Matilda” and “Water Boy”–parodied as “My Zelda” and “Seltzer Boy”, respectively–were actually under copyright, and Sherman was sued for copyright infringement. In 1963’s My Son, the Nut, Sherman’s pointed parodies of classical and popular tunes dealt with automation in the workplace (“Automation”, to the tune of “Fascination”), space travel (“Eight Foot Two, Solid Blue”, to “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue”), summer camp (“Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh”, to the tune of Dance of the Hours by Ponchielli), the exodus from the city to the suburbs (“Here’s to the Crabgrass”, to the tune of “English Country Garden”), and his own bulky physique (“Hail to Thee, Fat Person”, which claims his obesity was a public service similar to the Marshall Plan). Seven cartoon bears were printed on back of every album.
