Tom Lehrer, a mathematician by trade whose snarky, sardonic lyrics made him a famous satirist during the 1950s and ‘60s, died on July 26. He was 97.
Lehrer died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to his longtime friend, David Herder. He did not give a cause of death.
Lehrer parodied marriage, politics, racism and the Cold War during the 1950s with songs like “Be Prepared,” “The Old Dope Peddler,” “It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier” and “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” His songs earned him an underground following on college campuses as he released a pair of self-made albums.
But Lehrer was a professor who taught mathematics, beginning at Harvard and later at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California at Santa Cruz.
“I don’t like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living,” Lehrer once told a college audience. “I mean, it isn’t as though I had to do this. I could be making, oh, $3,000 a year just teaching.”
Lehrer stopped performing in 1960 after a few years, resumed briefly in 1965 and then ended his singing career for good in 1967.
In 2020, he waived his copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format without any fee in return.
“Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever recorded,” musicologist Barry Hansen once said.
Lehrer was born in the New York City borough of Manhattan on April 9, 1928. He took piano lessons from an early age but hesitated at learning classical music.
After graduating early from the Loomis Chaffee School in Connecticut, Lehrer attended Harvard. He majored in mathematics and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1946 as an 18-year-old. He earned a master’s from Harvard the following year.
In 1953, Lehrer recorded a solo album, “Songs of Tom Lehrer,” in a Boston studio for $40. It became a cult classic that sold more than 10,000 copies. Songs included “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie” and “Fight Fiercely, Harvard.”
The cover contained a drawing of Lehrer seated at the piano, with horns coming out of his head and a devil’s tail.
Six years later, Lehrer released “More of Tom Lehrer,” using the same image.
“When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn’t, I didn’t,” Lehrer told The Associated Press in 2000. “I wasn’t like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit. ... It wasn’t like I had writer’s block.”
Lehrer also wrote songs in 1971 for the educational children’s show “The Electric Company.”
A fan once asked Lehrer if he had ever married or had children.
“Not guilty on both counts,” he said.
Lehrer had no immediate survivors.
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