Eclectic Company: Musical Jews Are Funny And Bluegrassers Are Too

There are lots of ways in which humor and music work together, and I love every one of them. One standard form of musical tomfoolery is the brief referral in one song of musical quotes from other songs. A famous example of this is found in The Beatles’ “All You Need is Love,” which includes numerous musical quotes strewn throughout. The arrangement of that song opens with snippets of the French national anthem “La Marseillaise,” and after the mesmeric chanting choruses of “love is all you need,” Johann Sebastian Bach's “2-part Invention no. 8 in F” segues into a saxophone playing big bandleader Glenn Miller’s “In The Mood,” which eventually ends up as “Greensleeves,” until Paul and John reprise the chorus of their own “She Loves You” as the song’s outro. Genius.

When I was a kid, I watched the Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and even You Bet Your Life, with Groucho Marx, where I saw every kind of musical foolishness. Ed Sullivan — a weirdo — loved to feature Topo Gigio, a plush Italian mouse puppet, whose numerous family sang “Funiculi-Funicula,” to massaged applause. Groucho told lewd jokes and showcased his brother Chico’s slapstick piano playing, and Johnny Carson brought us Steve Allen with long face intoning, as if imparting grave wisdom, the lyrics to Phil Spector’s “Da Doo Ron Ron.” It was a double inside joke, I thought, to realize what fantastic instrumentalists these guys clowning around really were.

An early comedic musical favorite of mine was the Danish-born piano prodigy Victor Borge, a frequent guest on late night TV, who had his own show for several years. (Until I did some research for this piece, I had not realized he was Jewish, born Børge Rosenbaum, and had escaped the Nazis when they marched on Denmark because he was concertizing in Sweden.) His musical comedy was physical and witty — he would lift the lid of his piano bench to retrieve the halves of a car seat belt and strap himself in “for safety”; he’d spin around or fall off the bench in “surprise” when a singer hit a high note; he’d tell a story and make loud piano and vocal sounds (burps, farts, blurts, you get the picture) to indicate punctuation — a comma, a period, an exclamation mark; or he would play a well known classical piece and suddenly morph it into a light popular number taking off from an appropriate chord sequence.

I’m also a big fan of smart and funny songwriters, many of whom were Jewish: There was comedy writer and television producer, Allan Sherman, who wrote parody lyrics to well-known tunes to amuse his friends; George Burns heard him sing them at a party, and persuaded a record executive to sign Sherman and release the songs on vinyl. My Son, the Folk Singer released in 1962 went Gold selling more than 1,000,000 copies, and Sherman’s famous “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” a summer camper’s lament set to the classical number “Dance of the Hours” by Ponchielli (familiar to the general public from its appearance in Disney’s Fantasia) was a giant hit in 1963, the first summer I was at camp. I haven’t found a youtube video of “The Streets of Miami” (set to cowboy number “The Streets of Laredo”), in which the lamenter follows his business partner who’s skipped out with the lamenter’s wife and the company’s money, to Miami for a high noon showdown, but you can see and hear versions by Sherman and others of “Sarah Jackman,” set to “Frere Jacques,” “My Zelda,” a calypso number set to Harry Belafonte’s 1953 hit “Matilda,” and “Won’t You Come Home Disraeli,” set to, natch, “Bill Bailey.”

A few years older, I was taken with the black humor and ultra-smart wit of Harvard and MIT math professor Tom Lehrer, who wrote satirical, cabaret and showtunes-styled songs on topical themes, often for the television show That Was The Week That Was (“So Long, Mom [I’m Off To Drop The Bomb] (A Song for World War III)),” “The Vatican Rag,” and “National Brotherhood Week,” and songs like “New Math” in which he explains why we can’t do it, and “The Elements,” a recital of the Periodic Table set to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Major-General’s Song” from Pirates of Penzance. One of the best youtube videos of Lehrer’s own performances of his songs is “Poisoning Pigeons In The Park,” from the 1998 celebration for British theatrical producer Cameron Macintosh. Lehrer is introduced by composer Stephen Sondheim, who announces that it’s Lehrer’s first performance onstage in 25 years! Maybe ACTS or McNeese or the Little Theatre could be persuaded to revive Tom Foolery!, the British staging of some of his greatest songs. I’d come to town for that.

These days, the major form of musical humor I’m listening to is covers of rock songs by musicians steeped in other formats. I’m especially fond of the bluegrass stylings (and sartorial magnificence) of the former AC/DC tribute band Hayseed Dixie, who claim to have invented rockgrass (but frankly, Breakfast Special in the 1970s played Rolling Stones covers — I was especially fond of “Devil In Disguise” — and other “newgrass” bands as these upstarts were known covered lots of pop and rock tunes). Hayseed’s website announces that the band are taking a year off for a well-deserved rest, but on their site and on youtube you can see some of their best covers of the past, and iTunes will sell you downloads, or they’ll sell you hard copies of their impressive recorded output. I had to buy “Bohemian Rhapsody” (Queen) and “Stairway to Heaven” (Led Zeppelin) because I just about bust a gut listening to their speedgrass fiddle, mandolin, guitar and upright bass sounds played in service to those bombastic rock hits. If you’re a hard rock or metal fan, you’ll also like their A Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC and Kiss My Grass (Gene Simmons, look out!) cover albums. The band’s album of originals, titled No Covers, proves they’re bona fide and more than a novelty. I hope they get over their hiatus pretty soon.