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Allan Sherman achieved national fame in the 1960s with parody songs. (Photo credit: Sid Avery)<\/p>\n Allan Sherman achieved national fame in the 1960s with parody songs. (Photo credit: Sid Avery)<\/p>\n
Allan Sherman was a Jewish American comedy legend who earned fame as a song parodist throughout the 1960s, most notably with his summer camp chronicle \u201cHello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!\u201d Sherman died in 1973, at the age of 48, but he\u2019s remained highly influential on generations of comedians.<\/p>\n
On Dec. 4, the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History will present \u201cGlory, Glory Allan Sherman: A Celebrity Music and Comedy Salute,\u201d a live concert that assembles a group of comedy and music luminaries to pay tribute to Sherman.<\/p>\n
The concert is co-produced by Philadelphia area native and resident Jonathan Stein and his partner Jess Gonchor. Stein and Gonchor say the concert is inspired by the late Hal Willner, the Jewish Philadelphia native who spent many years as the musical director of \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d<\/p>\n
Willner was known for assembling all-star tribute concerts, including a Sherman tribute that he once put together in New York in collaboration with Steve Weisberg. Weisberg is the musical director of Weitzman\u2019s Sherman tribute.<\/p>\n
\u201cYears ago, Jess and I bought the rights to Allan Sherman\u2019s life story,\u201d Stein told Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. \u201cWe were developing a film about him, like a biopic. Over the years, as we\u2019ve been shopping it around, talking about Allan\u2019s influence, we started to realize how many people were \u2026 talking about Allan as an influence, and how much of his DNA shows up in contemporary art and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted that Larry David and Jason Alexander are among the modern comedy figures who have performed versions of Sherman\u2019s songs.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople of a certain age know Allan Sherman from their record collection, or [their] parents\u2019 record collection,\u201d Gonchor said. \u201cSo it was always a nostalgic thing for me. And when I met [Jonathan], he knew what it was, and then other people knew what it was. So it became a thing that everybody sort of had in common. If you knew, you knew, and if you loved, you loved.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJon and I decided that we really need to do something with this, because if we like it, and a lot of our friends like it, there are other people out there who love it as well,\u201d Gonchor said. \u201cSo we really just got a lot of joy from the music.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stein and Gonchor are still hoping to get their Sherman movie off the ground.<\/p>\n
Among the participants in the concert are Terry Adams of NRBQ, musician Laurie Anderson, Dead Milkmen frontman Rodney Anonymous, The Hooters singer Eric Bazilian, singer Janine Nichols, comedy writer Robert Smigel, John Wesley Harding singer Wesley Stace, singer Chloe Webb, and Low Cut Connie performer Adam Weiner.<\/p>\n
Most of the performers are either lifelong fans of Sherman, came through the Hal Willner connection, or both. Stace, the locally based singer, told Stein that he used to sing Sherman\u2019s songs with his grandmother.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we do is we celebrate the ways that American Jews have contributed to the fabric of society and popular culture,\u201d said Dan Samuels, the Weitzman\u2019s director of public programs. \u201cIt\u2019s not like there wasn\u2019t parody before Allan Sherman. But there wasn\u2019t parody on such a mass scale. There weren\u2019t mass parody albums that sold like this sold.\u201d<\/p>\n
Samuels noted that he grew up a fan of the work of \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic and Adam Sandler\u2019s early comedy albums, both of which were influenced by Allan Sherman\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Jonathan and Jess ended up in my inbox with this idea, it was very clear very quickly that this was something that I wanted to try and run with,\u201d Samuels said.<\/p>\n
All involved were happy to also pay tribute to Hal Willner, who was known for putting on \u201ccrazy extravaganzas,\u201d as Weisberg described his shows.<\/p>\n
\u201cHal\u2019s from here, and he kind of perfected this format,\u201d Stein said. \u201cThere\u2019s such a love of Hal\u2019s work, especially in the artistic community.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked on many projects with Hal over the years, and I knew him since 1985, until he passed in 2020,\u201d Weisberg, the musical director of the show, said. \u201cWe did many of these multi-artist live events, and we did one in New York, at a place called The Stone. \u2026 Basically, we\u2019re going to carry on the tradition of a Hal Willner show, which is that this isn\u2019t going to be a jukebox musical, it isn\u2019t going to be a karaoke thing \u2026 it\u2019ll be a thoughtful look at his work, taking into consideration that it\u2019s about the words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Samuels noted how special it is for a big event at the Weitzman to concentrate on something joyful.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got the sense, once I started talking to these guys and listening a little more to Sherman\u2019s music, especially the live recording \u2026 I ended up walking down Market Street, laughing. \u2026 It became so clear that this is the thing I didn\u2019t know we needed in our space. For this moment, and for this institution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allan Sherman achieved national fame in the 1960s with parody songs. (Photo credit: Sid Avery) Allan Sherman was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[25984,3869,69,71,70,12848],"class_list":{"0":"post-43611","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-allan-sherman","9":"tag-comedy","10":"tag-philadelphia","11":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","12":"tag-philadelphia-news","13":"tag-the-weitzman-national-museum-of-american-jewish-history"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}