Life to Art and Almost Back

Life and art, sometimes one imitates the other.

St. Louis 1895

It was Christmas night. Two friends, Lee Shelton and William "Billy" Lyons were drinking in Bill Curtis's saloon down at 11th and Morgan Streets. Shelton, known by his nickname of Stag Lee or Stagger Lee, was a flashy pimp, part of a group of pimps called The Macks. He also worked as a carriage driver, was the Captain of the disreputable 400 Club and a political organizer for the Democrats. Billy Lyons worked as a levee hand, was part of the St. Louis criminal underworld and was a political organizer for the Republican Party. After several drinks, the two men began to argue. Some say it was over a gambling situation, some say it was politics and others say it had to do with the Stetson hat Stagger Lee was wearing.

Stagger Lee (#1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959)
   ~first written lyrics appeared in 1912

     The night was clear and the moon was yellow
     And the leaves came tumbling down

     I was standing on the corner when I heard my bulldog bark
     He was barkin' at two men who were gamblin' in the dark
     It was Stagger Lee and Billy, two men who gambled late
     Stagger Lee threw seven, Billy swore that he threw eight
     .........

Kansas City 1973

Twin was standing on the corner with a small group of street gangsters in a bad part of Kansas City on the Missouri side. They were throwing dice for money when an old friend, Thomas, decided to join the group. Thomas was one of our informants against the heroin trade. He had already testified in federal grand jury for a second wave of indictments and was now working on his third wave of smack dealers. We'd arrested the first two groups of dealers and some of them had gotten out on bond. By now, everyone knew Thomas was our snitch, but he was slick enough to make them believe that was "then," in order for him to stay out of jail, and this was now. Supposedly, he was finished with working for the man and had returned to his old ways of dealing smack. Could have sold sand to an Arab.

Meanwhile, being involved in prostitution, gambling, dope dealing and bank robbery, Twin was a hard-core member of the old Black Mafia, as was his recently incarcerated brother with the nickname of Twin Brother. They'd both been involved in a bank robbery, but Twin Brother volunteered to take the fall, leaving Twin out on the streets to make some money for their future. However on this night, the dice were running against Twin and he was in a bad mood. Some say a killing mood.

                                                                          #

St. Louis  1895

The story on Stagger Lee and Billy was first covered by The St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Allegedly, when Stagger Lee and Billy got into their argument, Billy grabbed Lee's Stetson hat and refused to give it back. It's also possible there was some mutual hat bashing between the two. In any case, Stagger Lee became enraged, pulled his .44 and shot Billy in the gut. He then calmly picked up his hat and left. Billy was taken to the Dispensary where his wounds were pronounced as serious and he expired shortly afterward.

Stagger Lee

     Stagger Lee told Billy, "I can't let you go with that"
     "You done won all my money and my brand new Stetson hat"
     Stagger Lee went home and he got his forty-four
     Said, "I'm goin' to the barroom just to pay the debt I owe"
     Stagger Lee went to the barroom and he stood across the barroom door
     He said, "Nobody move" and he pulled his forty-four

           *                     *                     *                    *

     Stagger Lee shot Billy, oh he shot that poor boy so bad
     'Til the bullet went through Billy and it broke the bartender's glass

Kansas City 1973

Back on the street corner, Twin's mood was dark and getting darker. With the dice running Thomas's way, he kept on taking what little money Twin had left. The other gangsters, glad to have someone else as the object of Twin's wrath, slowly backed away until it was only Twin and Thomas in the game. Both men were wearing their pimp Stetsons. Twin angrily accused Thomas of cheating. Thomas loudly denied it as he reached for the money lying on the sidewalk. Twin drew his pistol and aimed at Thomas's face. Still bent over to get the money, Thomas reacted with exaggerated street cool and did the one thing that saved his life. He thrust his index fingers into his ears and screwed up his face as if the loudness of the gun going off would hurt his eardrums. Twin broke up laughing and the crisis passed.

                                                                  #

St. Louis  1895 - 1912 The Aftermath

Stagger Lee was arrested, bond set at $4,000 and a grand jury subsequently indicted him for first degree murder. Six months later, pawnbroker Morris H. Smit paid a $3,000 bond and Lee was released. At a July 18th trial, the jury came back with a split decision. Seven voted for second degree murder, two for manslaughter and three for acquittal. In August of 1897, Lee's successful attorney, a morphine addict, died after a drinking binge. Six weeks later during a retrial with a different defense attorney, Lee was quickly found guilty of murder and sentenced to 25 years in the notorious Jefferson Prison in Jeff City, Missouri. The governor saw fit to pardon Lee in 1909, but the die was cast. After two years of freedom, Stag Lee committed a fatal home invasion and got sent back to Jeff City. The governor pardoned him again, but it was too late. This time, Lee left his prison cell in a casket.

