As a teen, or possibly a young adult, my mom gave me Allan Sherman’s My Son, The Nut LP. I still have it somewhere.
It’s finally out on CD (or maybe it has been, but I never noticed), and I’m transferring it into iTunes now.
[ul][li]You Went The Wrong Way, Old King Louie (La Marseillaise, You Came A Long Way From St. Louis, and the Peter Gunn theme)[/li][li]Automation (Fascination)[/li][li]I See Bones (C’est si bon)[/li][li]Hungarian Goulash No 5 (Brahms Hungarian Dance Number 5)[/li][li]Headaches (Heartaches)[/li][li]Here’s To The Crabgrass (Country Gardens)[/li][li]Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter From Camp) (Dance of the Hours)[/li][li]One Hippopotami (What Kind of Fool Am I)[/li][li]RRAATTFFIIINNKK (Rag Mop)[/li][li]You’re Getting To Be A Rabbit With Me (You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me)[/li][li]Eight Foot Two, Solid Blue (Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue)[/li][li]Hail To Thee, Fat Person[/ul][/li]Was I even alive when the songs parodied were popular? But my musical tastes are eclectic, and I’ve heard most of the originals. I think everyone has heard Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh. A lot of people here probably remember RRAATTFFIIINNKK. But the one that has stuck with me the most is I See Bones. That’s the one that most often comes to mind. And You Went The Wrong Way, Old King Louie is where I learned the phrase ‘giving you the air’.
This is funny stuff. Allan Sherman was the Weird Al of his day. He died too young.
EDIT: Whoops. This was supposed to go into Cafe Society.
My parents had that album; I loved it and listened to it over and over. I was young enough that I didn’t realize most of the songs were parodies, and was startled years later to discover that there were real songs called Fascination, Rag Mop, etc. I do believe I can still recall the words to most of the Sherman versions without hesitation. (“Here’s to the crabgrass, here’s to the mortgage, in fact here’s to suburbia. Lay down your briefcase, far from the rat race where nothing can disturb ya.” I could go on, but would be entertaining nobody but myself.)
A year or so ago I searched iTunes and Amazon in vain, and am THRILLED to hear from the OP that the CD is now available. I shall go order it immediately.
My grandparents had a few of Sherman’s albums, and the one in the OP is the one that became my favorite.
I still have it on vinyl. It’s in terrible shape, but each time I try and thin the herd and I see that cover it cracks me up, and puts me instantly in my grandparents’ living room playing it on their tremendous Hi-Fi console.
I wondered the same thing. But back then nobody had heard of cyborgs.
Another thing I wonder is why my mom decided to give me that album. (Not that my parents had a great number of albums anyway.) Was there a message in the title?
That one still resides in my mom’s cellar somewhere, alongside Peter and the Commissar, My Son the Folk Singer, and his first album which featured a number of other comedians (and some genuine Yiddish). For the completists, there is My Son, the Box, which claims to be every damned thing Sherman ever recorded.
There is a six disk set called “My Son, the Boxed Set” that contains all three albums (My Son the Folksinger, My Son the Celebrity, My Son the Nut) plus lots of additional performances.
My Dad had this record, and as pre-teens my brother and I listened to it all the time. Whenever I mow our lawn I start humming to myself, “Here’s to the crabgrass, here’s to the mortgage…” I See Bones was also a favorite. I should get this on CD.
I’d been looking for this for my older brother because I seem to have acquired his record sometime ago. I was going to return it with a cd of the same but the only cd I could find was a compilation of songs called “My Son, The Greatest”. So now I can keep that one for myself and get him “The Nut” after all.
I had all the songs memorized as a kid. The one that sticks with me most is “I See Bones”, everytime we look at x-rays at work I sing it. Everyone thinks I’m weird but that’s not all the song’s fault.
