Tom Lehrer dies, recognized for songs as ‘The Vatican Rag,’ ‘Poisoning Pigeons within the Park,’ The Old Dope Peddler’

LOS ANGELES — Tom Lehrer, the favored tune satirist who lampooned marriage, politics, racism and the Cold War, then largely deserted his music profession to return to educating math at Harvard and different universities, has died. He was 97.

Longtime good friend David Herder mentioned Lehrer died Saturday at his dwelling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He didn’t specify a reason for dying.

Lehrer had remained on the maths college of the University of California at Santa Cruz nicely into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his personal copyright, granting the general public permission to make use of his lyrics in any format with none price in return.

A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math diploma from the establishment at age 18), Lehrer quickly turned his very sharp thoughts to previous traditions and present occasions. His songs included “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “The Old Dope Peddler” (set to a tune paying homage to “The Old Lamplighter”), “Be Prepared” (during which he mocked the Boy Scouts) and “The Vatican Rag,” during which Lehrer, an atheist, poked on the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. (Sample lyrics: “Get down on your knees, fiddle with your rosaries. Bow your head with great respect, and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.”)

Accompanying himself on piano, he carried out the songs in a colourful type paying homage to such musical heroes as Gilbert and Sullivan and Stephen Sondheim, the latter a lifelong good friend. Lehrer was usually likened to such contemporaries as Allen Sherman and Stan Freberg for his comedian riffs on tradition and politics and he was cited by Randy Newman and “Weird Al” Yankovic amongst others as an affect.

He mocked the types of music he did not like (trendy people songs, rock ‘n’ roll and trendy jazz), laughed at the specter of nuclear annihilation and denounced discrimination.

But he attacked in such an erudite, even well mannered, method that just about nobody objected.

“Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,” musicologist Barry Hansen as soon as mentioned. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed set of Lehrer’s songs, “The Remains of Tom Lehrer,” and had featured Lehrer’s music for many years on his syndicated “Dr. Demento” radio present.

Lehrer’s physique of labor was really fairly small, amounting to about three dozen songs.

“When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn’t, I didn’t,” Lehrer advised The Associated Press in 2000 throughout a uncommon interview. “I wasn’t like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit. … It wasn’t like I had writer’s block.”

He’d gotten into performing by chance when he started to compose songs within the early Fifties to amuse his mates. Soon he was performing them at coffeehouses round Cambridge, whereas he remained at Harvard to show and procure a grasp’s diploma in math.

He minimize his first report in 1953, “Songs by Tom Lehrer,” which included “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,” lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and the “Fight Fiercely, Harvard,” suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood may sing a soccer combat tune.

After a two-year stint within the Army, Lehrer started to carry out live shows of his materials in venues all over the world. In 1959, he launched one other LP referred to as “More of Tom Lehrer” and a stay recording referred to as “An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer,” nominated for a Grammy for greatest comedy efficiency (musical) in 1960.

But across the similar time, he largely give up touring and returned to educating math, although he did some writing and acting on the facet.

Lehrer mentioned he was by no means snug showing in public.

“I enjoyed it up to a point,” he advised The AP in 2000. “But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.”

He did produce a political satire tune every week for the 1964 tv present “That Was the Week That Was,” a groundbreaking topical comedy present that anticipated “Saturday Night Live” a decade later.

He launched the songs the next 12 months in an album titled “That Was the Year That Was.” The materials included “Who’s Next?” that ponders which authorities would be the subsequent to get the nuclear bomb … maybe Alabama? (He did not want to inform his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation on the time.) “Pollution” takes a take a look at the then-new idea that maybe rivers and lakes must be cleaned up.

He additionally wrote songs for the Seventies academic kids’s present “The Electric Company.” He advised AP in 2000 that listening to from individuals who had benefited from them gave him much more satisfaction than reward for any of his satirical works.

His songs have been revived within the 1980 musical revue “Tomfoolery” and he made a uncommon public look in London in 1998 at a celebration honoring that musical’s producer, Cameron Mackintosh.

Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York City, the son of a profitable necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that included attending Broadway exhibits along with his household and strolling by way of Central Park day or night time.

After skipping two grades at school, he entered Harvard at 15 and, after receiving his grasp’s diploma, he spent a number of years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate.

“I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many years as possible, and I started on the thesis,” he as soon as mentioned. “But I just wanted to be a grad student, it’s a wonderful life. That’s what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can’t be a Ph.D. and a grad student at the same time.”

He started to show part-time at Santa Cruz within the Seventies, primarily to flee the tough New England winters.

From time to time, he acknowledged, a pupil would enroll in one in every of his courses primarily based on information of his songs.

“But it’s a real math class,” he mentioned on the time. “I don’t do any funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly.”