Word: pianos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first, things moved rather slowly, as might be expected in a place where winters are so tough that graves have to be dug with dynamite. When Keillor and his guest musicians-a guitar duo, a jazz piano player and a male singer-first walked out onto the stage in St. Paul's Ja net Wallace Concert Hall, there was an audience of 15 and exactly 385 empty seats. But the program's brand of whimsy gradually attracted listeners...
...born in 1928 and raised on the upper East Side of New York City, where he spent an unremarkable childhood--piano lessons and private school. After graduating from Horace Mann high school, he arrived at Harvard simultaneously with World War II. "I thought about majoring in Math, Chemistry and English," Lehrer says, "but Math had the fewest requirements so I went with it." After graduating magna cum laude in 1946, he continued studying mathematics in Harvard graduate school. "I knew I wanted to teach and Math was my field, so I studied Math," he says...
While at Harvard, Lehrer began fiddling with a piano in Dunster House, writing ditties about campus personalities, parodying popular songs of the day, and playing his compositions at parties. He thought little of it at the time; it was just a way to entertain himself and his friends...
...first important gig came at the Freshman Smoker, a bawdy, all-male (and long extinct) annual revue that Harvard's freshman class used to sponsor. Lehrer played the Smoker for four straight years, parlaying his original songs, parodies and piano-playing into a small-time institution. He decided to make a record...
...revue and they finally got to the bottom of the barrel," he says) and the show, with its cast of four, is coming to New York in December. He also has published a new collection of his songs called Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer (Pantheon; $16.50), with improved piano arrangements and two songs that he wrote for public television's Electric Company...