I was a big fan of the master song parody performer of the sixties, Allan Sherman…this, despite the fact that when I was in junior high school, he once kinda/sorta threatened a lawsuit over something I wrote. I told that story back here so I needn't tell it again.
Sherman had his biggest hit in August of 1963 with a record called "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh." It was one of the last times a comedy single (as opposed to an album) topped the charts. Here he is, performing it on some TV show of the day…
Less well known is that Sherman later recorded a sequel to that hit. It was called "Return to Camp Grenada" and it came and went with little notice in 1966. Here he is performing it on The Ed Sullivan Show for April 24, 1966. This version was so forgettable that as you'll see, Mr. Sherman is unable to remember his own lyrics on live TV…
You'll notice Sherman's appearance had changed by '66. Before then, he'd been fat, he'd worn glasses and he'd had a not-too-stylish crewcut. Suddenly, he ditched all that along with his wife of 21 years. He slimmed down, let his hair grow, went to contact lenses and revised his act to include serious love songs a la Sinatra. It was a somewhat public middle age crisis and I can't begin to speculate what, if anything, it had to do with the serious downturn in his career.
He put out his last album in 1967. He spent most of 1968 writing the book and lyrics for a Broadway musical called "The Fig Leaves Are Falling." It opened in New York on January 2, 1969 and closed four days later. He spent a lot of time poaching at the Playboy Mansion and in '73, wrote an awful (and unsuccessful) book for Playboy Press about the sexual revolution and died later that year at the age of 48. His only real success of the period — and it was a small one — was doing the voice of The Cat in the Hat in two animated specials. A very sad ending for a very funny man.