For the uninitiated, Tom Lehrer is one of the greats, a pioneer of modern satire. Mathematician, satirist, singer-songwriter, and all-around absolute boss, he walked so that we may all run.
Worked at the NSA before anyone knew it existed.
Invented the Jello shot.
Multiple sources[1][2] attribute the creation of the modern jello shot to American satirist and musician Tom Lehrer, who claimed to have invented the jello shot as a way to circumvent a ban on alcohol at a navy base he was stationed at. According to Lehrer, he and a friend were barred from bringing alcoholic beverages to a Christmas party at a naval base, and so the two mixed orange Jell-O with vodka in cups so that the mixture could be smuggled into the party.[9] Comedian Luke Ski later wrote a song celebrating Lehrer's creation of the shot.[9]
Wrote and sang incredible songs such as
"I Got It from Agnes",
"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park",
"Wernher von Braun", and
"The Masochism Tango" during the McCarthy era!
Banned from Australia by the Boy Scouts.
Notable quotes:
It was a stint teaching at Harvard in 1953, where he entertained fellow professors and students with his songs, that he felt encouraged to spend $15 on a recording session, out of which came Songs by Tom Lehrer. He couldn’t get airplay for it because it was judged too controversial, so he flogged the record around the campus for $3. Interest spread by word of mouth. Or, as he put it, “My songs spread slowly. Like herpes, rather than ebola.”
The Onion: I'd long heard that you stopped performing as a form of protest, because Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Tom Lehrer: I don't know how that got started. I've said that political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize. For one thing, I quit long before that happened, so historically it doesn't make any sense. I've heard that quoted back to me, but I've also heard it quoted that I was dead, so there you are. You can't believe anything you read. That was just an off-hand remark somebody picked up, and now it's been quoted and quoted, and therefore misquoted. I've heard that I stopped because Richard Nixon was elected, or because I got put away in an insane asylum, or whatever. It was just a remark about political satire, because it was true. Not literally, but everything is so weird in politics that it's very hard to be funny about it, I think. Years ago, it was much easier: We had Eisenhower to kick around. That was much funnier than Nixon.
And in 2002 he remarked, still less optimistically: “Things I once thought were funny are scary now. I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava.”
In 2003, Lehrer commented that his particular brand of political satire is more difficult in the modern world: "The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban land mines ... I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them."
In a February 2008 phone call, Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post interviewed Lehrer off the record. When Weingarten asked if there was anything he could print for the record, Lehrer responded, "Just tell the people that I am voting for Obama."
In 2012 the US rapper 2 Chainz sampled Lehrer’s song The Old Dope Peddler (“He gives the kids free samples, Because he knows full well, That today's young innocent faces, Will be tomorrow's clientele.”). In response to the record company’s request for permission to use the sample, Lehrer responded, "As sole copyright owner… I grant you motherf*****s permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?”
And he's still kicking, the legend! Hasn't said a peep about Trump, I suppose we're beyond satire at this point.
He released all his work into the public domain last year, it's all available for download here till December 31, 2024:
https://tomlehrersongs.com/
Poll
