Allan Sherman: My Son, the Celebrity

"Not long ago it would have been inconceivable that Allan Sherman would ever seem timely or topical again. In the early 1960s, after a failed career as a television producer, he became the pudgy king of Borscht Belt-style song parodies, setting yuks about suburbia and clichés of Jewish life to the tunes of 'Streets of Laredo' and 'Frère Jacques.' His high point came in 1963. … But in the wake of 'Mad Men,' nothing from the Kennedy era looks the same, and Sherman’s albums … can be read as both lighthearted crowd pleasers and glimpses into a culture of rat-race conformity. He even sounds like a young Don Draper in 'When I Was a Lad' from the album 'My Son, the Celebrity,' in which Sherman, in his flat sing-speak, describes ladder climbing at an advertising firm: 'I learned who was going out with whom, and who had the keys to the powder room/For the key to the powder room, you see, is the key to the structure of the agency'" (Ben Sisario, "Playlist," New York Times, 9/5/10).

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