A Lost Art Form.

Satirical songs of the 1950s (including the early '60s, as what we call "the Sixties" includes the early '70s).  The pop-folky Kingston Trio -- still touring!! -- actually sang this, by Sheldon Harnick [entirely from memory]:

The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls,
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans hate the Poles,
Italians hate Yugoslavs,
South Africans hate Dutch,
And I don't like anybody very much. ...

They're rioting in Africa (da deedee dadee dum dum)
There's strikes in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man.

Then there was Tom Lehrer, whose drop-dead nasal delivery of one-liners like "Und I'm lernink Chinese, said Wernher von Braun" sticks in my mind more than long passages of his mordant lyrics, but they're all here, on such still-hot topics as nuclear proliferation and racial harmony.  The only Tom Lehrer on iTunes is the 2006 cast album of the London revival show "Tomfoolery,"  sung by others.  But a digitally remastered 3-CD Tom Lehrer collection, including live and previously unissued tracks, came out in 2000 and is available at Wal-Mart!

If you weren't around, these songs let you taste the flavor of that unappreciated decade -- sophisticated, sardonic, and absurd. Tom Lehrer was for grownups, and therefore bears a date stamp (but here's an alive-and-well fan site -- and, wow, Tom Lehrer himself is alive! and just J's age); but those brilliantly goofy Brits, Flanders and Swann, are for children of all ages, and timeless:  [also entirely from memory]

Seated one day at the tom-tom
I heard a welcome shout from the kitchen:
"Come and ge-e-e-e-t it!
Roast leg of insurance salesman!"
A chorus of yums ran round the table --
"Yum yum YUM yUm YuM yum YUM yum" --
Except for Junior,
Who pushed a way his shell,
Got up from his log,
And said,
[in a lofty British accent]
"I deaun't want any paht of it."

              ~ "The Cannibal Song"

If you have kids, you really ought to consider investing in The Complete Flanders and Swann.  The way these guys fooled around with words ("the hippo-po-ta-mus/ Was no ignoramus") will have them rolling on the floor.  I can tell you from experience that anything kids don't understand, like the odd dated reference (to Khrushchev, e.g.) or Britishism, only adds to the magic.  Their animal songs alone are worth the price of admission, like the famous Hippopotamus love ballad [again from memory, link added after]:

Mud, mud, glorious mud,
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me follow
Down to the hollow,
And there we shall wallow
In glo-o-o-orious mud!

Try the great Gnu Song out on them.  Lyrics here.

Comments

[GN]

How could you forget Randy Newman and "Political Science"? It is so apprapo at the moment.

[amba]

Randy Newman was the next generation, right? If I recall, he was/is a Sixties-to-Eighties guy, like Tom Waits who was inspired by the earlier greats.

Is anyone carrying this tradition on today?

[GN]

Yeah, he was. I am so out of the listening mode because lyric writing has gotten sobd. Don;t know of anyone carrying the tradition.

[Sissy Willis]

Fun stuff . . . Thank you. :-)

[Pastor_Jeff]

My folks had a couple of records of Allan Sherman from the 60s. Remember "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah"?

Sounds like similar kind of funny, witty stuff. I'll have to dig out that vinyl and give it a listen again.

[amba]

Here I am at . . .
Camp Granada!

But of course. All the words are probably still in there somewhere.

Even Broadway musicals were influenced -- think of "Gee, Officer Krupke" from West Side Story. It had that same sort of smart-ass quality. And then there were the spoken-word comedy records like Nichols and May and . . . who was that guy who did "Digging the Weans"? I see it was a story by Robert Nathan, variously performed by Peter Ustinov and Theodore Bikel.

[Dave Schuler]

and then there was Yip Harburg, a few of whose verses were recorded by the Chad Mitchell Trio back in the 60's.