Allan Sherman's Lost Song Parodies Surface After 50 Years

Last year, when Mark Cohen published a biography of folksinger-parodist Allan Sherman, we wrote about his book, Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman, and shared three of Sherman's lost songs that Cohen discovered while doing research for the book.

Cohen located the rare parodies with the cooperation of the Sherman estate and friends of Sherman.

Now, more than 50 years after they were recorded in concert and in the living rooms of friends, thirteen of these lost gems are being released in CD and MP3 formats on February 18. They are available now for pre-order on Amazon.com.

There Is Nothing Like A Lox: The Lost Song Parodies of Allan Sherman features the Jewish parodies of hits from Broadway musicals that Allan Sherman sang for Harpo Marx, Jack Benny and others at Harpo's home in Los Angeles in 1961 and that in 1962 landed him a contract with Warner Brothers Records. The album includes liner notes by Cohen.

The Amazon page for the album has 30 second snippets of all the songs. They're only a little taste, but you can get the general idea of most of the songs from the page.

Virtually all of the songs on the new CD comprise what Sherman called "The Goldeneh Moments From Broadway." Sherman explained, "It occurred to me, what if all of the great hit songs from all of the great Broadway shows had actually been written by Jewish people---which they were."

Sherman's insight led him to comically reclaim the American musical as a Jewish creation through parodies that judaized the material. "There Is Nothing Like A Dame" became "There Is Nothing Like A Lox," "Camelot" became "Ollawood" and "When You Walk Through A Storm" became "When You Walk Through the Bronx."

Here is a video (actually an audio with pictures) of Sherman's version of Cole Porter's You're the Top, from the 1934 Broadway musical Anything Goes, followed by a video-audio of the original sung by Porter himself.

Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)