Kansas City  1973 Aftermath

Twin went off to federal prison for delivering a quantity of cocaine to a house where my partner and I met him at the door. Happened that a different informant had made a phone call and ordered up the coke. Twin's luck ran bad again.

Thomas went on to be shot a couple of times by his cousin while they were standing on opposite sides of the cousin's screen door. Seems Thomas was upset that his cousin was poaching on Thomas's woman. Thomas, decked out in his best pimp Stetson, showed up on the cement porch and banged on the door. His cousin, whose repose was rudely interrupted that early morning by the loud banging, was clad only in his black, silk boxer shorts during the time that the two men blew holes at each other through the screen. Both combatants came up ventilated, but went on to survive the experience.

Life and Art

Shortly after the latter incident, I left KC for another post of duty. Never did hear what finally happened to Twin and Thomas, though I expect with their life style, sooner or later they were going to come up short.

However, I did wonder about one set of circumstances. If Twin had shot and killed Thomas that night on the street corner, would Twin have ended up with his own folk song? He was already a legend in the criminal world. So, would some blues writer have felt the urge to compose a parallel to the popular Stagger Lee ballad?

Guess we'll never know.

Piano of Mystery Sold

The Monday before Thanksgiving, a very special piano was auctioned off at Bonhams in New York.
Yes, this is primarily supposed to be a mystery writing web site, but sometimes inanimate objects are central to mystery plots.  Small, odd little objects may sometimes even point a detective to perceive the complex Rube Goldberg device behind a locked-room mystery.

Pianos also fit here in SS, I believe, because we have authors here who are just as passionate about their music as they are about their writing.  This auctioned piano combines mystery, adventure and music -- along with love.  In fact, it played a central role in all four at one time.  A seminal role, one might say. Which is perhaps not abnormal for certain inanimate objects.

This is the small, 58-key upright piano, probably made in 1927, that a production company altered slightly in 1942, by relocating some hinges, so that the character Rick Blaine could hide letters of transit inside.

That's right.  It's the piano that drummer Dooley Wilson, playing "Sam," sat at when Ingrid Bergman, as "Ilsa Lund," told him, "Play it, Sam.  Play, 'As Time Goes By,'" in the movie Casablanca.

This is the one.  He's not really playing, but he is singing.

Hiding the Letters of Transit

How central can an inanimate object really be to the heart of a film, or the plot of a novel?

Well, let's look at just a few of the roles this piano (and its brother) played in Casablanca.

"Play it for me, Sam."

The movie's "brother piano" used in flashbacks.

In the end, the piano reportedly sold for $3,413,000.00 which included a 12% commission.

I have no idea who bought it, though I've searched the web.

You can click on this New York Times article here for more details.










Mystery lovers might also like to know that a certain Maltese Falcon has the honor of having grossed more at auction, than any other movie prop, reportedly landing  $4,085,000.00 during Bonham's TCM auction last year. (This statistic should not be confused with the "overall record for a piece of movie memorabilia," which goes to the Aston Martin [$4.6 M] driven by Sean Connery's "Bond" in Gold Finger.) 

See you in two weeks,
— Dixon

Still More Fun With Music and Writing!

Taking a break from discussing the intersection of history and mystery to swoop back in one big elliptical arc to another of the tropes I mine for content for this site. Another intersection. This one the place where auditory input stimulates manuscriptive creativity.

Which is to say, "Word-count springing from music."

As I've written here, I struggle with tinnitus, even more so since my son (he's 2 1/2) found a
particular frequency of shriek guaranteed to instantaneously ratchet up my tinnitus like being plucked suddenly from the serenity of a peaceful mountain meadow and unceremoniously dropped into the middle of a Who concert circa 1978 (for an idea of what that sounds like, click here). Before my son was born I could go for long periods ignoring my tinnitus. Not so much anymore.

Come on, you just KNOW this shit is loud.

Don't get me wrong. I yield to no one in my admiration for the particular brand of aural havoc Townshend, Moon, Entwistle and Daltrey could wreak.

It's just not an easy soundtrack for me to work to.

And while this link to ambient engine noise in a 24 hour loop from Star Trek the Next Generation definitely masks my tinnitus and allows me to concentrate while writing, I find I sometimes want to have music in the background, "ambient," if you will.

