> Reflecting on his bicoastal life in a 1981 interview for Newsday, he said he planned to keep his Massachusetts home “until my brain turns completely to Jell-O, at which time I will of course move to California full time.”
To think he is only a couple years younger than Mel Brooks.
Lehrer taught me, at a young age, that the “division” between music and mathematics was completely arbitrary, that you can be interested in both, and indeed there is significant overlap.
Truly a gift of a person, we were fortunate to have him for nearly a century.
"In German, oder Englisch, I know how to count down Und I'm learning Chinese!" - as relevant as ever. Maybe less so German and more matrix multiplication
I loved Lehrer growing up- my parents had his record "That Was the Week That Was" which I think is his finest work. Anyway, when I went to college (UCSC), I took his 'Nature of Math' course, which was quite enjoyable. He was a great presenter, I learned all sorts of neat stuff like the the quartic factoring challenge and the pigeonhole principle/birthday paradox (at the time, I didn't know much about hash tables and didn't make the connection).
I almost ended up TA'ing his class the next year but I had to focus on my undergraduate thesis instead. I would have loved to get to know him better, as his sense of humor was incredible.
I also had Ralph Abraham- a chaos theory guy and psychonaut who taught hist class (Nature of Math) in a natural amphitheater- at points, I could almost picture him wearing a toga, lecturing us on greek math.
I grew up with a tape of Tom Leher songs and memorized the periodic table of elements song in middle school, which has mostly stuck with me. I loved his sense of humor - what a wonderful soul.
As sad as today is, the one ray of sunshine here is that Tom Lehrer’s obit was written so long ago (and saved for the day it would be needed), that no one updated it with the subsequent revelation that his work at the Atomic Energy Commission was actually a cover story for his far more sensitive work at the fledgling National Security Agency.
Seeing the New York Times publish wrong out-of-date information has been funny since Judith Miller.
I, Tom Lehrer, individually and as trustee of the Tom Lehrer Trust 2007, hereby grant the following permissions:
All copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been permanently and irrevocably relinquished, and therefore such songs are now in the public domain. All of my songs that have never been copyrighted, having been available for free for so long, are now also in the public domain. In other words, I have abandoned, surrendered and disclaimed all right, title and interest in and to my work and have injected any and all copyrights into the public domain.
The permission granted includes all lyrics which I have written to music by others, although the music to such parodies, if copyrighted by their composers, are of course not included without permission of their copyright owners. The translated songs on this website may be found on YouTube in their original languages.
Performing and recording rights to all of my songs are included in this permission. Translation rights are also included.
In particular, permission is hereby granted to anyone to set any of these lyrics to their own music, or to set any of this music to their own lyrics, and to publish or perform their parodies or distortions of these songs without payment or fear of legal action.
Some recording, movie, and television rights to songs written by me are merely licensed non-exclusively by me to recording, movie, or TV companies. All such rights are now released herewith and therefore do not require any permission from me or from Maelstrom Music, which is merely me in another hat, nor from the recording, movie, or TV companies involved.
In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs.
So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.
NOTICE:
THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE, SO IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING, DON’T WAIT TOO LONG.
In "An Evening Waster With Tom Lehrer" he chats a little between songs and tells a short story about someone who becomes a doctor: "He soon became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the rich. He was therefore able to retire at an early age".
"Diseases of the rich" has always seemed like a useful metaphor for one way to decide on what product you are going to build. Does it heal a "disease" of the "rich"?
His comments between songs are at least as funny as the songs themselves. For many years I thought that recordings only existed of those comments for An Evening Wasted and That Was The Year That Was. Then I discovered The Remains of Tom Lehrer, a 3 CD set that includes, not only the original Songs By Tom Lehrer (straight off the 10 inch LP), but also a live recording of the same songs from a concert, with comments between the songs! (This set also has studio recordings of the songs from An Evening Wasted, done before the live concert recording.)
