Tom Lehrer’s wry yet ironically reasonable sounding voice is familiar to any relatively hip person roughly 50 and up. Disc one of The Tom Lehrer Collection (released by Shout! Factory on April 13) includes is a best-of album by the piano-playing, singing satirist. Disc two is a DVD documenting a live performance taped in a television studio in Oslo, 1967.
First reaction: “That’s what he looked like!” Bespectacled and mostly poker faced, allowing himself only an occasional smile, Lehrer was the missing link between Oscar Levant and the National Lampoon, a masterful topical musical ironist and social critic, the sharp-pointed stick of American liberalism at a time of upheaval. Although the subjects of many of his lyrics have faded into history, it’s not hard to get the gist.
Nowadays, Lehrer would probably find a home at Comedy Central. In the ‘60s, the controversy adverse networks would never have touched him.
