I never said “the logical choice.” I said it was “a logical choice,” with as much going for it as Joyce.
And in my mind, more going for it when talking about how it was perceived. Let’s again remember we’re addressing two questions here: what was in Sherman’s mind when he wrote the line (unknowable in the absence of an interview or something similar)…and what was in the minds of those who heard that line (not, in my opinion, as unknowable).
No, the interpretation of the song changed. In its new environment, it had to change.
The Joyce interpretation would have been OK when the song was a number performed in adult clubs or appearing as a cut on an album bought exclusively by an adult audience (which Sherman’s albums assuredly were — I would have been astounded to find one in a teen or pre-teen’s collection before 1963).
The more innocent interpretation had to be embraced by radio programmers before the song was ever let on the mass airwaves. And I firmly believe the more innocent interpretation was embraced by the greater percentage of listeners to the song.
No goal post moving here at all.
It’s like the world’s worst performance art at this point.
I gave you an example of an unambiguously dirtier line (oh balls) he used in an earlier album.Stating that the kid was read Joyce is in no way dirty.
Sherman, by the way. started in this career by singing the parodies he composed at Hollywood parties. Hardly a place for kids songs.
Malaria in upstate NY is pretty close to impossible also, and not something a kid would mistake. I only knew about malaria symptoms because I took quinine pills in Africa, a place where you do get it.
Inconsistency and the structure of a humorous sing are two very different things. Forget about Ulysses - the kid talks about all sorts of stu7ff the kids do outside, like getting lost, even though it is raining. Humor is often inconsistent. Humor however, builds, just as mentioned before. Consider the “Would you believe” jokes from Get Smart if you need an example. Homer is not funny. Reading Homer to kids is not funny. Reading Homer to kids, as I’ve said before, is educational.
And I knew about Ulysses. It was one of the few “dirty” books back then that were famous and respectable.
I guess not quite astounding, but My Son the Nut was in my collection in 1964 when I was 8. My Son the Folk Singer was in my parent’s collection before that, but mine by default since my parents rarely listened to a record more than once. Why did I have those? Because they were acceptable to my parents and Rock was not.
Oh, really?
For most of this thread, you’ve argued strenuously that the song clearly refers to Homer’s Odyssey, and no other explanation makes sense.
Now, on page 7, you suddenly declare that the OP was really asking two questions: what Sherman meant and what people thought he meant. Then you dismiss the first question as “unknowable” and proceed to redefine the debate in terms of what the general public and radio programmers thought the line meant.
You even allow that “the Homer interpretation ‘works’ just as well as the Joyce one,” an interesting concession given your earlier insistence that the line doesn’t work at all as a Joyce reference because a kid wouldn’t have known about Ulysses, the coach would have gotten into trouble, etc., etc.
Then, just to continue your pretense that hey, this is what I’ve been arguing all along, you slip in “Let’s again remember we’re addressing two questions here,” hoping that we won’t notice that this is something you came up with only a few posts ago.
You’re not just moving the goalposts; you’re moving the whole freaking stadium.
Random House brought out a new, revised hardback edition in 1961, setting off a huge Joyce industry. By 1963 a number of studies of the book were being published and Peregrine Books put out an annotated student’s edition. Joyce’s Ulysses was in the public’s mind (the NYTimes has 83 mentions of the book in 1962 and 63.) about a thousand times more than Homer’s Odyssey - which, for the millionth time, was never referred to as Ulysses. Ever. By anybody.
Yes, and I thought that the point that everybody has been making is that Sherman called them The James Joyce Singers as a joke. Why would anybody do that without calling attention to his use of Joyce?
I’ve seen bad performance art. This is just sloppy parody of thought and logic.
The above is all that really needs to be said at this point.
Of all the impenetrable rock/pop lyrics in all of the world, the OP picked this one? And pages later he’s still not satisfied?
Mystifying.
Oddly, our valiant Homer warrior was not the OP!
I was introduced to Allan Sherman by my cousins; I remember how we listened to “My Son, The Nut” on their portable record changer. None of the adults in the house seemed even slightly perturbed by this.
And I’m sure that while everyone is waiting with bated breath for it, please don’t bother if it’s for me. I’ve moved on to reading other threads and more interested discussing things with people who don’t keep moving goalposts and are interested in a dialogue as opposed to handwaving and saying “None of your points make any sense because of this double-secret rule I just now invented” type monologuing.