And that's what today's post here at Sleuthsayers is about: an update on what i'm listening to while working, and additionally, trying to poke a hole in the unfair characterization of ambient music as somehow "boring."

My most frequent "ambient" listens these days are:

"Moonwater" by Rudy Adrian, a New Zealander who does wonderful stuff. Give it a listen here.

And then there's the epic stuff of Patrick O'Hearn. A Portland, Oregon native, this guy was something of a musical prodigy, playing bass for such jazz guys as Joe Henderson before he was out of his teens, matriculating to playing for Frank Zappa in the late '70s and early '80s, going from there to a gig playing synthesizers with Terry Bozio in a band that could have only found an audience during the 1980s, Missing Persons, and on to a prolific solo career doing mostly, you guessed it: ambient music. I've included the album cover from his masterpiece, "So Flows the Current" (2001), but I find all of his canon incredibly listenable, especially while I'm writing.

Dear GOD, why???

Lastly, there's musical polymath Brian Eno, who pioneered the notion of "ambient music" after leaving Roxy Music back in the 1970s. In so doing Eno was simply applying an electronic component to composer Erik Satie's earlier idea of background music played live by musicians, which Satie called "furniture music."

I've listened to a fair amount of Eno's stuff, and one of his earliest, "Music for Airports" (1978). is one of my favorites. And his latest, "Lux" (2014), is really great. In fact, his stuff is always interesting, whether or not you actually like it.

And that brings me to my second point: writing is an art form. So is music.  These sorts of things in the best of times, feed off of each other. This is how musical pieces such as Mussorgsky's terrific "Pictures at an Exhibition", can be inspired by another form of art (in this case, the work of Mussorgsky's recently deceased friend, the artist Viktor Hartmann).

And so for my next trick, I'll continue this train of thought next time with the work of several artists whose new stuff in 2014 has helped inform my writing.

See you in two weeks!

That's better, Brian! Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Eno, circa 2014, (apparently) all grown up!

Play It Again

My home office, as you might imagine, is stuffed with books. Two of the walls are floor-to-ceiling shelves loaded with hardcover novels, and an unfortunate number of books and story manuscripts are usually piled on the floor and all other flat surfaces.

My wife has said she's afraid to come in without a machete and a hard hat (I tidied things up a bit before taking the photo shown here), and she remains convinced that the weight of all my reading material is one reason we had cracks in our foundation years ago. But what can I say? There's something oddly comforting and peaceful about being surrounded by books.

A friend asked me recently why I have so many. He says he understands why I buy them--I can't seem to wait for the library, or for the paperback versions--but why keep them? My standard answer (that I sometimes re-read them) is only partially true. The real answer is that, God help me, I just can't make myself part with most of my books. I like being able to look up from my computer anytime I want to and see them there, and recall the pleasure it gave me to read them. It's one reason I own more printed books than e-books. I like to touch them and feel them and smell them.

The second time around

The fact is, I often do read them again, especially if my un-read cupboard is bare or unpromising. I chain-read the way folks used to chain-smoke: I light up a new one off the butt of the one I just finished, with scarcely a pause in between. And I often find myself remembering some little something I liked in a book long ago and going back and finding that chapter or that passage and reading it again. (I know, I know . . . that's weird. But it's true.)

I do the same thing with movies. I also own DVDs, you see, a lot of them, and I sometimes watch them over and over again. I was thinking about that the other day, and a strange thing occurred to me:

The movies I re-watch the most often are the ones with great soundtracks.

Mad for music

Several years ago I wrote a column for Criminal Brief called "Strike Up the Band," about movie music. Writing that piece was fun for me, because even though I am no music expert and am only an amateur musician, I dearly love movie scores. (Former mystery blogger James Lincoln Warren and I have spent hours e-discussing this subject.) I honestly believe the right kind of music can not only make a bad movie good, it can make a good movie great and a great movie unforgettable.

But why watch a film again, one might ask--unless it's a musical--in order to hear the music? Wouldn't it be quicker and easier to just buy or download the soundtrack and listen to it while doing something else? Sure it would. I do that too. But what I really like is hearing the music along with seeing the action on the screen. That kind of thing was so important to some directors, like Hitchcock and Sergio Leone and others, that they often filmed scenes to fit the already-written music, rather than doing it the other way around.

Perpetual emotion

I doubt that anyone could say he or she didn't brush away a tear during the final theme of Gone With the Wind, when the camera pulled slowly back from the silhouette of Scarlett under the live oak to reveal Tara in the background--or get goosebumps from the scene where Charles Bickford and Charlton Heston and all their men ride into Blanco Canyon in The Big Country. Without that blaring symphonic music, those great moments would have lost much of their impact. 

