As any reader of this site knows, I'm a big fan of the late, great Allan Sherman. I loved his records and I was fascinated by his story. It was basically the tale of a man who fumbled about show business, writing and producing, for a little under twenty years, occasionally getting a great job and usually managing to get himself fired from it before long. In 1962, he was outta work in the TV business but, in a move that no one expected would yield more than a few bucks, Warner Brothers Records agreed to put out an album of him singing somewhat-Jewish song parodies. That kind of thing never did that well and Sherman was, of course, an utter unknown to the public. So it startled everyone — most of all, Mr. Allan Sherman — that My Son, the Folk Singer became one of the fastest-selling records of all time, making him suddenly very rich and suddenly very famous.
Neither lasted long. Mr. Sherman's self-destructive capacity was strong enough to triumph over all that success…and within just a few years, he was back in the land of failure. He died in 1973.
Still, the records he made were quite wonderful and I wasn't the only kid in America who took up writing song lyrics and parodies because of him. I listened to his records over and over and can sing most of his tunes from memory. As a favor to you, I won't. I liked him so much that I didn't even lose my fondness for the guy when he threatened to sue me. And I felt very bad when he passed away.
I thought I knew a lot about Allan Sherman but after reading Mark Cohen's new book about the man, I feel like I knew nothing. Mr. Cohen has done a superb research job…the kind of thing where you constantly wonder how he found out what he found out. The footnoting tells you how: He interviewed everyone he could, dug up every bit of paperwork he could. I can't imagine anyone doing a better, more thorough job of it.
Two main narratives emerge in Overweight Sensation. One is that of Sherman and his role in bringing Jewish humor into the American mainstream. He could have been like Mickey Katz, doing Jewish-themed material for Jews and no one else. But Sherman's astounding success had to do with crossing over; of getting goyim to laugh at jokes about knishes and Hadassah. Cohen exhaustively charts Sherman's childhood and family and summarizes their impact on his humor. Then the author places Sherman's humor in the context of the times and his peers and….well, you rarely come away from a portrait of a comedian understanding so totally why he and his work mattered…and how they mattered.
The other topic (and it's a sad one) is Sherman's self-loathing and his determination to ruin all that he built. Once rich and famous, he dumped the wife who'd stood with him through the lean years and plunged himself into a world of excess, overeating and over-womanizing. This part is almost hard to read but I know it's true…and again, Cohen's research is exemplary.
If you have the slightest interest in this fascinating, often-funny man named Allan Sherman, I highly recommend the book, which you can order here. Then after you do that, watch another "lost" Allan Sherman song that Mark Cohen has unearthed and shared. This was from back in Sherman's early days when so many of his punch lines were merely to rhyme an unexpected Jewish word or name. His work evolved such that it was no longer about that, which is why he was able to make that crossover. But it's still a funny tune…
