I had three requests for this one. I posted it here in August of 2009…the story of how one of my idols sorta threatened to sue me when I was barely in my teens. I don't think anything has changed since I first wrote this except that I've given up on my campaign to get a collection of Frank Jacobs' parody songs issued…
Okay, here's the Allan Sherman story I teased a week or so ago here. This took place in 1965. I was 13 years old and attending Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles. Sherman had a hit record out called "Crazy Downtown," which was a parody of the Petula Clark mega-hit, "Downtown."
Like Stan Freberg, MAD Magazine, Soupy Sales, Laurel and Hardy and a few others I could name, Allan Sherman was a huge influence on me. Even at that age, I was writing a lot of silly poems and song parodies…and I guess he was my second-favorite writer of the latter. (My fave was Frank Jacobs in MAD. Mr. Jacobs is the gent to whom we gave the Bill Finger Award this year at the Comic-Con International…and I'm currently lobbying to get someone to publish a book collecting Frank's fine work for that publication and to include a CD of gifted folks singing some of his better efforts.)
Anyway, what you need to know is that I was in Junior High and that Allan Sherman was kind of a hero. His son Robert was a classmate and while we weren't close friends, every now and then Robbie would tell me how his dad was going to be on some TV show or had a new album in the works. I couldn't believe that I was even that close to the guy who wrote and sang those funny records I played over and over and over.
So one month, a campus group called the Girls League decided to stage a talent show/benefit with various students and teachers performing to raise money for I-don't-recall-what-cause. The festivities were to commence with an elaborately-staged (elaborate for a show with zero budget) dance number to "Crazy Downtown." The school orchestra knew the tune and some male student who, sad to say, looked a lot like Allan Sherman would be singing the lyrics while everyone did the frug and the pony around him.
That was the plan until two days before the event. That was when Mr. Campbell, who was the school principal, received a call either from Allan Sherman or Allan Sherman's lawyer vowing to sue if Mr. Sherman's lyrics were used. The obvious assumption was that Robbie had told his father about it. Mr. Campbell explained that this was a pretty low-profile event; that the number was to be performed but twice (two shows) in a Junior High School auditorium before, collectively, less than a thousand people, and that the money was going to a worthy charity. This made no difference to the caller.
With a deep sigh, Mr. Campbell called in the organizers of the benefit and told them to drop the number. They said they couldn't drop the number. It was the opening of the show and there was no time to write and stage something else. "Well," Mr. Campbell suggested, "How about dropping the Allan Sherman lyrics and just singing the real lyrics of "Downtown?" The students argued that, creatively, the number they'd staged really cried out for silly lyrics. Mr. Campbell said, "I'm sorry but this is final. You can't use Allan Sherman's lyrics."
The students behind the show didn't want to use the real "Downtown" lyrics so one of them — a way-too-cute girl named Cady — came to me at lunchtime and said, "Hey, you're always writing funny poems and things and reading them in class. Can you write us a new set of funny lyrics to 'Downtown?'" If Cady had asked me to trisect angles, I probably would have been motivated to learn how but this request was in that small subset of things in this world that I think I can actually do. She took me over to a rehearsal for the show and I watched the number. Then the next morning, I handed her a set of parody lyrics to "Downtown" that used none of Allan Sherman's jokes or even rhymes. I no longer have a copy of what I wrote but I can recall the opening. It went…
I'm feeling low
'Cause every radio show
Keeps telling me to go…Downtown.
All of my friends
Say it's the newest of trends
The party never ends…Downtown.
And from there on, it was all about how the singer was such a terrible dancer that he didn't dare go downtown and attempt to join in the fun. I do remember being pretty proud that I rhymed "fugue" with "frug" and that I got in a reference to Mr. Campbell, whose name I happily decided rhymed with "gamble." But what I really remember were a couple of big tingles 'n' thrills, first when I heard my lyrics being sung on a stage in what seemed almost a semi-professional fashion (a first for me) and then getting some decent laughs at the actual performances (another first).
And then I remember the summons, a few days later, to the office of Mr. Campbell. I didn't know what it was about but I knew I couldn't possibly be in any real trouble. My entire time in school, I never got in any real trouble. This was about as close as I ever came.
Mr. Campbell had someone on the phone when I walked in. My memory is that it was Allan Sherman himself but as I think back, I'm wondering if it wasn't Sherman's attorney who, in turn, had his client in his office or on another line. In any case, Mr. Sherman had heard that most or all of his lyrics had been performed at the benefit and he was going to sue Emerson Junior High, win, tear the school down and put up a Von's Market on the site…or something like that. He was also going to sue all the students involved, including whoever it was who, he insisted, had just "changed a few words" of what he'd written, hoping he [Sherman] wouldn't catch on that his lyrics had been used. I guess that meant me.
Cady and some other Girls League officers were in the office already and they'd explained eleven times that I had written completely different lyrics that had not employed a syllable of Mr. Sherman's work. The person on the other end of the phone refused to believe that.
So it came down to me reciting my lyrics — which I remembered in full then even if I can't today — and Mr. Campbell repeating them, line by line to either Allan Sherman or to a lawyer who was, in turn, repeating them to Allan Sherman. They didn't sound particularly clever that way but eventually, my hero was convinced and he agreed to withdraw his threat. I wish I could report that he also said, "Hey, whoever wrote those may have a future in this business" but no such compliment was voiced.
That was pretty much the end of the story except that it took a while before I could listen to Allan Sherman without getting a tight feeling in my tummy. Years later, I met some of Sherman's associates and learned that I was in good company; that though generally a decent guy, Allan was known to threaten to sue waiters if his soup was lukewarm. Despite that, I still love his work and can probably sing 90% of everything he wrote from memory. That's right. I can remember his lyrics but not my own.
Incidentally: A few years later at University High School, I was called upon again to write last-minute lyrics for a talent show. Students in this one were performing a number of recent hits. The faculty advisor decided that some of the lyrics of these songs, which were played non-stop on the radio, were too "suggestive" to be sung by high school students. I had to "clean up" the lyrics to a number of tunes, including "Never My Love" (a hit of the day for The Association), "Young Girl" (Gary Puckett and the Union Gap) and even the Doors' immortal "Light My Fire." In the last of these, I had to take out the part about lighting the guy's fire.
I did, and the revised lyrics passed inspection by the faculty advisor so the show could go on. But during the actual performance, as all the singers had agreed among themselves, they abandoned my laundered versions and sang the real lyrics. This struck me as the proper thing to do.
We all kept waiting for the faculty advisor to stop the proceedings or haul all the singers out to be shot…but if she noticed, she decided to pretend she didn't. In later years, writing for TV shows, I often employed the same trick of feigned compliance…and you'd be amazed how often it worked. The things you learn in high school…