For anyone who might be interested, here is a quick list of movies (excluding musicals) that I have seen several times--and will certainly watch again in the future--primarily because of their soundtracks:

Once Upon a Time in the West -- music by Ennio Morricone

Psycho -- Bernard Hermann The Last of the Mohicans -- Trevor Jones

Superman -- John Williams Cool Hand Luke -- Lalo Schifrin Legends of the Fall -- James Horner

The Magnificent Seven -- Elmer Bernstein Cat People (1982) -- Giorgio Moroder Medicine Man -- Jerry Goldsmith Dick Tracy -- Danny Elfman The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) -- Michel Legrand

The Man From Snowy River -- Bruce Rowland Blood Simple -- Carter Burwell Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- Burt Bacharach The Molly Maguires -- Henry Mancini Gladiator -- Hans Zimmer The Natural -- Randy Newman Amelie -- Yann Tiersen The Graduate -- Simon and Garfunkel King of Kings -- Miklos Rozsa Shane -- Victor Young

Signs -- James Newton Howard The Right Stuff -- Bill Conti Escape From New York -- John Carpenter The Godfather -- Nino Rota A Summer Place -- Max Steiner The Sting -- Marvin Hamlisch The High and the Mighty -- Dmitri Tiomkin Lonesome Dove -- Basil Poledouris Lawrence of Arabia -- Maurice Jarre The Big Country -- Jerome Moross Forrest Gump -- Alan Silvestri

Somewhere in Time -- John Barry

Closing notes (pun intended)

I included only one score by each composer, but I've found that I like almost anything by John Barry, John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini, and Jerry Goldsmith. (Several by Barry--The Lion in Winter, Body Heat, Goldfinger, Out of Africa, The Ipcress File, Somewhere in Time, Dances With Wolves--are among the best soundtracks I've ever heard.) Of those five composers, I think Williams is the only one still alive and working.

Please add your favorites to this off-the-top-of-my-head list. If you do, I'll happily fetch them from my stacks or grab them via Netflix and give them another look-see (and listen-to).

Question: Do any of the rest of you suffer from this addiction to movies and movie music? (I know Stephen Ross and Jeff Baker do.) If so, I warn you, it can be an embarrassment to friends and family.

Excuse me--I think I feel the urge to go watch the opening credits of Top Gun . . .

The Story I Said I'd Never Write

I am delighted to report that the January/February 2014 of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine is out this week and features my 24th appearance in that fine periodical.  Even better, it marks my third chance to grace the cover (and what a perfect illustration it is!).  "Devil Chased The Wolf Away" is a short story but the history of how it came to exist is a long story, so you might want to fortify yourself with a cup of coffee or something.  I'll wait.

Ready?  Okay, here goes.

About fifteen years ago I attended a concert by a man who had been considered a master musician.  The problem was he was long past his prime, and it showed.  He was confused and his playing was clumsy.

That would have been bad enough, but worse was the fact that his accompanyist, the man who had been driving him from show to show, was clearly fed up, and was rude and disrespectful.  This made the show quite unpleasant.

And as I watched it, being the person I am, I found myself thinking: is there a story here?  A crime story?

By the time the show was over I had invented Cleve Penny, an over-the-hill old-time fiddler from Kentucky.  His tale, "Snake In The Sweetgrass," appeared in the December 2003 issue of Hitchcock's.  

I thought it was my best story and some people seemed to agree.  Several urged me to write about Cleve again, but I didn't want to.  I was afraid that what seemed magical the first time might turn out to be just slight of hand the next time around.  Besides, if I kept dragging my old guy around from stage to stage, wasn't I being like that accompanyist?  So I made up my mind not to write a sequel to "Snake."

Then Bruce Molsky came to town.

Now, I must immediately explain that Molsky is not over the hill.  He is king of the mountain, and can play old-time guitar, banjo or fiddle as well as anybody.  This video should prove my point.  (And he can sing while he plays the fiddle, which is just plain cheating.)



But a few years ago Molsky performed here with a brother and sister act, only one of whom was old enough to drive, and watching him interact with those talented youngsters I had a sudden thought: wouldn't it be fun to have Cleve Penny work with some children?

I thought it would.  Not long before this my family had visited Chicago for the first time, which  included a pilgrimage to the Old Town School of Folk Music.  The School was founded in 1957 and has been offering lessons, concerts, and jams ever since. 

