Articles

My Son The Folk Singer - November 12, 1962 - Newsweek Magazine

"Sarah Jackman, Sarah Jackman, how's by you? How's your brother Bernie? He's a big attorney. How's your sister Doris? Still with William Morris. How's your cousin Shirley? She got married early . . . How's your nephew Seymour? Seymour joined the Peace Corps. He's nice, too. He's nice, too."

To the melody of "Frere Jacques," a girl named Sarah Jackman and a boy named Jerry Backman sing this telephone conversation in what has become the year's hottest-selling novelty record album. Intoned in pure nasal Brooklynese, "Sarah Jackman" is just one of ten old favorties similarly treated in "My Son, the Folk Singer." In five weeks, the album has sold more than 400,000 copies and Warner Bros. Records has gon into peak production to keep up with the demand.

The chief ingredient in the phenomenal success of MSTFS is a plump, guitar-strumming gag writer (for Phil Silvers, Jackie Gleason, Steve Allen) and TV producer ("I've Got a Secret") named Allan Sherman. By delicate use of pun and parody, and with a sharp ear for his subject, Sherman tastefully manages to satirize both the manners of urban Jews and the music of the folk singers. The result is a record that appeals to gentiles and to Jews alike.

Sherman transforms "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" into a saga of a cutter in Irving Roth's garment factory who stood fast during a catastrophic fire. It concludes: "Oh, Harry Lewis perished in the service of the Lord. He was trampling through the warehouse where the drapes of Roth are stored."

Sherman, who began singing his kosher folk songs for fun at Holly wood parties, is a s suprised as the record industry at the unexpected smash success of MSTFS. But he insists that the Jewis idiom is only ineidental to its popularity. "If it had been in Chinese or Italian," says the Chicago-born gagman, "it would have had the same effect."

He should live so long.