My Son, The Greatest: The Best Of Allan Sherman
This collection gathers 19 of Sherman's humorous story-songs. The comic uses original lyrics and pre-existing tunes to poke fun at television shows and consumer items, to send-up the kids and generally riff on early and mid-'60s American pop culture. On tracks like "Pop Hates the Beatles" and "Crazy Downtown," his subject is the generation gap. "Al 'n Yetta" portrays a TV-dependent couple while "Lotsa Luck" describes the complicated hassles of dealing with faulty TVs and new-fangled tape recorders. Sherman assumed his audience had a little knowledge of history, too. On "Good Advice" and "You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louie," he sings about inventors and French history, respectively. It's hard to imagine contemporary comedians working the historical beat. "One Hippopatami" is a delightfully goofy festival of wordplay that requires only a love of language and a tolerance for schmaltz.--Fred Cisterna