So I invented the Cornheim School of Folk Music, and installed Cleve Penny as guest Artist in Residence.  Then I gave the school a problem and invited Cleve to take his unique approach to solving it.  



But I had another problem.  "Devil" is in some ways a direct result of the events in "Snake."  Cleve's actions in the second story are heavily influenced by what he did in the first.  I can't assume that everyone who reads "Devil" will have read "Snake," much less remember it a decade later.  So how do I slip in the backstory?  I actually got into an interesting discussion on this subject with mystery writer Neil Schofield and wrote about it  at Criminal Brief.

I think I licked that problem, but Linda Landrigan, editor of Hitchcock's, offered an even better solution.  As I said last week, you can download a free podcast of "Snake."  I highly recommend you read/listen to it before you dig into "Devil."  You will enjoy them both more that way.

I think I'm done with Cleve Penny now, and he can settle into a well-deserved retirement.  But I have learned to never say never.

Media Blitz

by Robert Lopresti

A long time ago, Robert Benchley wrote the following about his most famous piece, "The Treasurer's Report:" I have inflicted it on the public in every conceivable way except over the radio and dropping it from airplanes.  (And as proof, here is a short, hilarious movie version.)

I am thinking about that because this autumn is seeing my own work coming at the public from a variety of directions.  Not to worry; the phase will pass and by December I will sink back into obscurity.  But let's go over the details of my temporary onslaught.

As I wrote last time, September marked my first appearance in an e-book anthology.  I am sure by now you have all run out (or run your cursor over) to buy a copy of Malfeasance Occasional: Girl Trouble.  Right?

I am happy to inform you you won't have to spend any money for this next feature (although I do like dark chocolate if you're thinking of a gift).  This one is a freebie.

Linda Landrigan, who edits Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, suggested doing a podcast of my story "Snake in the Sweetgrass," which appeared in the December 2003 issue of AHMM.  And if it isn't up now here  it should be by next week.


She sent me the recorder they use and after much diligent practice I was able to record the story with only three mistakes.  And that was the best I could do.  Three different mistakes every time.  (It wasn't like I consistently tripped over the same tongue-twisting phrase, alas.)  Linda assures me they can clean that up.

But here is the cool part.  My story is about an elderly Kentucky fiddler and the title refers to a traditional fiddle piece that is his personal signature tune.  It seemed logical to include a recording of that tune in the podcast.

The problem with that is that I made up the name.  There is no such tune. 

No biggie.  My daughter, Susan Weiner, is a fine composer so she created a tune that matched the description in the story.  And then, extra special treat, my wife Terri Weiner recorded it on the fiddle.

So it is a real family operation and I recommend it highly.  But if that isn't enough to entice you to give it a listen, here is a bonus.  Remember, I said this is a media blitz. 

The January/February issue of Hitchcock's comes out November 4 and I am thrilled to report that the cover story is "Devil Chased The Wolf Away," a sequel to "Snake."  And while you can read "Devil" without experiencing "Snake" you will definitely enjoy them more if you read (or listen to) "Snake" first.

And next Wednesday I will explain how "Devil" came to be written, much to my surprise.

Working on my novel

Just bought myself a webcam and guess what I did with it?  Lyrics follow...

When the cop cars finally caught up with me                               

I was down from a nine day drunk                                        

With a side door missing, the radiator hissing                     

And an alligator in the trunk                                                 

The judge said “You’ve got such potential, son          

So why is your life a mess?                                         

You’ll be making, they say, great art one day.”          

“Well, your honor, I must confess.”                                    

I’m working on my novel, (working on my novel) 
Starting on a great career                                                               

Every word rings true cause I’m living ‘em through 
I’m working on my novel here         

                                    

My wife hit me, then she hit the road

‘Cause of rumors that flew her way

‘Bout her ex-best friend and a lady bartender

And some games that we liked to play

She said through sobs “I work two jobs

To support you and your art.

Can’t the research cease on your masterpiece?

When will the writing start?”

I said: I’m working on my novel, (working on my novel) 
Starting on a great career                                                               

Every word rings true cause I’m living ‘em through 
I’m working on my novel here         

The outline’s done after years of work

But my agent said, “Hey, boy,

I love the plot but its really not

What sane people would enjoy.”

So I started on a story of the common folk

And the struggles that they go through

So nine to five you can see me strive

With the scum of the earth like you.