It’s generated some incredible posts, gone many pages, and gotten “Thread Spotting”. :eek:
Color me surprised, sure, but it’s been a great run.
No, I did not “declare” this. In this recent post, I reproduced the post that began this thread. Please show me where in this original post the OP asks “What did Allan Sherman intend in his own mind when he wrote this line?”
When discussing the meaning of song lyrics, there are ALWAYS two questions: “What did the songwriter mean in this lyrical passage?” and “What do you think the songwriter meant by this lyrical passage?” The answers to these two questions are very often entirely different.
It is actually fairly uncommon for a songwriter to explicitly and definitively answer the first question. Most are content to leave interpretation up to the listener, and most are perfectly fine with the listener drawing his or her own conclusions.
Thus, we have entire books authored by those attempting to answer the second question. When it comes to songwriters like Dylan, for example, it’s practically a cottage industry.
Since you disagree with this characterization, please explain how the answer to the question is “knowable” in the absence of a statement from Sherman himself.
No redefining at all. As I said, EVERY such question about lyrics will have these two components. Given the nature of the line in question, the perception of the general public and radio programmers is particularly important in this instance.
To steal a phrase from another poster, anyone who feels this issue isn’t important “wasn’t paying attention” during the era in question.
You’re right, it is a concession — because frankly I’m tired of fighting those who cling to the Joyce interpretation so dearly and won’t admit for even a nanosecond the possibility of an alternate interpretation.
If folks want to believe this, that’s fine. I’m trying to state that the Homer interpretation works perfectly well too, and I’ve given many reasons why it does. I haven’t changed my view that it works better than the Joyce one. Nor have I changed my view that the greater percentage of listeners to the song chose the Homer interpretation.
It doesn’t matter when I “came up” with this…it’s an issue regardless. (And in fact, I “came up” with the issue a week and a half ago when I took an informal survey of my friends to see what their perception of the line was and gave the results in this post).
To repeat: the issue is present regardless of whether people choose to say it’s not an issue. This is true just as surely as considering what was permitted on Top 40 radio in 1963 is an issue, regardless of people who choose to ignore it. History is not changed by ignoring it.
Thanks for the information, but there you go again. So everyone in the nation was a regular reader of The New York Times, was eagerly devouring “studies of the book” and was breathlessly awaiting the latest publication from Peregrine Books?
No doubt, for a small subset of the total universe of listeners to “Hello Muddah! Hello Fadduh!” these events were big news. But the key word here is “small.”
I can assure you that a much larger subset of these listeners had at least some exposure to Homer in their high school English classes and had seen the 1954 movie starring Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn that was entitled Ulysses.
I’ve dealt with this several times, most recently in the second portion of this post. Answer the question it poses honestly, and then we can talk again.
Maybe it’s because nobody did that.
There is no backing singers credit at all on My Son, the Nut.
See the the Allan in Wonderland back cover art for the credit that appeared on Sherman’s subsequent album.
Except on the album I cited when I brought it up in the first place.
I have not read 50 Shades of Gray. I will never read 50 Shades of Gray. But if someone made a joke about it, I’d sure as hell know what he was talking about.
BTW the second Firesign Theatre album from 5 or 6 years later ends with a stoned Ralph Spoilsport, used car salesman, reading Molly’s soliloquy from the end of Ulysses. Not the same audience, true, but not English majors either.
And you’re still treating the song as if it were actually written by a child, and not by an adult satirist. I repeat: even if it is plausible that a *kid *might somehow misconstrue the title of the reading, it makes absolutely no sense for *Sherman *to refer to one work of literature by the title of another and expect his audience to realize that he was doing so.
Absolutely right. Obviously, nothing that the country’s premiere newspaper, the one every other media outlet looked to for guidance, wrote about could possibly be reflective of what the country might be talking about. And equally obviously, New Yorker Allan Sherman himself would never deign to read the Times for what was current and trendy in order to use in a song aimed at other New Yorkers who might be reading the very same papers he read. Why, it would be silly to assume that the timing you yourself asked about might be a factor when the book had just been all over the country’s papers for two years, a uniquely important period in the book’s lifetime. And downright pernicious to leave off Homer and his work not-called Ulysses even though it had all of four mentions in the Times in that same period, or 5% as many. Why should reality and context count for anything at all when you can provide your own imaginary facts and alternate world?