Just to give a taste, before he even plays the first song in the concert version of Songs By Tom Lehrer, he gives a biographical introduction of himself, as though he were a toastmaster or an impresario. Here's how it starts (at least as much as I can capture it with just typing):
"Endowed by nature with perhaps the most glorious baritone voice ever to be heard on an American stage since the memorable concert debut in 1835 of Millard Fillmore; endowed also with twelve incredibly agile fingers..."
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 60.9 ms ] thread> Reflecting on his bicoastal life in a 1981 interview for Newsday, he said he planned to keep his Massachusetts home “until my brain turns completely to Jell-O, at which time I will of course move to California full time.”
To think he is only a couple years younger than Mel Brooks.
Truly a gift of a person, we were fortunate to have him for nearly a century.
https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?si=RDu536cWahc2Oct7
https://youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs?si=DYsY5Juco-kJ5eWD
https://youtu.be/zxFCQplZgKI
I almost ended up TA'ing his class the next year but I had to focus on my undergraduate thesis instead. I would have loved to get to know him better, as his sense of humor was incredible.
I also had Ralph Abraham- a chaos theory guy and psychonaut who taught hist class (Nature of Math) in a natural amphitheater- at points, I could almost picture him wearing a toga, lecturing us on greek math.
Seeing the New York Times publish wrong out-of-date information has been funny since Judith Miller.
I, Tom Lehrer, individually and as trustee of the Tom Lehrer Trust 2007, hereby grant the following permissions: All copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been permanently and irrevocably relinquished, and therefore such songs are now in the public domain. All of my songs that have never been copyrighted, having been available for free for so long, are now also in the public domain. In other words, I have abandoned, surrendered and disclaimed all right, title and interest in and to my work and have injected any and all copyrights into the public domain.
The permission granted includes all lyrics which I have written to music by others, although the music to such parodies, if copyrighted by their composers, are of course not included without permission of their copyright owners. The translated songs on this website may be found on YouTube in their original languages. Performing and recording rights to all of my songs are included in this permission. Translation rights are also included.
In particular, permission is hereby granted to anyone to set any of these lyrics to their own music, or to set any of this music to their own lyrics, and to publish or perform their parodies or distortions of these songs without payment or fear of legal action.
Some recording, movie, and television rights to songs written by me are merely licensed non-exclusively by me to recording, movie, or TV companies. All such rights are now released herewith and therefore do not require any permission from me or from Maelstrom Music, which is merely me in another hat, nor from the recording, movie, or TV companies involved.
In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs.
So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.
NOTICE: THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE, SO IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING, DON’T WAIT TOO LONG.
Tom Lehrer November 26, 2022
"Diseases of the rich" has always seemed like a useful metaphor for one way to decide on what product you are going to build. Does it heal a "disease" of the "rich"?
His comments between songs are at least as funny as the songs themselves. For many years I thought that recordings only existed of those comments for An Evening Wasted and That Was The Year That Was. Then I discovered The Remains of Tom Lehrer, a 3 CD set that includes, not only the original Songs By Tom Lehrer (straight off the 10 inch LP), but also a live recording of the same songs from a concert, with comments between the songs! (This set also has studio recordings of the songs from An Evening Wasted, done before the live concert recording.)
Just to give a taste, before he even plays the first song in the concert version of Songs By Tom Lehrer, he gives a biographical introduction of himself, as though he were a toastmaster or an impresario. Here's how it starts (at least as much as I can capture it with just typing):
"Endowed by nature with perhaps the most glorious baritone voice ever to be heard on an American stage since the memorable concert debut in 1835 of Millard Fillmore; endowed also with twelve incredibly agile fingers..."
I'd only heard of him from a song of his, "Poisoning pigeons in the park", that has been available on DECtalk since way back.
Searching for this, I just found another of his, "I got it from Agnes", that has also been adapted for DECtalk. Similar dark humor!
https://chordify.net/chords/i-got-it-from-agnes-by-tom-lehre...