A Christmas Carol (2023)
Genre: Trad Jazz, Novelty
My Dad was a microbiologist by profession, a serious man who built his own Heathkit Hi-Fi system in the 1950s, loved classical music, and sang in the local Bach Festival. But he easily could have been a comedian. It’s from him that I learned to appreciate a tall tale, a timely-delivered punchline, a bawdy limerick, or a pithy saying always at the ready for any occasion.
Sandwiched among his classical LP collection were his favorite comedy albums. He was a fan of Bob Newhart, satirist Mort Sahl, the Smothers Brothers, Woody Allen, Jonathan Winters, and later, the likes of National Lampoon.
The two oddest records he had in his collection were also strange in format: each the size of a 78 record but in standard long-playing 33 1/3 speed.
The first was Al “Jazzbo” Collins’s recorded retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Three Little Pigs.” My Dad was no hipster; the guy on the front definitely was.
The second was a simple black and white record with a cartoon of a devil in tails seated at a curving keyboard, the cover bordered in red flames. It was titled “Songs of Tom Lehrer”— “his lyrics, his music, his so-called voice, and his piano.” This was his debut album, released two years before I was born.
When my Dad played the record for me the first time, I was a pre-teen, so my understanding of the world was far too narrow to really grasp the satire, but I completely enjoyed the delivery. With song titles like “The Old Dope Peddler” and “The Wiener Schnitzel Waltz,” I had a lot of questions, which my Dad kindly explained away through euphemism.
I would have to have many more life experiences (and a bigger vocabulary) to understand what Tom Lehrer was talking about when he sang:
He gives the kids free samples
Because he knows full well
That today’s young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow’s clientele
But the most inscrutable Tom Lehrer song for me was “Be Prepared” because I was a Boy Scout (albeit not a very good one). I found some of the lyrics hysterical:
Be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well
Don’t write naughty words on walls if you can’t spell
I could grasp why you would want to keep cigarettes a secret from your scoutmaster, but lyrics like these were beyond my ken:
Don’t make book
If you cannot cover bets
Keep those reefers hidden where you’re sure
That they will not be found
And be careful not to smoke them
When the scoutmaster’s around,
For he only will insist that they be shared
And I would have to wait for puberty to understand what kind of preparation might be required from his admonition to “be prepared” in these lines:
If you’re looking for adventure
Of a new and different kind,
And you come across a Girl Scout
Who is similarly inclined,
Don’t be nervous, don’t be flustered, don’t be scared…
So it wasn’t until I was much older that I rediscovered Tom Lehrer’s music—especially his political satire. I realized that he had been performing a running commentary about everything that was happening the entire time I was growing up (!).
As a social studies teacher, I came to appreciate the educational value of his songs (his last name is “teacher”after all). I had many opportunities to share my favorite Tom Lehrer songs with my U. S. History classes—to enthusiastic student response.
I have too many favorites to list here, but I’ve always particularly loved “A Christmas Carol” for its timelessness. It always seemed like a necessary counterweight to the supposed joy of the season and confirmed my own suspicion that the holidays are (partly? mainly?) just another excuse for commercial excess.
As an amateur musician, every time the holidays came around —(“Brother, here we go again”)—I thought about covering this tune.
Last year, on November 26, 2022, Tom Lehrer, age 94, announced that he had taken the unprecedented step of freeing up all of his legal claims to his songs and placing them in the public domain—years before the law allows.
And so, to my delight, I found my chance.
Some might argue that the lyrics could withstand a rewrite for the age of on-line shopping and the frenzy of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Travel Tuesday, and whatever the “merry merchants” might come up with next. But I don’t think Lehrer’s original words have lost any luster.
So this year, I’ll fill the cup (and I won’t say “when”) to respectfully toast the man who is, in my opinion, the wittiest musical satirist of our time.