Before Steve Martin or Richard Pryor, before George Carlin, before Bob Newhart and yes even before Lenny Bruce, there was Tom Lehrer. Lehrer began releasing comedy albums all the way back in 1953, even before the concept of the comedy album had really been established. But Tom wasn't your ordinary stand up comic - he was something so unique that quite frankly no one like him has ever appeared on the stage since.
Tom Lehrer was a comedian, a musician, a mathematician and even possibly a spy (for us) - but beyond all of that he was a wit the likes of which only appears once in a generation. The closest analogue we can think of today might be Steve Colbert - although Steve's songs don't quite compare to Tom's.
Tom Lehrer, the inventor of the Comedy album
Tom Lehrer went to Harvard, studied mathematics, worked at Los Alamos and later taught math at several universities. He ended his singing / comedy career in the early 1970's - rumor has it due to Henry Kissinger winning the Nobel peace prize. Another rumor states that Ricardo Montalban attacked him at a performance in San Francisco due to his "Vatican Song." It is clear that his comedy influenced all generations of comedians since but none has ever managed to reproduce the intellectualism and savvy he demonstrated.
This song really benefits from the visual aid...
Tom is still with us and lives in his retirement in beautiful Santa Cruz, CA (one of our favorite places) - he even taught at the University of California Santa Cruz - a combination of Math and Musical Theater (not in the same class of course). His last lecture concerned the nature of infinity - that's a hell of a way to make an exist.
One of the more biting satires of the Cold War
We will leave you with several more of Tom's ballads...
The Raving Reviews Blog is dedicated to the convergence of popular and critical review of the motion picture art - that and taking a sometimes irreverent view of popular culture.