I’m working on my novel, (working on my novel)                        

Where'd my alligator disappear?
Every word rings true cause I’m living ‘em through           

I’m working on my novel here         

Prohibit Singing and Bible Reading

Last March, I wrote a post about the “Failure of the 13th Juror” in which I discussed the trial of three men and a young woman who carjacked and murdered a young couple in 2007. In 2009, all four were tried and found guilty. However, the original trial judge (whom I called Judge P) was later discovered to have been using two parolees in his charge to obtain pain pills. Consequently, he was removed from the case and a new judge (whom I called Judge G) was appointed.

Over the prosecutor’s objections, Judge G granted new trials to the three men without holding a hearing, ruling that Judge P’s conduct was enough to warrant new trials. The State Appeals Court ordered him to hold hearings. He refused. So, he was removed and a new judge (I call him Judge T) was appointed. 

The prosecutor agreed that Judge P had been under the influence of something during the trial of the young woman. She was granted a new trial and again was found guilty of facilitation in the rape and killing of the female victim and sentenced to 35 years.

As for the third male, the prosecutors had argued that, although he did not participate in the crimes, he benefited from them when he used the car to run errands and stayed in the house where the young woman was raped and murdered. Judge T, acting as the 13th juror, concluded that there was no forensic evidence connecting him to the carjacking and murders and granted him a new trial.

The second male, the leader’s young brother who was sentenced to life in prison, wanted a new trial because he was beaten up in prison. Since forensic evidence connected him to the crimes, Judge T denied his request.

The ringleader’s argument for a new trial is the most interesting. His defense team argued that the jurors were influenced by religion when they convicted him. One of the jurors admitted that after dinner one night he got permission from the court staff, picked up his guitar, and began singing Christian songs. The other jurors joined in. They also read Bible verses. Since DNA tied the ringleader to the crimes, Judge T also denied his request for a new trial.

Jurors are not supposed to discuss the case outside of the jury room. I guess the defense felt that singing gospel songs and reading the Bible could be interpreted as discussing the case. I’m not sure how, but it might be possible.

Another twist to the case: the previous two judges allowed relatives to wear buttons showing pictures of two victims and sit where the jurors could see the buttons. Judge T nixed that bit of theater. The relatives must sit two or three rows back from the front bench if they choose to display the buttons.

Should singing and Bible reading during jurors’ down time be prohibited because it could influence their decision?

***

And yet another twist: The original judge, Judge P, was found guilty of misconduct in state court, dismissed from the bench, and allowed to keep his pension. The Justice Department stepped in and tried him for misprision of a felony, i.e, lying to other judges and officials to keep his drug-supplying mistress connected to her supply network. He was found guilty and sentenced to six months and loss of his pension. His defense team filed a motion to allow him to remain free pending an appeal of the conviction. However, Judge P later changed his mind and decided to do the time. His appeal could take a year or more, and he’ll  be free by the time it is completed. Still, he wants it to go forward because he could get a new trial or dismissal, even though he will have already paid the price for his actions.

Well, I guess six months in the prison of his choice, humiliation, and loss of pension could be considered a high price to pay for breaking laws he was sworn to uphold. Were the scales of justice truly balanced in his case?

Tomfoolery! Happy Birthday to Tom Lehrer

    When I was 14 years old (an unbelievable 50 years ago) a friend of mine and I were spending an otherwise boring evening pawing through my parents’ LP records, which were collected in a dusty rack in the knotty-pined basement of our suburban St. Louis home.  My friend pulled an abnormally small record from the stack.  It was a record I had been ignoring for years.

    The cover cried out cheapness – a flimsy cardboard sleeve featuring a drawing of a small man, sporting devil’s horns and tail, seated in front of a stylized piano keyboard.  Red flames ringed the borders of the album.  The title was Songs by Tom Lehrer. 

    “This,” my friend opined knowingly (since he had already discovered the record in his parents' collection), “is an awesome album.” 

    We positioned the 10 inch vinyl record on the nearby turntable, turned up the volume, and laughed for thirty minutes straight.  Afterwards, tears still in my eyes, I took the album upstairs where my parents were watching Ed Sullivan, oblivious to the merriment that had transpired below. 

    “I didn’t know we had this record,’ I said, holding out the album toward my father.

    In unison the blood drained from my parents’ faces.  My mother stared, aghast, at my father.  “You weren’t supposed to,” my father stammered, reaching for the album cover, which by the next morning had been relegated by my parents to a more secure hiding place.

                                *         *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

    Every once in a while I get lucky on SleuthSayers.  My every other Tuesday rolls up on a “winner.”  So far I have drawn New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day and November 22nd – each of which readily suggests themes for an article.  And today, though a bit more obscure, is another such winning Tuesday.  I can't really make today's article into something about mysteries, or crime, though it does, at base, have a lot to do with clever writing.

