Hello, Allan!

By John Lane

Collectors’ Choice Music has just released eight out-of-print novelty albums (encompassing the years 1962-1967) by the singular Allan Sherman. Given that the novelty album is an art form now seemingly owned by Weird Al Yankovic, one could be forgiven for not understanding the lineage from whence Weird Al sprang.

Allan Sherman was from the school of comedians originating from the Borscht Belt or Catskills; these comics fine-tuned their chops in front of well-paying, predominantly Jewish, resort audiences. Each up-and-comer had a “shtick” or gimmick they developed to grab their audiences (see Zero Mostel’s character in the movie The Front or Billy Crystal in Mr. Saturday Night for a peek into that world). As The Cavern Club was to The Beatles, the resorts in upstate New York were to Jewish comedians.

Looking back on Allan Sherman, one can see how the world has—in some senses—shrunk; the self-effacement, the newness, and the sharing of cultural idiosyncrasies is something that seems lost today, either out of boredom or fear of being un-P.C. The fact that Allan Sherman falls squarely in the middle of post-WWII and JFK-Camelot-era America is no coincidence; the music charts, as such, were not as fragmented then. An Allan Sherman novelty song could sit cheek-to-cheek with Sinatra or a pop tune. This was the Ed Sullivan-era America where there was something for everyone.

And thus it was that in early 1963, Allan Sherman’s album My Son, The Nut went to #1 on the Billboard charts, on the strength of “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter From Camp),” sung to the ballet melody “Dance of the Hours.” It is one of those tunes that becomes recognizable only when you hear it, not by name.

“Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh,
Here I am at Camp Grenada
Camp is very entertaining
and they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining.”

Quite simply, Sherman sings in the voice of a kid having a sort of crummy time at Camp Granada. It was a huge album, spawning a hit single and riding the tides through 1965 when Milton Bradley issued a board game named “Camp Granada.”

The inside joke/shtick that Allan Sherman loved to repeat was titling the album My Son, The [fill-in-the blank]. This is a stock Catskills line, referencing the proud Jewish mother who might say, “My son, the doctor” or “My son, the lawyer,” whereas Sherman is “My Son, The Nut.” Good cultural fun!

Having heard four of the albums from the re-released set, I can say somewhat sadly that the trajectory Sherman’s career was that of diminishing returns, mostly through no fault of Sherman’s. When JFK was assassinated in 1963, this cataclysmic event put the laughs to a halt temporarily, first with Vaughn Meader, the fantastic JFK impressionist whose record The First Family was a smash success that even JFK himself loved.

Then 1964 arrived and youth culture superseded parental shtick with the embracing of The English Invasion. Allan Sherman released the album For Swingin’ Livers Only with the tune “Pop Hates The Beatles” (sung to the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel”) and he permanently placed himself on the other side of the divide in the oft-analyzed Generation Gap.

Yet I applaud Collectors’ Choice Music in putting out these eight discs, because Allan Sherman needs to be revealed and revered culturally as a comedic prototype: the paunchy guy with horn-rimmed glasses who preceded Drew Carey; the tunesmith with the joking lyrics who gave rise to Weird Al; and the family comedian who laid down his craft so that Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart could venture safely and more successfully into commercial waters.

La Chaim, Mr. Sherman! I raise my glass of manischewitz to you!

Collector’s Choice reissued the following eight albums on September 7:

For more on Allan Sherman, check out Allan Sherman: The Internet Site.