    Today professor, satirist, and sporadic performer Thomas Andrew Lehrer celebrates his 85th birthday. 

    So, what was it about that little record that fifty years ago both sent my 14 year old friend and me into gales of laughter while turning my parents ashen when confronted with the fact that we had discovered it in their collection?  One does not have to listen long to Mr. Lehrer’s 1953 collection of songs to understand both reactions.  Here, for example, is one of those songs -- My Home Town:

                                                  

More to come on the musical front, but let’s pause first for a little backstory on one of the greatest satirists of our age.

    Tom Lehrer, born this day in 1928, is famous for three record albums released between 1953 and 1965.  (While more than three albums show up in various catalogs, do not be fooled – the differences reflect only whether the songs were recorded in a studio or before a live audience.  Any way you slice it, there basically are only three albums of songs.)  Not only is the list of songs small, by his own count Tom Lehrer also performed a grand total of only 109 concerts.  As Lehrer observed in a 2010 interview, writing “37 songs in 20 years is hardly what I would call a career.”   But what songs!

    It is true that Tom Lehrer apparently never saw himself as a composer or entertainer.  His principal career was mathematics professor.  He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard in 1946, went on to earn a master’s degree in mathematics and worked toward, but never completed, his doctorate.  He earned his living teaching mathematics at Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, and in later years at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  (At Santa Cruz he taught an introductory mathematics class for Bachelor of Arts students that he referred to as “Math for Tenors.”)  If we were to ignore his musical contributions, Mr. Lehrer’s published works would consist of pretty thin and dry stuff – he co-authored Random Walks with Restraining Barrier as Applied to the Biased Binary Counter, which appeared in a 1958 issue of the Journal of the Society for Industrial Applied Mathematics, and The Distribution of the Number of Locally Maximal Elements in a Random Sample, published in 1957 in the Annals of Mathematical Statistics.  Obviously it is not in honor of these works that we are assembled here today. 

    It was while studying mathematics at Harvard in the1940s that Lehrer began to compose humorous songs.  Trained as a child on the piano, his self-accompanied renditions of his compositions rapidly gained a following among the Harvard student body.  Inspired by this success, Lehrer self-funded an LP album – that one with the red flames at the top of the article, the one my father had not quite hidden well enough.

    At first Lehrer sold the 10 inch vinyl albums himself for $3.00 a piece, but eventually demand became great enough that local stores around the Harvard campus began selling the album for $3.50, pocketing the half buck as profit.  The popularity of the record continued to grow by word-of-mouth, and by the early to mid-1950s Lehrer’s first album was available in record stores across the country.  The word “available” is used, however, advisedly.  The album was virtually always sold only “under the counter,” since the songs were deemed too risqué and dark-humored for public display and sales.  Eventually a second album was recorded, More of Tom Lehrer, a studio recording, and An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, consisting of the same songs, but performed in a live concert. 

    Slowly, but steadily, Tom Lehrer was discovered.  As an example, Lehrer performed his songs sporadically in nightclubs in the 1950s, and while playing Boston in October of 1954 a young writer named Isaac Asimov wandered in to listen.  Asimov promptly became a fan, and the evening proved memorable enough that it is recounted in Asimov’s autobiography In Joy Still Felt.  The song Lehrer reportedly was playing as Asimov entered the nightclub was I Got it from Sally, which over the years morphed into I Got it from Agnes.  During the course of the song it became obvious to the audience, including Asimov, as he recounts in his autobiography, that the “it” was a sexually transmitted disease, and that the ways that “it” was acquired grew increasingly, shall we say, less normative as the song progressed.  Asimov wrote "I haven't gone to nightclubs often, but of all the times I have gone, it was on this occasion that I had by far the best time."  Although, as Asimov marvelled, the song contains no word that standing alone would have been unacceptable to a 1954 listener, in its entirety the piece was nonetheless deemed too over the edge to be included in either of Lehrer’s early albums. 

    But that does not stop us here at SleuthSayers – in all its glory, here is Tom Lehrer singing  I Got it from Agnes.

    No further albums were forthcoming, and by all appearances in the late 1950s Tom Lehrer had left satire behind and was concentrating on his day job at Harvard.  Then along came an NBC series:  That Was the Week That Was. 

    There are those in my generation who still hold cherished memories of TW3 (as it was known to its sadly few fans).  Satire, it is said, closes on Saturday night.  TW3, NBC’s experiment in live satire, lasted a scant one and a half seasons, finally expiring on a Tuesday.  While it was around it offered a weekly live send-up of the notable news stories of the previous seven days.  If you don’t remember this gem, or if you are too young to have been there, the show was sort of a Daily Show, but done in a variety format.  Reportedly Professor Lehrer tuned in, liked what he saw, and, upon listening to its musical odes to the events of the week, thought to himself  “I could do that.”   He began submitting songs to the show.  The first one accepted, performed live on TW3 (if memory serves) by Broadway performer Stanley Grover, commemorated National Brotherhood Week.

   The songs written for TW3 provided the fodder for Tom Lehrer’s third, and final, album – That Was the Year That Was, recorded live at San Francisco's famous Hungry I, and released in 1965.  The album not only contains all of the TW3 songs as performed by Tom Lehrer, it offers the original versions of those songs without the dampening (and damning) revisions made by nervous NBC censors.  Fueled by the success of his TW3 songs Tom Lehrer toured briefly in 1965 and 1966.  There were several other short tours, but by 1972 Tom Lehrer had once again largely stepped back from the public eye. 

    Explaining his disdain for touring Lehrer has observed “if you have already gone to Cincinnati, there is really no reason to go on to Cleveland.”  There is also an urban legend that Tom Lehrer retired from performing after Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, explaining that the event rendered satire forevermore obsolete.

    Nevertheless Tom Lehrer again re-emerged, at least vicariously, in 1981, thanks to the efforts of Sir Cameron Macintosh, the Broadway producer extraordinaire later known for producing Cats, Les Miz, Phantom of the Opera, Lady Saigon and Mary Poppins.  Macintosh decided that the world needed a revival of Lehrer’s mischievous musings, and took it upon himself to accomplish this.   

    Tomfoolery, Macintosh's theatrical revue of Lehrer’s works, was  fashioned along the lines of Jacque Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris -- the show is a musical revue, without story, presented in a cabaret setting.  The revue played in various cities across the United States – I saw a production at Washington’s Arena Stage in 1982 – and played off Broadway for 120 performances.  It featured songs from Tom Lehrer’s three albums, as well as some additional songs he wrote for the PBS children’s television series The Electric Company.

    Thereafter, other than some re-issues of his albums, notably a nice newly re-engineered 2010 offering, The Tom Lehrer Collection (highly recommended, purchase it here), that  has pretty much been it.  What nevertheless has fueled the fire and kept Professor Lehrer popular all of these intervening years?  Certainly not his formal reviews.  The following are included, tongue in cheek, on his album covers:

•    "Mr. Lehrer's muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste."  New York Times

•    "More desperate than amusing" —  New York Herald Tribune

•    "He seldom has any point to make except obvious ones" —  The Christian Science Monitor

•    "Plays the piano acceptably" — The Oakland Tribune

Nor has Mr. Lehrer’s music been widely accepted by other entertainers.  I can think of only one “cover” for a Lehrer song, although that one is brilliant.  Listen to Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe introducing and then performing the Lehrer classic The Elements.

    In a 2010 interview Lehrer reflected on the continued vitality of his satiric works.  He noted at the time that what he tried to do in his pieces was to use internal rhymes and clever word play so as to produce songs that one not only would want to listen to, but would want to listen to over and over again.  It certainly has worked for me over the last 50 years.  And why do the songs, with all of their dark humor, continue to resonate, more than 60 years after many of them were written?  Again, in the words of Tom Lehrer:  “if you predict the worst, you are likely to be hailed as a prophet.”

    All of that said, the truly amazing thing about Lehrer’s songs is how well they do in fact (even if darkly) continue to resonate.

    A new Pope faced with issues of reform in the Catholic Church?  Time for The Vatican Rag.

    The Supreme Court re-examining provisions of the Voting Rights Act?  Lets listen, once again, to Dixie.

    Scandal in the ranks of the Boy Scouts?  That calls for Be Prepared.

    Censorship?  In a word, Smut.

    Pollution?  Pollution.

    Harvard unimaginably wins the first round in March Madness?  Fight Fiercely, Harvard!  (Okay, its about  football but you'll get the picture!)

    My favorite professor did emerge from the ivy covered halls at least one last time, in 1998, when, after 25 years he agreed to perform in London at a gala tribute to Sir Cameron Macintosh.  As we are poised to enter yet another spring, what could be more appropriate than this?

        Tom Lehrer has famously observed that "[i]f, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.”   Sorry, but it's not going to happen.  We are too busy, even after all of these years, laughing.

   Happy Birthday, Professor!